Dealing With The Twin Foxes of The Fear of Death and Death

UV 1545/10000 Dealing With the Universal Fox of the Fear of Death
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

I Corinthians 15 v 55


From the very beginning of time ,the common enemy of man is death, was death and will be death. It robs kings of their glory, the wealthy of their pride, the famous of their renown, the powerful of their pelf, the common people of their hope. Death is the great leveller that brought Pharaoh and commoner to the ground. The grave defined the destiny of mankind. The grave became the door of the great unknown. The fear of death therefore envelops all of mankind from the least to the greatest. The fear of death is a fox that morphs at times as a snarling wolf and a roaring lion. It is not only cowards that fear death but every human being does. Dealing with death and the fear of death is the common need of every human being ever born into this world. Death gets its power from the fact that it is irrevocable. It gets its power from the sinfulness of the human being. It gets its power from the fact that God’s law itself defines sin and prescribes death as its wages or payment. As long as man lived and died in sin or a state of being spiritually unclean, incomplete or unfinished, death would hold him prisoner and the thought or fear of death would keep stinging him like a bee.


There is no other text or no other life that so comprehensively overcame death and promised eternity that does not wait till we die but commences at the first point of belief or faith in the life, death, resurrection and words of Jesus. The Unique Saving Proposition (USP) of Jesus and the gospel of Jesus is that He alone embraced death in its most cruel form and overcame it. Not only did He overcome it by taking His life back as He lived sinless and death had no power or authority to withhold it, He gave the right to anyone who believed in Him and His promise of eternal life would live forever beyond the grave. Pope Francis recently said that Jesus ended His life in utter failure. He could not be more wrong unless he hides under the cloak of infallibility. Jesus embraced absolute failure and shame but He overcame it and came out of it absolutely triumphant. Hereafter, anyone who lives believing in His triumph would treat death as only the sting of a bee. He could brush it off like the sting of a bee. It might hurt for a while the people who survive the believer who dies physically but for him or her, death is the happiest moment, the entrance to his or her rewards for a life of faith to be enjoyed for eternity. Jesus becomes the door to eternal life through which anyone can enter who believes. He is the all conquering hero who has conquered death and enables every believer to conquer death and the haunting fear of death is banished forever. Satan is the defeated foe – the killer who is defeated and destroyed. The lion’s carcass in which a beehive thrives that Samson makes a riddle out of is symbolic of the defeat of satan. The honey dripping from the beehive is a metaphor for the sweet and precious, life-strengthening, faith-enhancing promises of scripture that Jesus has given us the right to claim.

As a youth I would often say in my youthful brashness
“ what is the worst that can happen ? I would die. So what?” The Lord took me through two near death experiences to realize the full significance of my words. The worst thing that can happen to anyone is to die without hope of living forever in the presence of the Redeemer. Sure, my Redeemer lives but will I live in the presence of the Redeemer ? That is defined or secured by my faith and its expression here and now. The gospel is the perfect and complete antidote to death and the fear of death. I once wrote these lines: “ Gospel- go spell it out , by the way we live. Don’t talk of hell, No need to yell.” Jesus shifted the paradigm of justice from sin and judgement to grace and faith. Faith fills the gaps between us and the absolute standards of God. Faith fills the gaps in our understanding with wisdom from above. Faith fills the gaps in our relationships. Once we are liberated from death and the fear of death, the Lord gives us so much hope and freedom that we think and act as if we live forever. The tail of the fox of the fear of death becomes our firebrand to throw light on our paths. Death and the fear of death will literally turn tail and seeing us approach would speed away in the opposite direction. We now have the power to defy death, to challenge it and to even command it.

Prateep V Philip