A. Death being threatened as the wages of sin,^a it is appointed unto all men once to die;^b
for that all have sinned.^c

The Scripture speaks of death in numerous ways. It speaks of physical death, spiritual death and eternal death. Our present study deals with physical death.

All men must die because all men are sinners, is the general rule that the Scripture and our catechism teaches.

Man was created in the image of God to have eternal fellowship with God in his whole being, which includes body and soul. But God appointed death as a punishment for sin (Rom 6:23).

Therefore when Adam fell, Adam had to die. Likewise, all men descending from him by natural generation, fell with him and sinned with him, and therefore must experience death. The apostle Paul puts it this way:

Death,—at least death for mankind,—in other words, entered the world because of sin. Death is therefore not a natural and necessary process as atheists and evolutionists would have us believe. The Scripture describes death as "the last enemy" (1 Cor 15:26).

One day the last enemy shall be destroyed. But it will not be science and medicine that will destroy it—because death does not merely include natural causes be they sickness, accident or old age. Death has a spiritual cause, namely the righteous judgement of God upon sin.

Therefore God alone can destroy death.

God has already hinted in the Old Testament that He would do so, for there are two notable exceptions to the rule of death in the history of man, namely Enoch and Elijah (see Gen 5:24; 2 Kgs 2:11). God can remove death from His children.

But how does God remove death from His children, when He appointed death as the punishment for sin? If God simply overlooked death, would He not violate His own justice?

The answer lies in the fact that Christ Jesus died on our behalf. Christ alone was born without original sin, and lived a perfectly blameless and sinless life. For this reason, death has no claim upon Him. But He was born that He might redeem His people from sin (Ps 40:6-8; Isa 53:4-5). Therefore He died to pay for the penalty due to our sin.

In the goodness and justice of God, Christ’s sacrifice was deemed sufficient and accepted by the Father. He therefore rose from the dead. He had conquered death.

Today believers will still die, for death is a consequence of sin. Death, however, is no longer a punishment for sin, for the believer. His sin has been already been paid for. The believer, therefore, will be raised at the Last Day, as Christ was raised. For the same reason, believers who are alive at the Last Day will be translated to glory without death (see 1 Cor 25:52-52; 1 Thes 4:16-17). But today, by the wisdom of God, death will remain as the means by which we are translated to glory. W