Facing Death with a Clear Conscience: Remembering Steve Walker

 [In the fall of 2013, my dear brother Steve lost his battle with cancer.  It all happened so fast.  He was a year younger than me, and in apparently great health in January 2013 when our Dad passed away.  But between the spring and the fall, he steadily grew weaker and sicker, and soon he was gone.  He was a blessing to me, and to so many.  I admired him in his outlook toward dying.  He was gentle and peaceful and gracious.  He faced death with a clear conscience.  What a blessing to those who know this secret!  A few reflections about that…] 

We are made in God’s image, spiritually.  Adam and Eve connected with God in the spiritual realm, that perfect spiritual harmony was the foundation of their communion.   Animals cannot sin – because they cannot make a moral choice, cannot have a spiritual relationship with their maker.  They do not have a moral conscience - are not made in his image spiritually.

When Adam and Eve sinned, look at the sense of their souls toward God – hiding from God, afraid of God.  It is the result of distrust and rebellion, selfishness [I will have it my way].  They hid because they were afraid.  They felt guilt and shame and fear. THEY had changed.  God had not changed.  They cut themselves off from their perfect union with God, but notice they did not escape his law or his love.  Fear and guilt today causes us to hide from him. “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me,” Ps. 51:3.

A wonderful thing is this conscience, which God gives us to provoke our awareness of sin.  The conscience is woven into our being, and guilt and fear result from it.  It tells us things are not right with us, within us.

But this guilt and this fear are blessings from God – his gift to us of the consciousness of sin.  It is the mark that we are divided in our nature.  There is still that spark of the divine in us.  If we were completely degraded we would not have a consciousness of it.   There are men who progress to that point.   This is worse than death – to sear your conscience and harden your heart to the point there is no consciousness of sin, no fear or guilt.  That is worse than death.

When they sinned, they were brought face to face with the consequences of their sin.  We sometimes think of this as their punishment, arbitrarily imposed by God – since you did THAT to me, I am going to do THIS to you.

But think of what God said to them. 

1. curse of the serpent [enmity between woman’s seed and his]
2. pain for the woman, corruption of the marriage relationship
3. curse of the ground FOR THY SAKE
4. sweat and toil for the man
5. death of the body – return to the earth.

Death is the natural course of sin.  Sin is the seed of which death is the fruit.  So James says, “sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”  Death is the completeness of sin. To fall short of what we were designed to be is to fall short of that spiritual harmony with our Father, to be cut off from our true Life, and what can that end in but death?

And it must be that way.  While evil lasts, suffering and death are necessary.  Suffering, men think, is the cause of their misery.  If I could just get rid of this disease, this trial, I would be happy.  But the suffering is the result of sin, and is necessary to our salvation.   Death is the result of sin, and is NECESSARY to our salvation.  We MUST learn to come face-to-face with death in order to look at life in the right perspective.  If we did not suffer consequences of sin, how wicked would we be? If you knew you would never die, where would you stop in your selfishness?

God does not play games and he does not deal in fictions.  It is I who have sinned, and it is I who must die.  “The soul that sins, it shall die.”  As long as the world stands there is no escaping it.  It is fixed and immutable.  Even if I could be avoid physical death, what would that accomplish in terms of my relation to God?

But where does that leave us?  What shall we do?  We are sin-stained, and we know we are guilty, and we cannot wash it off.  It is eaten into our soul and it is part of our nature now.  And we know that sin is death, and that we MUST die, and that we ARE dying.

Sin IS Death – there is no escaping it, they cannot be separated. This is the truth – BUT IT IS NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH.  It is not the end of the story.

What I need, if my death is not to be my final end, is to go through death in such a fashion as to conquer it.  THAT IS MY NEED!  Yes, if there were only some way…

But praise be to God, this is exactly the way he tells us about in the Bible.  This is EXACTLY the message of the cross.  This is exactly the victory that God hinted at in the garden – the seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent.

Jesus offers it – emptied himself taking the form of a servant.  Jesus says to us, “You have to die (physically).  There is no escaping it.  But I can go through it with you.  I can show you the way through it.  You don’t have to do it alone.  I can show you how to die, and in dying conquer death. Through death, into life.  You don’t have to die like a tired old dog, with no choice but to endure it.  You don’t have to die like a convicted criminal, just blocking out what’s on the other side.  You don’t have to die in a terrible accident, where suddenly you are seized with fear and your whole life flashes before you in regret.  You don’t have to die with a dreaded disease, where fatigue and pain and hopelessness.  You can DIE in victory, with me by your side…”

His life can be MY life.  I can live in HIM!  His death can by MY death.  I can share his life and I can share his death.  I can make them mine! 

I am so thankful to God for brothers and sisters who understand the message of the cross and follow it to the death.  And especially today for my dear brother Steve, with whom I shared so much in daily living in our early years, and so much in spiritual fellowship in our later years.  That spiritual bond still stands, and cannot be shaken.