All Too Mortal

A couple weeks ago, I had several days that brought home to me that I am, in fact, a mere mortal. Which is a bit unsettling, considering that for the past 73 years I have pretty much considered myself to be immortal and invincible. However, as I was getting ready to leave the hospital after five days following a minor stroke (TIA), implantation of a leadless pacemaker, and every medical test known to modern science, (and a few medieval ones, excepting leeches and maggots), I told Karen that I never felt so mortal in my life. When I said that, she immediately thought of the hymn, “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.”*

The Bible affirms God’s unique immortality in many passages. Some important ones are these:

• • In 1 Timothy 6:15-16, the Apostle Paul writes, “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.”
  • In Exodus 3:14,, God reveals Himself to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM,” indicating His eternal and self-sustaining nature. God is the source of His own life and because he is not dependent on anything else, he always is.
  • 1 Timothy 1:17 says, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
  • And because Jesus is God, Hebrews 13:8 can proclaim, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Karen bringing up God’s immortality was a good contrast to my mortality. Before, whenever I had any medical issues, they were minor, such as a bruise or scrape, or peripheral, such as feet or ankles, or fixable, such as teeth or cataracts or near-sightedness. They were things an “immortal” could live with. Even when I lost a couple toes a few years ago, they were my “little toes” and I expected to be normal once my feet healed up. And when I had to begin dialysis (due to kidney failure), I still didn’t think of my mortality because I was undergoing treatment and I felt fine. Forget the warning that without that artificial procedure I would learn how mortal I am very quickly! (I also noted how when I told people I was in dialysis, everyone told me they used to have a relative who was in dialysis.)

But this time, my brain and my heart had problems. Even my last morning in the hospital, they ran me through a stress test because an early morning (read, 2:30 am) CT scan had revealed deposits in my cardiac arteries that could need angioplasty to improve the blood flow. Fortunately I passed the test, so for now they left the arteries alone. As I said, I left the hospital feeling all too mortal.

Of course, if humans are to function in this world, and carry out the many activities life requires, we pretty much have to think we will be around in the future. We have faith we will be able to work, play, love, travel, and fight, and come out alive at the end of those activities. We set aside money for retirement planning to be alive to need it. Even if we buy life insurance, we don’t intend to really need it. . .

But if we take the Scriptures seriously, we have to take our mortality seriously, too. The very first death sentence was pronounced against the first humans, Adam and Eve, when they sinned and broke God’s one prohibition. In Genesis 2:17, God warned Adam, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat^[d] of it you shall surely die.” Then, in Genesis 3, God gave his judgment: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The reality of God’s judgment is echoed throughout all mankind through all the ages. The Psalms declare it: “You turn man back into dust and say, ‘Return, O children of men.”’ (Psalm 90:3);  “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10); and “What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” (Psalm 89:48).

There are many other passages that speak of death and the shortness of life. For example, Isaiah 40:7 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.”

The New Testament also emphasizes the shortness of human life. 1 Peter 1:24  says, “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls.” Hebrews 9:27 adds, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” James 1:10 says, “and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away.” James 4:14 is even more direct: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

Romans 5:12 declares the reason for our mortality: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

Fortunately, our story does not end there, for even though this life is limited for all humanity, our immortal God provides us with the chance of new life, of resurrection to eternal life – in a renewed body that will be raised immortal. Listen to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:53-55 “For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The final book of the Bible ends with the promise of eternal life and joy for those who die in Christ. There, the voice from the throne of God proclaims: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-5).

In fact, the whole Bible tells the story of an immortal God creating humans to be immortal like him, only for them to lose their immortality due to sin, then for the immortal Son of God to give up his immortality to become mortal like us and to give his life for our sake that we may regain our immortality through him.

So, in light of God’s word, I don’t have to worry about feeling mortal, because in this life I have always been mortal even if I didn’t recognize that fact. The point, and it is a most reassuring point, is that thanks to Christ, I am also destined to be immortal!

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give your peace. Amen.

Read:   Job 38                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          *Hymn by Walter C. Smith, 1867. Listen below: