Disney and Death.
In the Disney movie Frozen 2, the love-struck Kristoff makes several hilarious attempts to propose to Princess Anna, who can’t get over Kristoff’s, actually-pretty-good opening lines.
“Just in case we don’t make it out of here….” Kristoff starts, after covertly slipping the diamond engagement ring from his pocket.
“Wait, what? You don’t think we’re going to make it out of here?” She asks, assuming that he thinks they’re trapped forever in the enchanted forest.
In a scramble to clarify, Kristoff insists that no, they are going to get out (though “Technically, the odds are kind of complicated,”) and that they aren’t going to die—at least, not then. Unfortunately, the damage is done and Kristoff has botched another chance to propose to his true love. Anna, falling into panic, runs off to find her sister. Calling after her, Kristoff assures her, “Way far in the future, we will die!”
Although the scene is deliciously funny, the mention of death and its inevitability is not. When I watched the movie a second time only recently, that remark came across as a definite truth. We will die.
Death torments our world. People are born and they die—all of them. But as bad as that is, it’s not the most painful type of death. There’s a Second Death, which is a burning lake of fire and sulfur—and absence of God (2 Thessalonians 1:9) for all of eternity. All who commit sins will be condemned to Hell—which is God’s place of punishment.
But, for those who believe in Christ—that is, trust in him in everything and count him as our everything, we have a hope, yea, an assurance, because Christ has given his lifeblood to wash our condemning sins from us.
Jesus Christ became a man so that we might have life and have life more abundantly (John 10:10), which he gave us that by living a sinless life and then dying so that His sacrifice could cover the sins of all those who believe on him. Jesus rose from the dead and spoke these marvelous words:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (from John 11:25-26)
Christians will pass away just like everyone else, but when it comes to the judgement at the end of the age, they will be counted as guiltless and spared from the Second Death because Jesus says that His people shall never perish and that they will have eternal life (John 10:28). All thanks to his death on our behalf.
But then, there’s more death that has to happen before a person can be saved, but it’s also a good kind of death.
The Apostle Paul wrote this:
Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. (Romans 6:11-14.)
A certain death happens inside each person who trusts in Jesus for salvation. That person dies to sin—he doesn’t want to sin against God anymore. Something shifts, and that person has become new, regenerated, and, all in all, Christian.
Those deaths—Jesus’ death to save the lost and to bring sin-deaths in believers—are what makes a Christian a Christian.
Indy.
