We often hear some reminder that we ought to stay in touch
with people we love because we never know when we might lose them. We are urged
to make that phone call instead of watch the TV show; or write the email instead
of play the game; or stop in for a visit instead of keeping so busy. The point is
that we ought to take time for people now, while they are still here.
Then there are the conflicts within families and friendships
that change everything from an issue of time, to one of value. Instead of
letting a grudge keep us apart, we are urged to mend relationships before it is
too late. We are encouraged to see the value of reconciliation above that of
being right. The focus is that we ought to treasure people above perceptions,
and reconcile with loved ones before they are gone.
While there is obvious good in these encouragements, and we
would do well to increase our focus on people instead of things, and
reconciliation instead of pride, there is also the inescapable reality that
there is just too much stuff wrong in the world for us to have enough time for
everyone, or to mend every relationship that is broken.
Not only that, there are far too many legitimate reasons
that the child of God can keep busy in things that are led and directed by
their Father’s Holy Spirit that there will always be someone we weren’t able to
reconcile with, or someone thinking we should have spent time with them on at
least one more occasion.[1]
All of this makes me wonder how to live my life so people
would come to my funeral with a greater sense of rejoicing in what my life has
meant to them than regret that we didn’t relate to one another as well as we
could have experienced.
Which changes the focus from whether we spent enough time
together, or whether we mended things that were wrong between us, to whether we
related to one another in the fullest and most meaningful way possible.
When I look at this from my side of things, that I want to
know that I gave people every opportunity to relate to me in the most genuine
of ways, and that I related to them with the most loving and sincere heart I
could have, everything returns to who I am in Jesus Christ as a branch abiding
in the vine of life.[2]
The only way I can be everything I ought to be to anyone at
all, let alone to everyone I meet, is to be everything I am in Jesus Christ.[3] He
is my Creator, and so I find who I am as a creature made in his own image and
likeness.[4] However,
I violated his God-designed workmanship by choosing to live in sin, ruining what
he made so very good in me, and joining the rest of humanity in ruining what Jesus
had made very good in the world he created.[5]
In my sinful condition, I cannot expect to see time with
people in any way except through whatever pleases my sinful, sarky, selfish
desires.[6] I
cannot value people above my own self-interest, because my sinful blindness
keeps me from knowing the foundation of life and love that is in Jesus Christ
alone. Apart from him, as a branch cut off from the vine, I can truly do
nothing God would consider righteous in his sight.[7]
Which leads me to Jesus Christ as my Savior and Redeemer. On
one side, I realize that my whole identity is found in Christ, and I can never
be a complete and whole human being without being myself in him. On the other
side, I find Jesus coming to me with everything I have lost in my sin, and
graciously restoring me to the most awesome and gracious and real experience in
the world, which is to once again know what it is to have peace with God.
This solves the most significant relationship issue facing
me when I die. It is not whether there are estranged relationships left with
the impossibility of reconciliation. It is not whether there is such a glaring
finality to time, with nothing left to see anyone for one last visit.
It is that, to die as one who is a child of God through
faith in Jesus Christ means that I will never be ashamed in relationship to the
one person who could have caused me the most intensely profound regret in the
whole wide world.[8]
Whatever remains broken with people at the time of my death, facing death as a
brother to our Lord Jesus Christ means there will be no eternal regret.
Even though I have missed so many opportunities to spend
time with God in this lifetime, and have so often succumbed to the snares of
the evil one tricking me into preferring some pleasure of sin above the pearl
of great price that is in Jesus Christ,[9]
the redemptive gift of life in Jesus so reconciles me to God that my death will
usher me into an eternity without regret.
In fact, God has already made special provision for us
arriving in his eternal presence with heartaches and sorrows over lost
opportunities, broken relationships, and who knows what other griefs will
suddenly intensify at the moment of our death. His promise is that, “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.”[10]
The fact is that, for those who have been delivered out of
the domain of darkness now, and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved
Son now,[11]
death will not lead us into an eternal life of regret, but into the comforting
presence of our Savior who will wash away all sorrow and pain and regret so
that they no longer have any place in our lives.
This is so wonderful to look forward to that it leads us to
consider our days very carefully, and look at how we ought to live life to the
fullest in the here and now. We love to spend time with people we can love with
the love of Jesus Christ whether they notice it or not. We feel the value of
people who are with us in the kingdom of God, and an intense concern for people
outside God’s kingdom who are dying in their sins, and facing eternal death,
complete with its unavoidable regret.
We now want to be as fully ourselves in Jesus Christ as we
could ever be this side of heaven, and we long for daily opportunities to touch
people’s lives for good. We feel the weight of concern that hangs over a world
that prefers bearing the condemnation of God over the pleasures of sin they
love so much. We feel grief even for strangers who are content in their sins
and transgressions against their Creator, and we live with sometimes daily
disappointment that our life in Jesus Christ has not brought anyone else into
the righteousness, and peace, and joy, of God’s kingdom.[12]
However, we now have a problem. Everyone knows that people
who claim friendship with God through Jesus Christ are considered one of the
greatest irritants of human relationships on the planet. Who doesn’t know
someone who has lost significant numbers of friends or family just because they
have valued reconciliation with their Creator above every other relationship in
the world? How can knowing God be the best way of facing death if it means we
may increase the number of broken relationships in our lives?
The answer is that God is the greatest relationship we can
ever experience since he is our Creator, and returning to who we are in him is
the most real experience of humanity possible. To live without him is to give
every person in our lives an inferior version of who we could be.
We might have time for people, but with no contribution of
the love of God in their lives. We might get along quite fine with people who
only want to get together for fun and frivolity, but never save them from the
most profoundly hopeless experience of regret the human soul can know, which is
to stand before the eternal God still living under the condemnation our sins
have earned.[13]
The conclusion of the matter is that it is impossible to
spend enough time with enough people to guarantee that someone does not feel
intense regret at our funeral, or ourselves struggling with regret at theirs.
We cannot control other people’s choices about reconciliation enough to salvage
every broken relationship in our lives by the time we or they pass on.
What we can do is “be
reconciled to God”,[14]
so that our sudden appearance before his great white throne of judgment[15]
will find our heavenly Father rejoicing over us with gladness, quieting us with
his love, and exulting over us with loud singing.[16]
When “we have been justified by faith,”
and so “we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ”,[17]
we have come into God’s solution to the ultimate experience of regret. We can
now live with the heartaches and sorrows of this lifetime, including the acceptance
of how many people will hate us because they hate our Savior,[18]
and know that, at our death, there will be no further regret, because we will
enter into the joy of our God forever.[19]
The older I get, and the more impending death appears, what
I want more than anything in the world is to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit
so that every day of my life is about joining God in whatever he is still
graciously doing in our world. If people hate me for shining Jesus into their
lives, I have nothing to regret for giving them the opportunity to know their
Creator. I plan to leave enough blogposts, and Facebook quotes, and emails, and
Youtube videos, and songs, and unfinished stories, that I hope will speak of my
testimony to knowing and loving the Lord Jesus Christ long after I am gone.
I also plan to have such a Christ-centered funeral that
people could, even then, come to Jesus by hearing one more time of the
salvation that is, “the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes”.[20]
Dear people, “Believe
in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”[21]
This is the only way to avoid the greatest regret of all at your own funeral. And,
of course, if you feel any regret in your relationship with me, we could deal
with that as well, while there is time.
© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
I can think of many scenarios in which people will be busy serving the Lord in
some capacity that has them away from loved ones and friends who wish they
could see them more often, or may hold some grudge or resentment against them.
Should anyone in such scenarios suddenly pass away, the wish that some
relationship was in a better state, or that one more visit had been made, will
be unavoidable.
[2]
Jesus gives us this imagery in John 15:1-11
[3]
The book of Ephesians has a wonderfully strong theme of identifying who we are
in Jesus Christ when we are saved by grace through faith.
[4]
Genesis 1:26-27 shows the Triune collaborating to create man in the image and
likeness of God’s Son, and the centrality of Jesus as our Creator is clearly
revealed in such passages as John 1:1-3, and Colossians 1:15-17.
[5]
Man’s fall into sin is described in Genesis 3, and the effects of our sin is
exposed throughout all the rest of God’s Book. Romans 3 shows very clearly how
we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God so that all people face
the same condemnation their sins deserve, no exceptions.
[6]
Romans 7 shows how sinful sarkiness invades every part of our lives, and every
part of the human condition.
[7]
John 15:5
[8]
Romans 1:16; 5:5; 9:33; 10:11. Hebrews 2:11, and 11:16 also show the remarkable
gift that God is not ashamed of us who are his beloved children!
[9]
Yes, God’s Book admits to the deceptive pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:25).
However, knowing Jesus in his kingdom is the pearl of great price and the
treasure hidden in the field (Matthew 13:44-46). Notice also Paul’s testimony
of trading in all his life-accomplishments for “the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8; see Philippians 3:1-16 for the whole
story).
[10]
Revelation 21:4; see also Revelation 7:17.
[11]
Colossians 1:13-14
[12]
Romans 14:17
[13]
John 3:18, 36
[14]
II Corinthians 5:20
[15]
See Matthew 25 for this imagery that is wonderful news for the children of God,
and terrible and hopeless doom for the unrighteous.
[16]
Zephaniah 3:17
[17]
Romans 5:1
[18]
John 15:18-25
[19]
Cf Matthew 25:21, 23
[20]
Romans 1:16-17
[21]
Acts 16:31
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