February 6
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints,” Psalm 116:15.
It has been said that the day you die is better than the day you were born! What is meant by this statement? When you and I were born, we were sinful. We were flesh born of flesh. We were born in the image of our parents. Our sinful condition can be traced back through each preceding generation all the way back to Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve were created in God’s image; they were holy and perfect. However, they listened to the devil and sinned against the commandment of God. That was the sad beginning for all people. Thereafter, all people have been conceived and born in sin. The psalmist wrote, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me,” Psalm 51:5. Moses wrote, “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” Genesis 8:21. “There is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin,” Ecclesiastes 7:20. In the Epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrote, “There is none who does good, no, not one,” Romans 3:12, and later he adds, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.
We do not have to teach people how to sin. Parents do not have to teach their children how to do things that are wrong. Before a child can even walk or talk, he or she already shows sinfulness in the form of anger by biting, scratching, hitting, and kicking!
We are born sinful, born into a sinful world, and we are surrounded by sinful people. In view of all of this sinfulness, it is said that the day you die is better than the day you were born. Of course, this does not hold true for everyone. The unbelievers who reject God and Jesus as their Savior have no hope for eternity.
The statement that the day of death is better than the day of birth is true only for a Christian – one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our only Savior. For a Christian, the day you die is the day that you leave this sinful world and enter into the glories of heaven. The Christian enters the mansion which the Lord Jesus has gone on before to prepare for him. The Christian puts all trust and hope in Jesus, who lived the perfect life in our place, who took all our sins upon Himself and went to Calvary’s cross where He shed His holy, precious blood to wash our sins away, and who rose from the grave and conquered death and the devil. The day a Christian dies, he enters into that place of which the evangelist John writes, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away,” Revelation 21:4.
Thus we see how precious the death of a Christian is in the sight of God! For a child of God, the day of death is a homecoming! On that day, we go to be with our risen and ascended Lord.
“I know that my Redeemer lives;
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my ever-living Head.
He lives, triumphant from the grave;
He lives eternally to save;
He lives all-glorious in the sky;
He lives exalted there on high.
He lives to silence all my fears;
He lives to wipe away my tears;
He lives to calm my troubled heart;
He lives, all blessings to impart.
He lives and grants me daily breath;
He lives, and I shall conquer death;
He lives, my mansion to prepare;
He lives to bring me safely there.” Amen.