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

Even though Jesus did many different miracles during the time of His earthly ministry, there are only three instances recorded for us in the Bible of Him actually raising someone from the dead. There is the raising of Jairus’s 12-year-old daughter, the raising of His friend Lazarus of Bethany, and the raising of the widow’s son at Nain, which we heard about in our Gospel lesson today from Luke chapter 7. In the same way that the Holy Spirit uses special numbers elsewhere, like 40 and 12, so that we can make connections between Biblical events and teachings, these three different resurrection accounts remind us of how our Lord gives us the victory over three different kinds of death.

So, in today’s sermon, what I’d like for us to do is consider together what those three kinds of death are and how Jesus alone saves us from all of them.

The first kind of death that we learn about in the Bible is spiritual death. In the garden of Eden, God warned Adam and Eve that on the day that they disobeyed Him and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. And yet, if you recall, when Adam and Eve eventually did eat from the tree, it was not that they immediately fell to the ground without a pulse. Yes, they died, but their death was not a physical one. Rather, it was a spiritual one. Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, and lost the image God along with their original righteousness. From that moment on, they made it so that every one of their descendants would inherit from them a fallen and sinful nature.

This is exactly what Saint Paul explains to us in Ephesians chapter 2. There he writes, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” All of us, from the moment of our conception, as Psalm 51 also tells us, are conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity. What that means is that even though we are born physically alive, apart from Christ, we are spiritually dead, just like Adam and Eve were after they sinned. Now, instead of being aligned with the will of God, and wanting to do the things that please Him, we constantly fight against Him. We don’t fear God as we should. We don’t trust God as we should. We don’t love God as we should. 

And because of our spiritual death, that is, because of our sinful condition, the Bible also teaches us that every one of us will eventually also experience the next kind of death, which is physical death. Of the three different kinds of death that there are, this is the easiest one to recognize by far. We see it very clearly in the account of the widow’s son at Nain, and many of us have seen it up close and personal with people that we know and love. But even though it is the easiest kind of death to see, that doesn’t mean that people always see it correctly. Many times, when people look at physical death, they think of it simply as the circle of life. Since everybody dies, they assume that death is just a natural part of our existence. And yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

God’s Word teaches us that far from being a part of His original design for the world, death is the wages of our sin. Death is the just punishment and consequence that we bring upon ourselves because of our disobedience to God. That’s what the Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter five, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.” How do we know that every single man, woman, and child is a sinner who is spiritually dead apart from Christ? We know it because without the special intervention of God, every single man, woman, and child eventually dies. As James tells us in his epistle, “Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

In addition to spiritual death and physical death, though, which are both bad enough as it is, there is also a third kind of death, which is the worst one of all, and that is eternal death. Despite the dominant religious perspective in modern American, not everyone goes to a better place when they die. Sadly, as we learn throughout the Scriptures it is possible for an individual to die apart from the grace of God, while still in a state of spiritual death, and spend forever in hell because of it. Eternal death is not annihilation where a person ceases to exist at all and no longer has consciousness. Rather, as Jesus describes it elsewhere, it is a place of weeping and gnashing of death, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The most awful thing about hell, though, is not that it is filled with all kinds of terrible suffering, but that there is no access to the love of Jesus in the midst of it. Hell is separation from God for all eternity. As Saint Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 1, “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.”

So, those are the three different kinds of death that we learn about in the Bible: spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death. All three of these kinds of death are the result of sin and all three of them can only be overcome by the one who alone can save us from our sins, namely, Jesus. In fact, when Jesus raised the widow’s son at Nain, He showed us how He has the power to deliver us from every kind of death that there is.

First, our Lord has the ability to deliver us from spiritual death. Jesus does this when He forgives us of ours sins and gives us the gift of faith to trust in His atoning sacrifice on the cross. Just as Jesus touched the casket of the man at Nain, and then spoke to Him saying, “Young man, I say to arise,” Christ draws near to us through His Word and Sacraments, and raises us to new spiritual life through the power of the Gospel. Listen, for example, to what Saint Paul says in Romans chapter 6 about the gift of Holy Baptism, something that, God willing, we will get to see take place next week for little Gregory. He writes, “We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” And then there is also what we read in Colossians 2, “In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God.”

Jesus raises us from spiritual death to new spiritual life in our Baptism, because in our Baptism God joins us to the death and resurrection of Christ and washes away our sins. God makes us a new person by filling us with the Holy Spirit and giving us the gift of faith so that we can trust in Jesus. Therefore, as we read in Mark chapter 16, “Whoever believes and is Baptized will be saved.” This is also why the very first thing that we Lutherans do at our funeral services is point people to the comfort of our Baptism. After the invocation, the pastor reminds the congregation that in their Baptism the deceased was “clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covered all their sin.” Jesus has the power to save us from spiritual death, and He does that through His Word and Sacraments.

Likewise, our Lord also has the ability to save us from physical death. As we see very clearly with the widow’s son at Nain, Jesus can cause a person to come back to life again simply through the proclamation of His Word. Christ can command death to depart from an individual and for their soul to re-enter into their body. And yet, while Jesus did do this for the widow’s son at Nain, it is also not the normal way that He delivers us from physical death. Usually, Jesus does not save us from this kind of death by not allowing us to experience it all, or reversing its effects temporarily in this life, but by delivering us from it completely on the Last Day.

It’s good to remember that not even the people who experienced a special resurrection in the Bible remained alive in that exact same way forever. Where is the widow’s son from Nain now? Where is Jarius’ daughter now? Where is Lazarus of Bethany now? All of those individuals eventually died again and are now buried somewhere in the ground. But that does not mean that they will stay that way forever. In fact, because of Christ’s own resurrection, we know that God has promised a universal resurrection for all people. As we read in John chapter 5, “An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” On the day that Jesus returns in glory, just as He commanded the young man of Nain to rise again from the dead, He will command every individual to be raised too. After that, those who died believing in Jesus will live with Him in a new heaven and a new earth, and those who died not believing in Him will come into the fullness of their punishment.

Regardless though, Jesus will undo the effects of physical death. He will join the souls of every person back to their bodies and make them alive together once again. This is why the Bible repeatedly refers to the death of Christians as a form of sleep. Remember what Jesus said about Jairus’ daughter when she died? He said, “the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” And what does Saint Paul tell us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4? He writes, “We do not want you to be uniformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.”

Because of what Jesus did for us, and how He died and rose for our sins, we can have confidence that everyone who have been joined to Jesus through faith will share in His resurrected glory. Even if they die in the most horrific way imaginable, our Lord will restore them and make them whole on the Day that He makes all things new. He will deliver us from physical death.

And lastly, and most importantly of all, Jesus has the power to save us from eternal death. Unlike spiritual death and physical death, which all of us have to experience no matter what, it is possible through the merits of Christ to avoid eternal death completely. As Saint John tells us so clearly with those famous words from the third chapter of his Gospel, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life.” To perish is to die and go to hell. But Christians don’t perish. Even though they die, they continue living on in Jesus, and one day Jesus will bring them back to life entirely through the resurrection of their bodies. That is exactly what Jesus once taught Mary and Martha after the death of their brother. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

What did Jesus say to the widow from Nain when she lost her only son? He told her, “Do not weep.” It’s not that Jesus was teaching her that we shouldn’t be sad when people die. After all, even our Lord wept at the death of His friend Lazarus. But rather Jesus was showing her how He takes away our eternal weeping and promises to bring our sorrow to an end completely in the resurrection. Eternal death is eternal weeping. But eternal life is eternal joy. As we read in the book of Revelation, in heaven God will “wipe away every tear from our eyes.” That is what we have in Jesus. That is the hope that is ours because of His victory over sin and the grave. We have the assurance of everlasting life for all believers.

In the Bible we learn that there are three different kinds of death: spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death. No matter what form death takes, God’s Word teaches us that death is always our enemy. But Christ puts all of our enemies under His feet. He did that when died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead for our justification. Now we know that even when we do die, someday, the Lord will say to us like He said to the widow’s son at Nain, “Young man, I say to you arise.” Christ has already spoken those words to us once in our Baptism when He made us God’s children and washed away our sins. And on the Last Day He will say those words to us again and bring our Baptism to completion.

So, now we can rest assured of our salvation and look forward to eternal life even though we still see death all around us. We can look at our dying bodies and take comfort in the words that the pastor will one day speak over us at our burial: “May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son, who by His blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be His temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.