Someone else might try to kill. Or at least intimidate with death threats. Because the reversal of death is a disruption. Resurrection threatens the natural order of things. It’s just not how things are done around here.
If death is no longer a thing, what leverage does anyone really have over anyone else? If someone has already died and come back to life, is any kind of second death intimidating at all?
We don’t know for sure, but I like to imagine that Lazarus—who already died once due to natural causes, but then was raised back to life by Jesus—had to chuckle a little when he heard that there was a plot to kill him. Death? Been there, done that.
Which, I also like to imagine, is the lighthearted and unintimidated Paul would like Jesus’ disciples to live when he writes things like,
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
Further, I think that this death-defying hope of resurrection pertains not just to a person’s final physical death, but to all the little deaths we endure in life as well. All the lesser losses that feel like lesser deaths. Resurrection ultimately wins, so we can chuckle at all the little death threats that come our way.
That is what living by faith in the Son of God looks like.
