No Escaping Death
By John Gavazzoni

It's been with great satisfaction that I've observed more and more believers coming to the understanding that the Lord Jesus' death is not an instead-of death, but an all-inclusive death. His death covers the whole of humanity's experience of death. In Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament, Amplified, Expanded, (with) Alternate Renderings, the rendering of the Greek of, "Christ died for us," includes that He died OVER us. That is, He's got us covered. He's got us covered all the way to death and beyond. "Christ died over us," and "Christ died over our sins" according to Paul. In that over-covering of our sins, was the covering over sin's consequence, i.e., death.

Since Christ died, inclusive of us all, no one can get out from under His death. Some of my readers may at first be troubled by my next statement, but do please reflect on this inescapable fact: To die is to die in Christ, believer or unbeliever, no exceptions. That all-inclusive death leads to His all-inclusive resurrection, ascension, enthronement, and glorification. Yes, He's got us covered all the way from the manger to the throne. That's the objective, "in Christ" dimension. All done, all the way, all already in Him.

Then there's the subjective dimension whereby that already accomplished work of the Father in the perfecting of Jesus' human experience from incarnation, through death, on to glory for us all, is now at work in us subjectively. It's being done, not because it hasn't yet been done, it's being done because it's already been done. That's central to Pauline theology: On one hand, Jesus summed up all humanity and all humanity's earthly experience in Himself. That's the Pauline, "in Christ." On the other hand, we have Paul equally noting the "Christ in you," dimension. We are all in Christ, and Christ is in all of us. The former is being experientially unfolded by the latter. We must maintain the balance that it's all been done, but because it's all been done, on the basis of that already accomplishment, it is also being progressively done....our struggles with that reality notwithstanding.

We will all be brought subjectively to the consummation of the full range of that reality in "due time." Before Christ revealed Himself to you within you, when you were dead in trespasses and sins, you were dead in Christ. Oh YES! To be dead is to be dead in Christ, for all things were created in Him, and have remained, and will remain in Him to the end of history. He is the Containment Field of All Things. You were, in that state, not yet made alive, that is, subjectively, you had not yet experienced Christ as your life, but you were part-way there already being dead in your sins. You see, to be dead in Christ, and to be dead, amounts to the same thing.

I used to think that the death of being crucified with Christ was one kind of death, but to be dead in trespasses and sins was another kind of death. Not so. Jesus died the death of being dead in trespasses and sins. He died our death conclusively. When the due time for you to experience your union with Christ in His resurrection....the experience of being made alive in Him...the foundation has been laid for you to understand how important it was for you to die, for there's no such thing as being resurrected without first dying. Right? Of course not! Now alive with Him, having His mind, you're led to understand the place of death in the plan of God, and you gladly yield to being crucified with Christ.

Union with Christ in His resurrection was not an after-thought on the part of God. It was not some sort of Plan B because the devil had spoiled Plan A. From the beginning, or we might say before the beginning, God chose for His life, inclusive of ours, to go through death to resurrection. That explains why Eve was so obviously set up to be deceived. If we were to think of God thinking linearly about His plan for mankind and all of creation, the desirability of resurrection would have come first in His thinking, then death as inherently necessary.

We will not, in this life, get our heads at all adequately around that truth, but we can know that there's an abundance factor involved in that seemingly strange predestination of God's. Can the life of God become more abundant? Well, Jesus did say, "except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone." Of course, that abundance doesn't come from somewhere, or something, or someone outside of God, that unfolding abundance comes from within Him. I'll repeat what I've written before, and what I've stated in in-person sermons: with us in tow, as the Primal artesian well that He spoke of to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, springing up from within, God becomes more and more of all that He is out of the depths of all that He is. That has to do with the relationship of God to Himself, and then, consequently, of God to His creation. Good theology maintains a distinction between God's Being and His creation, while maintaining also His solidarity with all He has made.

God brought creation out of His own Being, and that creation had a certain strangeness in relationship to His Being. From 1st Peter, and Hebrews, we learn that we are pilgrims, strangers, sojourners in a strange land in our present eonian state. With that, I dare say, given the Lord's solidarity with our humanity, that He's also a pilgrim and a stranger, a sojourner here, though that is not at all to say that materiality is intrinsically evil. No, that's the Gnostic error. How shall we put it, that God has joined us in our pilgrim journey, or that we have joined Him? Since we don't initiate anything, I say we have been made to join Him.

So how is it that repeatedly down through history, within different theological paradigms, that many Christians have been led to believe that there is an escape from dying? There are those brethren who embrace the whole rapture theory scenario: Some will be remain alive at a secret coming of the Lord for His church, unlike those who have died in Christ, they will be caught up without dying. Do a search about the Millerites, who had been led to believe that Jesus would return on a certain day, and they would, supposedly, as an elect company, escape death and go straight to heaven. The unbelieving world loves to mock such expectation of folks who, to them, ignorantly take the Bible seriously.

Presently within a community of believers truly rich in revelation, understanding, and devotion to Christ, where I enjoy much, beautiful fellowship, and where my ministry has been graciously accepted, there is the notion that there will be coming on the scene a company of overcomers (manifested sons of God) who will, as it were, walk right into immortality without dying. There have been other similar movements that don't come to mind for me at the moment, that have embraced such a "hope"..... cases that have ended in embarrassment, disappointment, and even despair. That notion, based upon no more than a couple verses of scripture, has, at least up until recently, been a common doctrinal distinction in spite of scripture's clear instruction that "it is appointed unto men once to die...."

I once taught that Enoch being translated that He should not see death was an Old Testament type of the rapture of the church. But Enoch being made to not see death, doesn't equate to him never having to die. It just doesn't. Maybe Enoch, who walked with God, and had a testimony that he pleased God, took that last step in a walk with God that led him into that spiritual dimension within which one only sees life. Maybe there, in that heaven, Enoch saw life so clearly that it left no room for seeing death.

Not seeing death and not ever dying are not necessarily the same experience. Remember, Paul knew a man who had been caught up to the third heaven, to paradise, but there's no suggestion in his account of knowing that man, that the man had attained to immortality by his experience. When I was contemplating writing on this subject, the Christian mystic, Sandhu Sundar Singh came to mind, how he had started on a mission into Tibet, and simply vanished, no trace of him at all, though it's generally thought that he died at the foot of the Himalayas. I'm inclined to think that of what I know of the depths of his walk with the Lord, that he, like Enoch, walked with God and God took him to that place where death is not seen.

We've assumed that Elijah, when the chariot of fire separated between him and Elisha, and Elijah was caught up in a whirlwind, that Elijah was given an end-run around death. I don't think so. Such a notion has always ended in disappointment, and I know this from experience with at least one dearly beloved brother friend and brother in Christ with whom I enjoyed sweet fellowship for many years. He saw resurrection life so clearly; it was such a reality for him that it led him to presume he was destined to not die. We can have, as he did, such a clear revelation of our union with Christ in His resurrection that we unwarrantedly extrapolate that we have been chosen to never die.

There's a pressure in my spirit to encourage my brethren to face up to the inevitability of death. I'm hesitant to play the psychologist here as to what might be going on in our unconscious mind, but I will go so far as to say that none of us are completely immune from being troubled by thoughts of death, as Hebrews says, "who all their lives were subject to bondage though the fear of death." Dear ones, don't look for an escape for that which leads to glory. I'm adamant regarding this. Do see death as the last enemy, but see through it to life, and that more abundantly. Maybe that's what was how Enoch was made to see, through death, as one sees through a clear window, seeing through it to the life beyond. Death, to him, in that experience, was a transparent presence, a clear window through which to see only life.