Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead… .

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us” (2 Cor 1:9-10, italics mine).

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith…” (Eph 2:8a, italics mine). “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18, italics mine). “Since we now have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Rom 5:9-10, italics mine).

“If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die” (Epigram above the gateway of Mt. Athos Monastery, Greece).

Life and death… death and life. Are there any concepts more superficially, diametrically opposed? In life, there is locomotion, color, expression, warmth, growth. In death, there is stillness, opacity, dullness, coldness, decay. Life is good; death is bad. We celebrate life! We mourn death.

“A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow, because her hour has come: but as soon as she has delivered the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world” (Jn 16:21).

“This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: the same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead… . For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten” (Eccl 9:3, 5).

Life and death; joy and sorrow. Celebration and remembrance; mourning and forgetfulness.

The Christian perspective on life and death is very different from the world’s. The world loathes death; the world is averse to death. The world may relish in the gothic and the macabre, but this is the fetishization of death as a coping mechanism: the world cannot stare death in the face without blinking. But Christianity is different. Christianity embraces the reality of death. It does not glorify death, and it does not interpret death as anything other than the natural consequence of exile from God (cf. Gen 2-3). But it embraces it because of the marked role it now plays in our salvation. Death was a curse, yes. And it is a curse that cannot be circumvented. Rather, it is a curse transformed by the work of the Incarnate God. We are saved by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection from the dead. Christ has died for our salvation; Christ has risen for our salvation. The German Lutheran pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once wrote, in his seminal work, The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him… come and die.”

In today’s Epistle, we hear from the Apostle Paul of his trials and sufferings in Asia [Minor, that is]. Even earlier in the epistle, the Apostle writes,

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble… . For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. … And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort” (2 Cor 1:3, 5, 7).

What are these sufferings that the Apostle endured? He writes later in 2 Corinthians,

“I have worked… [hard], been in prison…, been flogged… severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles… . I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked” (2 Cor 11:23b-26a, 27).

After hearing of the Apostles’ afflictions, his words from earlier in the epistle ring even more true: “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor 4:10).

“We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

It is part and parcel of Orthodox soteriology—a phrase plastered on welcome tracts, website banners, and the like: “We are saved. We are being saved. We will be saved, by the grace of God.” Orthodoxy does not neatly divide her soteriology into the camps of “justification” and “sanctification.” Rather, she says, “Salvation is found in Christ. Salvation is becoming like Christ. As we are baptized, as we are communed, as we regularly repent and confess, as we pray, as we serve, as we give: we become more like Christ. This growth in holiness is growth in grace. Salvation is deification. Salvation is growth in godliness.” Do you know then, brethren, what must parallel our growth in the life of Christ? … Our growth in death. “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” also said by St. Paul, in Philippians (Phil 1:21). Death is the predecessor of life. Death to oneself precedes life in Christ. “Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor 1:9).

We cannot live in Christ, if we are not willing to die to self. We cannot let Christ in, if we are unwilling to let ourselves—that is the “old man”—out. “Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves,” says the Apostle, … as all men do! Brethren, we are saved, we are being saved, we will be saved. We are dead, we are dying, we will die. Accept it! Accept it now! Indeed, for those of us who have been baptized into Christ, we have already accepted the call—“come and die”—for the baptism of a man is his union with Christ in death. On this theme, St. John Chrysostom writes,

“For as Christ died on the cross, so do we in baptism, not as to the flesh, but as to sin. Behold two deaths. [Christ] dies as to the flesh; in our case the old man was buried, and the new man arose, made conformable to the likeness of his death. … For baptism is nothing else than the putting to death of the baptized, and his rising again” (St. John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on Hebrews).

“Christian, remember your dignity” (St. Leo the Great). Said another way: Christian, remember your baptism. Christian, remember your death, “[for] you [did] die, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!