By Deacon Mike Seibert
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“I believe in the resurrection” (CCC 1005-1011; 1012-1019).
I like the idea of resurrection, but do I have to die first?
The Bible has a lot to say about death, here are just a couple: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living” (Wisdom 1:13), “Through death he (Jesus) might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life (Hebrews 2:14-15).” Note, it’s the fear of death that the devil holds over us. That fear pushes us to do things contrary to God’s will for the sake of self-preservation, not to mention the fact that God does not want us to live in fear. I mean, the Bible says — “Do not be afraid” — between 70 and 100 times, depending on the translation. It was exactly that fear of death that Jesus came to destroy. He showed humanity that the path into eternity leads through the narrow door of death … in other words, we must die, but we needn’t fear death anymore!
When Jesus came, the devil held the keys to death and the netherworld. The devil wasn’t going to give up that power easily, so Jesus came to “destroy the one who has the power of death.” Jesus came to destroy the devil — not through some great wrestling match or duel — but by entering into death himself. The devil thought he had won when the Son of God died on that cross, but once Jesus was there, he could open the doors of the netherworld from the inside and free everyone who had been in the power of death. The devil’s greatest victory (killing the God-man) quickly turned to utter catastrophe. He no longer held the keys to death. Jesus “free(d) those who through the fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.” By propping open the door of death, Jesus allows us to all walk out — we no longer need to fear death!
Yet we still don’t want to die. It’s only human, after all. Self-preservation is planted in us as an instinct. Besides that, death usually involves some sort of suffering, and we surely want to avoid that. There’s an old gospel song: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”
There are worse things than death. As I get older and see people suffering for years, waiting and praying for Jesus to take them home, I realize that death might actually be part of God’s grace. At first, that might sound like blasphemy. After all, “God doesn’t will death” (see Wisdom 1:13). But think about what happened after the fall of Adam and Eve — once they fell, God separated them from the Tree of Life, lest they eat of it and become immortal and are locked forever in this fallen world. Death became the only way out, and once death entered the world, we trust that God will do something great with it. I’m increasingly putting my hope in Romans 8:28 — that God will use ALL things for good … even death.
Death entered the world because the father of lies slithered into the Garden of Eden. But Jesus, in another garden, stomped on the head of that snake and took away his power. Now God uses death as the doorway out of this fallen world of sorrow and suffering and into paradise.
Bottom line: We can’t enjoy the resurrection of the dead unless we die! It’s a necessary evil brought on by the fall, but God has turned it into part of his grace. “The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Timothy 2:11). “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). We know who wins in the end — and it ain’t