Summary

In this verse, death is accentuated as the monotonous enemy which no man can withstand. When as a human being you never look beyond life on this earth, it would inevitably seem as if your life does not extend beyond the day of your death. The people who have lived on earth are forgotten after they die. The one may be remembered longer than the other, yet even their memory also fades more and more as the years pass. Someone who has died no longer truly exists on earth. It really seems like we as humans cannot alter the inevitable course of history. Death really does seem to be forever inescapable.

This is what the view of someone living without the Lord looks like. Then there is really no room for a different perspective. Everything seems cyclical: what goes around comes around.

Those who look beyond this life hold a different perspective, however. Then you can say, based on God’s revelation in Christ, that Christ’s work has liberated the world and humanity from the circle of miserable monotony. He has taken away the sins of believers that caused them to be oppressed by this monotonous misery. Christ’s resurrection has brought that which is truly new into and for the world. Christ has conquered death—the enemy that holds the world captive by means of this cycle of misery. Christ has ascended into heaven. His presence in heaven is the guarantee that this cycle of monotony and misery will vanish forever on the day of his return. It is Christ who has made all things new. He has brought about the new reality, which is coming in full glory.  Of that we can be certain.

Allow me to mention two more texts in which this is also clearly stated:

2 Corinthians 5:17: ”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 

Revelation 21:5: ”And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”