By Nathaniel Marino
Loss and grief are not things humans must be taught to experience; all people will encounter them in this life. What we must learn is how to cope with grief, how to prepare for future losses, and how to truly understand them. We all desire satisfying answers to the heart-wrenching questions of “why did I lose this person?” and “why does it hurt so much?” and “what do I do now?” We need to make meaning of our loss and to find hope on the other side of it. The Christian framework is the only belief system that can bear the weight of these existential questions and answer them, and that framework is derived from our Holy Scriptures, to which we now turn.
A Biblical Theology of Life, Death, and Resurrection
When we survey the narrative of Scripture, we will notice a prevailing thematic emphasis on life and death, grief and hope. In Genesis when God creates humanity he “breathes into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). [1] Our life comes from nowhere else but from our Creator. At the center of Eden stood two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God commanded Adam and Eve to eat from any tree except the latter, “for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen 2:17); had they eaten from the tree of life, they would “live forever” (Gen 3:22). From the beginning, God’s design was to give humanity life that persists in obedient relationship with himself. But Adam and Eve disobeyed. [2] The consequence of their rejection of God is death: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen 3:19).
God’s original design was for humanity to live in communion with him, but the sinful corruption of humanity now results in the death of every person. The Apostle Paul teaches that “just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Rom 5:12). Following Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden, death becomes the inevitable end of every human. Genesis 5, the first genealogical record in Scripture, lists how long each person lived followed by the refrain, “and then he died.” As humanity multiplied, the curse of death lay over us all. Yet God did not resign his precious humanity to its dominion.
As the story continues, glimpses of hope appear that God will overcome death for his people. Job proclaims, “And after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:26). Isaiah declares, “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever” (Isa 25:7–8). And Ezekiel proclaims from the Lord, “you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live” (Ezek 37:13–14). The anticipation builds that God will free humanity from the curse of death. But how?
The prophets proclaim that the Lord will send a savior to deliver his people from sin and the curse of death. Isaiah 53 describes this servant of the Lord, sent to save God’s people by being handed over to death himself. The chapter is saturated with life-and-death language: “he was cut off from the land of the living;” “he was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death;” “the Lord makes his life an offering for sin;” “after his suffering he will see the light of life;” “he poured out his life unto death” (Isa 53:8–12). Our hope of overcoming death is realized in the Lord’s servant who loses his life to save ours—and this savior is none other than Jesus the Christ.
In Jesus, God’s design for human life is fully realized and incarnate. The Apostle John tells us, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind” (John 1:4). Jesus proclaims that he is “the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in [him] will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in [him] will never die” (John 11:25–26). He came to free us from bondage to sin and death: “by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death … and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb 2:14–15). Jesus has power over death itself, and so do his brothers and sisters by faith. As Paul teaches, “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:21–22).
For followers of Christ, though we will all die as a consequence of sin, we will not stay dead any more than Christ stayed dead. Our hope carries beyond death into new life with the risen Christ: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Rom 6:4). Paul teaches that because of this hope, though we grieve, we “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” And because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, “we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thess 4:13–14). Our victory over death is not an ideal to hold to but a person to hold onto.
As the community of Christ, we now live knowing that we will die but that we will be resurrected to new life when Christ returns to reign over all his creation. The Lord Jesus “will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess 4:16). He will give us new bodies free from the corruption of sin and the curse of death.
Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:54–57).
Christ will reign for all eternity over his new creation and his redeemed and resurrected people who will now never again know the sting of death.
Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Rev 21:3–5)
Hope and Redemption in Practice
This narrative arc should reframe our posture toward loss, grief, and hope. Scripture never treats death as a “natural” part of God’s creational design; it is the enemy, and an enemy already defeated in Christ. We are called to “mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15), but not to grieve as those without hope (cf. 1 Thess 4:13). Every person operates from some framework for the existential realities of life—what psychologists call a “meaning system”—and one of the hardest tests of any such system is the death of a loved one. Most cannot bear that weight, lacking the language to name evil, constrain grief, ground hope outside the self, and offer true redemption. [3] The Christian meaning system is not merely the best of the alternatives but the only true one, because of the risen Christ.
Yet the system only carries those actively being transformed by it. As Paul writes, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2–3). Our entire way of thinking, feeling, and behaving must be reoriented—from the posture of a slave to sin and death to the hope we have in Christ. The Christian meaning system is meant for us to inhabit. We must be formed by it all throughout our days so that we may prepare for death properly, suffer loss and grief well, and stand steadfastly in the hope we have in Christ.
First, we must think rightly. Death often comes as a surprise when we experience it, but we must never fail to remember that we all will face death in this life. [4] We should commit the Psalmist’s words to memory, “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is” (Ps 39:4), and “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). When grief arrives, we must remind ourselves that we are not exempt from the experience of grief any more than we are free from the reality of death—but we grieve differently. We lament the evil of death while holding the truth that Christ has carried us through death into new life and will ultimately vanquish death once and for all. And we anchor our minds in the hope that is set on things above where Christ is, not on this earth where life is broken by sin and death. If we regularly rehearse the story of Scripture regarding life, death, and hope we will prepare ourselves to encounter death whenever it shows itself, keep ourselves anchored as we persevere through the ensuing grief, and truly rejoice in the victory we have over death in Christ.
Second, we must feel rightly. Right thinking is not the suppression of feeling. When death comes, we will feel its weight—the empty chair, the silenced phone, the solemn memories—and we should. Death is the enemy, and to grieve it is to name it truthfully. Even Jesus, standing at the tomb of Lazarus moments before raising him, “wept” (John 11:35). What our hope does is not numb the lament but hold it. We grieve and we hope at the same time, in the same breath. We feel the loss as deeply as anyone who has no hope, and we feel the nearness of the God who “is close to the brokenhearted” (Ps 34:18) more deeply than we could without him. To feel rightly is to refuse both the false comfort that pretends grief away and the despair that severs grief from hope.
Third, we must behave rightly. Right thinking and right feeling cannot remain interior; they must move outward into how we live among the dying and the grieving. The Christian meaning system is carried in the body of Christ, and we bear it for one another. Paul exhorts us to “mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15)—no small charge. It means being present in the hospital room, at the graveside, and at the kitchen table in the weeks after the funeral, when the casseroles have stopped arriving and everyone else has moved on. My pastor growing up once said to me, after we had visited a severely ill man together, “You can pretend that you care, but you can’t pretend that you’re there.” He was right. It means letting our hope be witnessed in how we sit with sorrow without being undone by it. It means living now, before death comes, in a way that prepares us and those who love us for the day it arrives—speaking the truth of the gospel to our children and friends and proclaiming our hope out loud. To behave rightly is to let the resurrection shape not only what we believe and feel but what we do, so that when others encounter death through us, they encounter Christ.
Death has been defeated in Christ, and we are being carried by him through it. This is why we can stand with Paul and say, “Where, O death, is your sting?” We can profess, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). And we can rest assured that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21).
- [1] All scripture references taken from the 2011 New International Version of the Holy Bible.
- [2] An important note is that the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not lead to death in itself, but rather that their disobedience before God is what leads to death; they desired to take for themselves that God had not provided for them. In rejection of God they also rejected the life that he supplies them and therefore they now “will certainly die.”
- [3] Park, C. L. (2013). Religion and meaning. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 357–379). Guilford Press.; Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257–301.
- [4] I do not neglect the reality of death that is sudden and shocking. No one knows when their or anyone’s final moment will be, and it can be in time surprising. But the fact of a person’s death should not be surprising to Christians since we know that all humanity lives under the curse of death.
Nathaniel (Nate) Marino, MA, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Houston Christian University, with graduate degrees in Research and Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University–Camden) and Theological Studies (Houston Christian University). His research centers on social and personality psychology, with particular focus on moral cognition and behavior and the development of character and virtue. He is also deeply interested in the philosophical and methodological foundations of modern psychology, particularly in reframing them through a distinctly Christian worldview. Flowing from this, Nate is committed to pursuing psychological inquiry that is Christ-centered and biblically and theologically grounded. In future work, he hopes to explore how a Christ-centered psychology might shape Christian culture and church life, including discipleship, spiritual formation, church governance, evangelism, and practical theology.
