If we sought after truth out of pure love to it, and for the pleasure of it, as is pretended, we should not fear the great teacher, Death, as we do. (Thomas Adams, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
The human soul is so full of pride and self that it deceives itself in all areas. It thinks it has a great love for truth, but many times it is simply a great love of the pride of self in knowing more than others. Self can be orthodox only out of a love of being orthodox rather than something else. The human heart is so deceitful because of its love of self and honor for self (either by self or others), it will take on differing drives and appearances in order to appear like it wants to self or before others. It may even be so deceived as to do those things in an effort to appear in certain ways before God.
If we loved the truth with a pure love and found pleasure in the truth, death (at His sovereign pleasure) would be seen as a way of obtaining the highest truth, real joy, and love. This is not to say that death itself must be pursued, but it is to say that when the soul that lives and dies for His glory and in His timing, that soul will find the highest truth along with real joy and love. Romans 14:8 sets out this great truth: “for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
Acts 20:24 sets out how this would influence our view of life and ministry: “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” It is only when people are free from the fear of death (to some degree if not a large degree) that they are then able to live for His glory. As I Thessalonians 5:10 shows us, the issue is not death but it is being with Christ in this life and in the next: “who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.” I John 4:18 tells us that perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment.
Jesus also taught that we must be willing to deny self in order not to deny Him. Part of the denial of self is to deny our right to live as we please and perhaps to die in our own timing. To come to Christ in truth is to come to Christ in total submission to Him as our Master who can do with us as He pleases. This is nothing more than to pursue truth out of love both now and forever. It is to say that Christ is my Master and He is the One who chooses when I die and I will not fight Him over that. If He calls me to be a martyr, then so be it. The believer must learn in an increasing way not to fear death but instead to love true life which is Christ Himself. It is in the pursuit of Truth and Life (that is, Christ) that the fear of death will slowly fade away. This does not mean that a person will not fear the pain and certain things about it, but perhaps we can grow to be like Paul who cried out to be delivered from his body of sin. If we pursued truth enough perhaps we would hate sin so much that death would be a welcome deliverance from sin into the arms of Christ.
But for the present, we fear death because we are attached to the world and don’t want to leave it. We fear death because we do fear some punishment and so we have not been growing in love for Christ as we should have. We fear death because we don’t want to leave our families and friends, but in so doing that is idolatry because we should want and love Christ more. Perhaps, then, the real issue with our fear of death is that our hearts are too focused on and cleaving to this world. The modern brand of Christianity is so focused on a God who gives good and easy things now that it will not wrestle with sin and the hard things that God sends to train His people. With that focus the modern brand of Christianity simply cannot prepare people to pursue truth and love hard enough to not fear death. We are too shallow to grow up.
God Loves... Himself 
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