“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)
A pastor once told me that he preferred preaching for a funeral rather than a wedding.
Does that surprise you?
If given the choice, I think most people would rather attend a wedding than a funeral.
One event is full of happiness, joy, and laughter. The other is full of grief, sorrow, and tears. One is focused on a couple’s commitment and love for each other. The other is a jarring reminder that life—as happy and joyous as it can be—is often all too brief.
Funerals force us to confront the reality of life in this sin-darkened world. We don’t like the reminder that we’re mortal and that our time here is slowly ticking away second by second every day. We’d much rather focus on light and happy things than wrestle with the hard questions in life.
Questions like “When I die, how do I know for sure that I’ll be in heaven? Can I even know that for certain?”
After thinking about those questions, perhaps you can understand why the pastor I was talking to preferred preaching for funerals to preaching for weddings. He had opportunities to speak to a group of people—some Christian, some not—and share the confident hope that their loved one had in life and in death: eternal life won by Jesus.
Dear Christian, the hard questions we often ask in the face of death—either that of a loved one or as we think about our own death—are exactly what our loving God answers for us in his Word. He reveals to us what death is for Christians: It’s the doorway through which we cross into eternal life.
Is death still frightening to us at times? Of course. We’ve never experienced it before, and the unknown is often frightening. But we know the one who passed through death, unafraid, and was raised to life again for us.
Our Savior says, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19).
Do the deaths of our loved ones still fill us with grief and sorrow? Absolutely. Death was never a part of God’s good and perfect plan for his creation. God never meant for us to experience grief and sorrow. But because of the presence of sin in this world, we feel such heartrending emotions at times. Even our Savior wept at the death of his friend Lazarus.
But we do not grieve as non-Christians do, because we know what our Savior has done to death for us and all who believe. He has ripped out death’s fangs and now says that one day, he will wipe away every tear from our eyes in a place where there is no more sorrow or grief. He remembers us, and we will see him face-to-face in paradise, just as Jesus promised the dying thief on the cross in the verses from the beginning of this post.
How do we know this?
We know because Jesus promises us in his Word that it will be so. And no word of his shall ever fail. Eternal life isn’t ours because of what we’ve done, but all because of what he, Jesus, has done for us.
All our sins are forgiven. We’re God’s dearly loved children. We have a home in heaven waiting for us. That is our sure and certain hope through God-given, Spirit-worked faith in our Savior Jesus.
Whether you’ve just become a Christian or have known the Lord for years, odds are you’ve wondered, “How do I know that I’m actually saved? I know what Jesus did for me, but do I really know it from the depths of my heart? How much belief is enough?” I Know That I Know tackles these common questions about faith with God’s Word.
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Alex Brown is the marketing and content copywriter at Northwestern Publishing House. He has his Master of Divinity degree from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time in God’s creation.
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