Fear Not

Good morning, Immanuel. Jesus did not just defeat death for his own sake but for ours!

“But he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.’” (Revelation 1:17-18).

Photo by LoboStudio Hamburg on Unsplash

There is a reality about death that we all know to be true–so true that it seems crass and even unkind to point it out. Death is permanent. It is final. Death is never in the past tense; it is always ongoing, always with us. 

So when Jesus says, in Revelation 1:17-18, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades,” it should grip us. I died, and I am alive. I was dead, but I am the living one. 

If this seems like a small thing to us, a mundane thing, an uninteresting thing, then we have lost touch with reality and mortality. The Bible tells us death is an enemy, and we know it is one we cannot defeat. But Jesus did. He didn’t just rise from the dead; he left the corpse of death in his own grave. 

And when he says he is “alive forevermore” and has “the keys of Death and Hades,” it is a promise. He did not just defeat death for his own sake but for ours. And we can be certain that he will return and do away with death forever. So while death is yet a fearful enemy, its days are more numbered than our own. Though death may bring us low today, we know that our tomorrows are held in the hands of the risen one.