Sweet Sleep

"For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." 1 Thessalonians 4:14 KJV

For many millennia the emblem of sleep was used to refer to death. Jesus said of Jairus's daughter, "She is not dead, but sleepeth." (Luke 8:52) And of Lazarus, he said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." (John 11:11) The prophet Daniel said, when referring to the end times and resurrection of the dead, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." (Daniel 12:2)

Greeks, Romans, and undoubtedly many other cultures also found this figure of death natural, though always with a tone of despair. To those without God in this world, strangers from the hope found in Christ, death is deemed the sleep from which no one awakes. It is eternal night and darkness. This perception often causes hearts to shrink from the naked hideousness of death, and seek to cloak it in the less threatening visage of sleep.

The Bible speaks of death as sleep for the opposite reason. To Christians living in the hope of eternal unity with the God of love, death is not threatening. The truth of the gospel softens death to a gentle sleep, from which all who believe in Jesus will awake to beauty and glory forever. It is the sleep that transports the soul from one locality to another. It is a simple change of environment, an address change. For those heroes who sacrifice their lives for others, the sleep of death is an offering, sweet incense poured out on an altar before God.

The rest associated with natural sleep applies in death to the body, worn by the toil and troubles of life on earth. The spiritual life that the soul in Christ awakens to is energetic and vital. Indeed, because his earthly limitations are suspended, some of his faculties are set free to work more vigorously.

Those in Christ and those without him perceive death from irreconcilable vantage points. The truth is death is a sleep and transportation of the soul. Everyone who sleeps in death will awake--some to everlasting despair and torment, and some to everlasting life and love with Jesus.