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Grace for Today
Devotional: April 6th

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Psalms 116:15

‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints’

Read 2 Corinthians 5:1-10

This statement is true only of the death of a believer. To die without Christ is a terrible thing. For the unbeliever death is the wages of sin, the execution of justice, the beginning of sorrow, the end of all hope, the end of all mercy and the end of all opportunity. To die without Christ is to enter into the torments of infinite, inflexible, insatiable wrath. But for the believer death is a far different thing. For us there is no penalty to be inflicted in death. There is no sin to terrify us. And there is no law to condemn us. Christ, our Substitute, has borne the penalty of our sin, removed our guilt and satisfied every demand of the law and justice of God. To the child of God, it is not death to die. Death for us is a covenant blessing (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). It is a departure out of this world unto the Father. It is being unclothed that we might be clothed upon. It is failing asleep in the arms of Christ. It is entrance into the heavenly kingdom. Death to a believer is a happy home-going. There is no limit in this statement; if a man, woman, or child who dies is a believer, one of God’s saints; that death is a precious thing in the sight of God.

How can the death of God’s saints be precious to him? Why, because they are precious to him. They are the objects of his eternal, electing love, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and members of his body, the church. The death of God’s saints is precious, because then the precious blood of Christ will be satisfied. We are ‘the fulness of him that filleth in all’. Without his body, every member intact, the Head cannot be complete. As members of his body, we must be where our Head is in glory. A believer’s death is precious in the sight of God, because it answers the prayer and satisfies the desire of God’s well-beloved Son (John 17:24).

Children of God, let us learn to look upon our death and the death of our believing relatives and friends as the Lord does. We may sorrow because we miss them and feel our need of them. But we have no reason to weep for their sakes who die in the Lord. Death to a believer is a precious thing. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!

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