Tonight’s family service looked at our identity as children of the King of Kings. Garry spoke from 1 Tim 1:17 and Romans 8:16-18, reminding us that God has chosen us to be His children and treats us exactly as He treats His beloved Son. Once, when on holiday in Bridlington with a friend and his family, Garry was given the same money to spend at the amusement arcade that his friend’s mother gave to all her children. He was treated exactly the same as her own family.

In the same way, God treats us exactly as He treats Jesus; we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. We may feel timid, diffident, unworthy and as though we do not belong in God’s family, but He treats us as children of God.

Mark reminded us that God chose us before the foundation of the world and that since God is the King of all the universe, we are ‘rich and famous’ in the Lord. We are God’s special people (1 Pet 2:9), handpicked by God.

Last week we had an October birthday to celebrate!

At our former building on Beever Street, the truth that ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:8) was written on the back wall in large letters:

This simple but profound truth has the power to transform our lives. Stephen spoke from 1 John 4:7-17 this morning, reminding us that God’s love is not flat, but is four-dimensional. Just as a child’s pop-up book captures the child’s imagination and brings the story to life through its careful use of 3-D images, so too do we find that God’s love, fuelled by Father, Son and Spirit, has the power to shape and transform us. God’s love gives: the Father gave His only Son, so that we might have fellowship with Him and with each other. God’s Son is a channel for that love, a love which is unconditional and which motivates us to love. As we hear, see and read of God’s love, we are invited also to experience and participate in that love by His Spirit. Nothing else can satisfy, fuel and keep us.

In the film ‘Heist’, the casino owner (a hard-nosed, ruthless man who is feared but not loved, played by Robert De Niro) is left ruminating on death and destruction with a former employee who has robbed him to pay for an operation which will save his daughter’s life. Mr Pope is estranged from his ex-wife and daughter because of his ruthlessness and is dying from cancer, but still he has not been merciful to his employee; now, wryly, he remembers his mother’s words to him: ‘Regrets in death mean you’ve lived life wrong. Don’t live life wrong.’

The good news for us as Christians is that we don’t have to live  – or die –  with regrets; we have the opportunity to live life right, through God’s grace and mercy to us. Despite our mistakes, our sins, our weaknesses, our failures, we can be cleansed and purified, given spotless garments of righteousness to wear. John reminds us, ‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.’ (1 John 1:7-10)

Regrets can weigh us down and leave us under the cloud of guilt and condemnation, but God is able to free us from that: ‘Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.’ (Rom 8:1, The Message) We are able to rest secure, because even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. (1 Jn 3:20) He is able to turn everything that happens in life – even the sin and shame – to good. (Rom 8:28) Christ really does transform both our living and our dying.

If I had been Paul, I think I would have ended my writings on resurrection with 1 Cor 15:57 – ‘But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ That’s a fantastic verse, reminding us of the help God gives us because of the resurrection. Because Christ has destroyed the power of sin and death on the cross, we have hope of deliverance and victory. This hope is in the present tense and indicates that it is God’s characteristic to give victory. The implication is that we participate in that victory now and that we participate in it daily! What better way to end the chapter?!

But Paul does not end the conversation there. Instead, in the next verse we read, ‘Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.’ (1 Cor 15:58)

Paul is never content to leave us with theology that is not tied to practical application. The fact that Christ has died for our sins and been raised for our justification has enormous present-day relevance, shaping how we live our everyday lives right now. This hope enables us to stand firm, to be steadfast, to be immovable, not to be swayed by every whim or fancy (see Eph 4:14). It gives us a good grip on life, better than the bottle openers for those struggling with arthritis!

This hope makes us as unshakable as the ship which ran aground on the island of Malta, whose bow stuck fast and could not be moved (see Acts 27:39-41). It also provides the motivation for our service to God. Paul reminds us that just as the death and resurrection of Christ were not in vain (empty, worthless), so our labour in the Lord is not in vain. That labour can be hard work indeed! (see 1 Cor 11:23, 27; 2 Cor 6:5; 2 Thess 3:8) – but is as nothing compared to the sacrifice of Christ and the reward promised to God’s people. Confidence in the resurrection moves us to both stability and service. John Piper says, ‘Christ has come. He has died for you. He took all your sins on himself. He satisfied the demands of the law for you. The sting of death is removed. There is no condemnation. No hell. No fear. Though your body be laid in the grave, Christ will come and the trumpet will sound, and this mortal body will put on immortality and this decomposing, decaying body will become imperishable. Death is swallowed up in a great, blood-bought, Christ-wrought victory. To die is gain. Away from the body, at home with the Lord.’ If we keep these things in mind, our stability and service are assured.

In our Bible study we looked at 1 Cor 15:50-58, the final verses in Paul’s triumphant chapter on the resurrection. Here, he speaks of Christ’s ultimate victory over death (see 1 Cor 15:26, 1 Cor 15:55-56) and the glorious hope we have because of Christ’s resurrection. The Christian is assured of eternal life where the perishable will be clothed with the imperishable and the mortal will put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53) and reminded of God’s great victory which He gives us through Jesus (1 Cor 15:57).

Attitudes to death vary enormously. Most of us are afraid of dying to some extent; even if we have the hope of being with Christ in eternity, we are not at all sure we will have the courage or strength to go through the process of dying and are worried about pain and suffering. Death is a great unknown, and we often are fearful of the unknown and resistant to change. Many of us cope with death by ignoring it as much as possible, refusing to think about our own mortality (a strategy that is easier when we are younger and death seems a remote possibility…) Paul’s attitude does not seem like this. He says that ‘for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Phil 1:21), going on to say ‘If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.’ (Phil 1:22-24) This chapter gives us the key to understanding Paul’s attitude to death and can transform our attitudes too.

Keith Krell writes, ‘We cannot exist long-term in physical bodies that are subject to decay or corruption, and we cannot exist long-term where the inevitability of death exists. These two aspects must be changed.’ Christ’s resurrection means that the perishable can put on the imperishable and the mortal can be clothed in immortality, but this means a transformation of our physical bodies which are subject to decay. Death can be seen, therefore, as a re-clothing, something God urges us to do daily to some extent (see Eph 4:22-24, Col 3:12). He has provided us with new garments (see Is 61:10) which we will experience in fulness after death.

The real problem is not simply death, but sin, which gives death its sting or power (1 Cor 15:56, Rom 6:23). The good news is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin has been dealt with decisively once and for all (see Gal 3:10-14, 1 Pet 2:24), and as a consequence, Jesus has broken the devil’s power over death and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Heb 2:14-15) Death for the Christian is simply the journey to with the Lord eternally in our new dwelling (see 2 Cor 5:1-5, Jn 14:1-4).

Our attitude to death is therefore very different to people who have no hope (see 1 Thess 4:13). We may grieve and mourn the loss of those we love, but we can find comfort, solace and hope in the fact that death is not the ultimate end, a cessation of being. Because Christ lives, we also will live (Jn 14:29, see also Jn 11:25) Jesus is the ‘Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’ (Rev 1:18) Hallelujah!