Romans 8:38-39, ‘For I am sure that neither death nor life…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
Death is an enemy; the ‘Last Enemy’ that will be finally destroyed by the unfolding of Christ’s work on the cross at the return of the Lord (1 Cor.15:26).
At the same time, Death has become a servant and handmaid of final joy for the one united to the slain and risen Lord. Paul suggests this when he tells us that Death is ‘ours’ in Christ (2 Cor.3:22). Death itself—the devouring mouth that swallows into itself all the beauties and innocences and hopes of this mortal world, the incurable wound dealt beneath the Tree in Eden, the ‘Last Enemy’—Death itself bows its head in humble service to the saints, transformed from Enemy to Servant through the victory of the cross, bearing them in mercy into the presence of Him who is the True and Eternal Life.
This, I’d suggest, is part of what it means to be ‘more than conquerors’ (Rom.8:37). By His love, God in Christ embraces Death—and every fracture of this fallen world—to its bitter and bleeding fullness upon the cross. There is no drop of agony left in the cup of cursed mortality when Jesus lifts His eyes to heaven and cries out, ‘It Is Finished.’…
And when this same Jesus is raised up from that very Death, Death itself is transfigured into the servant of divine glory and the herald of redeeming love…Death itself, as eschatologically defined in the wounds of the Risen Lord, finally speaks joy and peace to those in Christ (cf. John 20:20-21)….This is Death ‘more than conquered.’
In today’s image, Death as enemy recoils under the crushing blow of Christ’s cross (Gen.3:15), and is thus transformed into a handmaid of mercy who lifts the saint into the presence of the Lord. Jesus is depicted as still hanging on the cross—meeting His Beloved in the moment of shared Death—and yet He is illumined by the open tomb such that the five wounds of His suffering become the radiant jewels of divine glory. His final (and our first) breath pours from His mouth in the form of a Dove—the Spirit who interweaves the Death of Christ with that of His Saints and raises them with Him to New and Unending Life.
