In this sermon series we’ve been talking about darkness and light. But if you’ve been listening closely, it’s been apparent that we’re not focusing on literal darkness and literal light, but the spiritual implications of both.
The “light” has been a metaphor for how Christ enters into the situations and brings His unique contribution, His light, into those areas where His cross intersects our daily lives. The darkness we’ve faced so far has been revealed in places like the brokenness in our relationships and the need of others.
But before we go any further in this sermon series, it would be worth taking the time to ask a few questions about the nature of darkness and light. If you were asked, how would you describe “darkness”? Could you do it? What is “darkness”? _____________________
Let me suggest a definition of darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. That means something. It means that darkness is not a living thing all on it’s own. It is not the opposite of light, exactly, but the absence of it.
Now that’s certainly true physically, right? Way back in the day when I was in high school I was on the yearbook team. And back in those stone-age days in order to take pictures we used a funny little thing in our cameras called film. Because the film was light-sensitive, it had to be developed in a special room called a darkroom. No light was allowed in that room. The doors were sealed off from the outside world. When I entered into that room, there was utter darkness. But even in that pitch-black darkness, the kind of darkness where I literally could not see my hand in front of my face, what happened when I flipped on the lights? The darkness was dispelled.
If darkness were the opposite of light, the darkness would have fought for control of that darkroom. But since darkness is merely the absence of light, there was no way the darkness could defeat the light. The darkness reigned only until the light was turned on, but once that switch was flipped . . . the darkness was no more. The darkness could only exist where the light did not shine.
Darkness is the absence of light. That’s not only true physically, but spiritually, as well!
Spiritual darkness is the darkness of sin. Sometimes that sin is deliberate and willful, as when we reject God’s good and righteous ways and choose to follow our own path. Sometimes that sin is a condition, like the darkness that we are born into and inherit from our parent and can trace all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But no matter if the sin is deliberate or a condition, when Christ shines His light into our hearts and lives, the darkness is dispelled, because spiritual darkness cannot exist where Christ’s light shines.
Is there any place where the light of Christ cannot reach? Is there any life, any person, any place where the light of Christ does not shine?
There is one place. Today we face the darkest place in all of creation. The one place where even Christ’s light cannot touch. That is the darkness of the second death.
“Second” death? What in the world does that mean? How many deaths are there?
Well, I admit that it’s a bit of a mystery. As a matter of fact, in the reading from Revelation today John mentions two such mysteries: in addition to the second death he also mentions something called the first resurrection.
So before we go any further, let’s get a handle on those terms. John mentions both a “second death” and a “first resurrection” but he never once tells us anything about a “first death” or a “second resurrection.” We’re left on our own to decipher what these mean with the help of other Scriptures.
Very briefly, what we see in Scripture is that while the first resurrection and the first death both occur in this life, they have nothing to do with our physical body. They are spiritual in nature. They deal not with an outward physical appearance, but an inward spiritual reality.
The Apostle Paul helps us understand this when he says in Colossians 2:13-14, “13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
Now, Paul isn’t suggesting that there were a group of people in the Colosse church had been physically put to death and then raised to physical life. No. When he says we are dead, he is talking about is our natural spiritual state. We are born spiritually dead. We don’t have the ability to make spiritual choices like a living person would. But when Christ’s light comes into our lives, we are made spiritually alive! It’s that simple: we were spiritually dead, but in Christ we are now spiritually alive! The first death and the first resurrection are both spiritual, and they both occur in this life.
But the “second death” and “second resurrection” . . . what are they? Well, John leads us to believe that they are different from—but related to—the first ones. They are different because they are not primarily hidden, inward, spiritual realities, but rather something that can be viewed with our own eyes. The second death and second resurrection are a physical reality that occurs in the life that is to come.
In the book of Revelation John uses the words “second death” four times. Two are merely references to the faithful escaping the second death, but two are very, very informing. In Revelation 20:14 and Revelation 21:8 John connects the second death with a very specific place: the lake of fire. This lake of fire is a place where the ungodly are condemned for eternity. It is a place of great suffering. There is no one there who is called by the name “Christian” . . . it is reserved only for those who, like Satan, have rebelled against God and rejected Him. Sound familiar? The second death is what we commonly call Hell.
Hell is a real, physical place filled with real, physical torment for all eternity. Now, when I say “eternity”, however, don’t make the assumption that time will have no meaning. No, I believe that people in Hell will be painfully aware of each and every passing second. The seconds will multiply into minutes, the minutes into years, the years into millennia . . . and still there will be no end in sight.
The Old Testament uses a word—sheol—that translates as “The Place of Asking” to describe the second death. I think that’s a particularly poetic description. Imagine the darkness of asking and asking and asking . . . but never, not once, ever getting an enlightening answer
The second death is a place of utter darkness because it is the one place where Christ’s light does not shine. This is maliciousness on His part: His light would indeed shine there if it could. But it cannot, because Hell is a place reserved for those who spent their lives rejecting Christ and His light. In The Great Divorce, a wonderfully illuminating tale about the after life, C.S. Lewis said this: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell chose it.”
Christ’s light does not shine in Hell because what people wanted in this life, they received in eternity. It’s not God’s decision that they be in the darkness and apart from Christ’s light, but their own.
But now let’s contrast the second death to the first resurrection. Again, whereas the second death is physical, it occurs in eternity, and is marked by the utter self-chosen absence of the light of Jesus Christ; the first resurrection is spiritual, it occurs in this life, and is marked by the wonderful, grace-filled hand of God the Father as He shines the light of Christ into our lives.
The first resurrection is when the Holy Spirit creates saving faith in our hearts. There is a marvelous illustration of Christ’s light filling the first resurrection in the Scriptures: the account of the conversion of Paul.
Paul—who was then called Saul—was on the road to Damascus to carry on his favorite pastime: persecuting Christians. All the church feared Saul. He was one bad dude.
But when Saul got a certain stretch of road, suddenly he was blinded by a heavenly light that enveloped him. He fell to the ground and tried to shield his eyes from that bright light, but it seemed to fill him up from the inside out, even searing his eyesight beyond repair.
Christ was in that light. Nowhere in Scripture do we see in Saul anything worthy of being approached by Jesus Christ. Nowhere in Scripture do we hear of Saul accepting the light, asking for the light . . . we only see Jesus Christ, in His divine goodness, choosing a wicked sinner like Paul. Christ chose Paul . . . and Christ gave Paul His light.
The first resurrection happens wherever and whenever Christ shines His light into the heart of wicked sinners. The first resurrection happens whenever the Holy Spirit creates saving faith in the heart of someone; the saving faith that makes he who had previously been dead in his sins now alive in Jesus Christ. No, you can’t see it with your eyes, but it is nevertheless absolutely real.
It is real because in that first resurrection—what we often call “conversion”—Christ gives us something priceless beyond compare: the forgiveness of sins. Catch that in your mind for a minute: Holy, righteous, God—so holy that even the minutest infraction of His rules is a monumental offense to Him—this holy, righteous God looks down upon Christ, He looks down upon the cross, and then He looks at you and sees that Christ has put His mark upon you. Christ has called you by His own name . . . and the holy, righteous God reaches up, takes down the register that holds all the accounts of all the people of all time, finds your name . . . and marks “paid in full.” In and through Jesus Christ, you have been given the first resurrection: being brought from spiritual death into spiritual life.
And you want to know the good part? You want to know the really good part? The second death can’t touch the people of the first resurrection. It can’t touch them! Everything that the second death is—the eternal darkness of separation from God—is countered and conquered by the first resurrection! When you believe in Jesus Christ in this life, what happens to you in the next life is absolutely secure. You won’t ever need to fear the second death of Hell if you’ve been given the first resurrection in Christ.
This is what John means by the second death and the first resurrection. The second death is eternal damnation: it is torment; it is asking . . . it is Hell. But the first resurrection is belief, contentment, and answers that all find their fulfillment in eternal life in Jesus Christ. Eternal life that begins right now . . . right now in the moment that Christ shines His light into your life.
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