Death: a study in Pauline theology

According to the Apostle Paul, the two comprehensive features of the present age which make it an evil age (Gal. 1:4) are sin and death — of which the first is cause and the second is effect. The rebellion of Adam made possible the entrance of sin's power into the very substance of the cosmos, resulting in the corruption (death) of the whole of God's good creation.In the Pauline letters no aspect of death is ever treated as natural. Death is always the work of sin. Death's power is in no way distinct from sin's power nor any less extensive. Wherever there is resistance to God's will, there is death; and death is the "last enemy" because it will be finally destroyed only when the last resistance to Christ's reign is overcome.Sin's special stronghold is in the flesh. That is why Paul speaks of the fleshly body as a "body of sin" and a "body of death". Sin's power is so great in every person's "members" that his "inner man" is inevitably overwhelmed and, joining in Adam's sin, he dies spiritually. A measure of sin's power in the flesh is the fact that when the Law challenges sin's presence the Law itself is made an instrument of sin to deceive and to kill. Even when by union with Christ the believer becomes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, spiritually alive with the life of the coming age of glory, his body remains under the power of death. The body will become liberated from death's power only at the Parousia, when by Christ's power it will be transformed into a -rrveo/^^Tiisov. In the intermediate state the man in Christ, though he is with Christ and at rest from the bitter tension and conflict between the Spirit and the flesh which he experienced as long as he was in a body of sinful flesh, awaits in hope the full life of glory which he will receive — together with all the sons of God and with all the KTtVry — at the resurrection, when his body will at last be redeemed from its thraldom to sin and death.Total victory over death is already the experience of one man, Jesus Christ. He now lives the life of the coming age of glory in a redeemed body. His triumph over death is the result of his triumph over sin in the flesh, wrought by a per¬ fect act of righteousness: his obedient acceptance of the undeserved death of a sinner in its fullest dimensions of horror on behalf of his sinful brothers. Be¬ cause his death was fully representative and substitutionary, he is able to share his victory over death with all who will accept union with him in his death. To die with Christ means the death of the ego in faith and love and, also, a join¬ ing in the sufferings of Christ which Christ's body, the church, experiences as Christ uses it to make effective in the lives of all men the redemptive results of his vicarious death