Where Is Death’s Sting?

1 Corinthians 15:54-55,

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The sting of death is sin.

For spring break, last month, our family went to the Grand Canyon. We did not go to increase our self-esteem. Rather, we went to feel small and insignificant in comparison to magnificence.

The Grand Canyon is wonderfully humbling. The Grand Canyon doesn’t make you feel good about you. It shouldn’t. It gets your poor, pathetic, self-centered eyes off yourself as you are swallowed up in something far bigger and majestic.

Easter Sunday, let’s hope, has a similar, and even better, effect on our souls. We don’t celebrate Easter to increase our self-esteem. Easter is wonderfully humbling. 

Jesus rose again on Sunday because he died on Friday. And he died on Friday because of our sin. “Jesus our Lord . . . was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:24–25).

So, Cities Church, the exhortation on this Easter Sunday is this: Let the greatness of his triumph shine against the backdrop of your need. And not just need but desperation. And not just desperation but sin.

Easter is a very good day to be needy. And the resurrection shows us the power of our God to conquer death, and to conquer the sting of death: our sin.

Prayer of Confession

Father in heaven, as we celebrate the resurrection of your Son, we acknowledge that we, in our sin, in our cosmic rebellion against you, caused the problem Jesus came to die for, which then caused the problem you solved by raising him. Easter is bright, but only so bright until we know ourselves desperate, until we know ourselves to be sinners, until we know ourselves as those deserving of your eternal righteous wrath in our sin — unless you and your Son come to our rescue. 

So, Father, on this Easter Sunday, we don’t blow past our need to confess our sin. As we do each Sunday, so we do on Easter, and all the more on Easter. The resurrection reminds us not only of our neediness as sinners but also of the safety we have in Christ as we confess our sins to you in the quiet of this moment.