96. Never See Death
John 8:51 If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.
This is a conditional promise: if you keep my saying, then you will never see death. “Keep my saying” means “believe in me.” “Never see death” simply means that you will pass right through death and come out into life, eternal life. The “death” here means eternal death, or the Second Death. Life is God’s life; death is separation from God. The one who believes in Jesus will never be separated from God = he will never see death.
Death, and the fear of death, confronts us all the time during our sojourn on earth away from Home. The promise that we shall not see death is astonishing, and it runs contrary to human experience and empirical evidence; but faith unshakably knows the truth: I will never see death. Nothing can separate me from the love of God. God’s Love is life and has no death in it. Death is defeated; Death is powerless; Death, in its power and effect, no long exists. Death is a nothing.
Death and the threat of death pervades the human condition: wars and rumors of wars, epidemic pestilence, torture and murder, famine and hunger, grinding poverty, pain and suffering; all of it is a major part of human history. Although death is always around us the believer will never see death. Faith often must triumph over sight and experience. What we believe is more real than what we see. Faith overcomes. Once the fear of death is removed there is really nothing left to fear