What does it mean that there is a time to be born and a time to die (Ecclesiastes 3:2)?

Death is here viewed in immediate connexion with its procuring cause. "It is appointed unto men to die." Death is, indeed, "the way of all the earth." But the feet which find reluctantly the passage out of life, are guided by a stronger will than that of nature. Man's death is a judicial ordinance of God. It entered at His bidding as the unwelcome consequent of sin. Yet it is not in this natural decease of life that God declares His judgment on the ways of men. For death is the term and limit of corrupted human life, without all reference to personal transgressions. Mankind are born to die, because of sinful origin and birth. By a general appointment men die once. Judgment comes after this. Death, to the natural man, is but the closing of a life, the quality and ultimate results of which have yet to be determined. Eternal judgment will award, in righteousness, a worthy sentence to the man who meets death's stroke with no acknowledgment of Him who has appointed it, and who turns away his ear, while mortal breath remains, from the word of reconciliation and eternal life. To such as close their earthly days in willing ignorance of Christ, another death remains (Rev. 20) to be encountered in that day of fear, when Christ shall search the pages of the book of life, and find no names there but of those who knew Him, and confessed Him, ere their former life was passed.

"T." We believe the key to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and indeed to the entire book, will be found in the expression, "under the sun." The Spirit of God has furnished us, in this interesting book, with a commentary upon all under the sun — a glowing picture of the old creation, and of man in the midst of it. "Under the sun" there is time for everything. God has set one thing over against another. If there is a birth, there is a death; if there is a smile, there is a tear; the sorrow stands over against the joy. Thus it is "under the sun." This is the law of the old creation. But look at Paul in Phil. 3. Had he "a time for everything?" No. "One thing I do," he says. And why? Because he had found his life, his sphere, and his object, "above the sun" — in that "new creation" of which Christ is the Head and the Centre, and wherein "all things are of God." We have frequently heard Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 abused in the way you allude to; but it has invariably been by those whose hearts are in this present evil world, and who are bold enough to quote Scripture in defence of their worldliness. Alas, for all such!

Death is upon every thing; and the more precious any thing is, the more terrible to know that it must pass away. Whether lost wholly and at once, or filched away little by little by the flying moments, still all that we prize is doomed; and we are doomed. To every thing there is a time, and for every thing the time goes by. And God has fixed the place and time of all in this cycle of things that pass and return, among the generations which yet do not return. Eternity, too, is set in man's heart, compassed as he is by that which is for the moment; but eternity no wisdom of his can pierce: it is the wisdom of which death is the price paid, and it cannot elude or look beyond it. Death brings down all to its level — wise and fool, and man and beast: what difference? save that the beast can fill his place for a time with no regrets and no anticipations, and man cannot. Death he hates and dreads, and conscience forebodes judgment.

The fact that death lies upon all that are born into this world, and that sooner or later every individual must by that means pass from here, is enough to prove that the Creator does not intend to go on for ever with things as they at present are upon earth. From the moment of birth until the last breath has been drawn, men wage a grim battle with the king of terrors, but the issue of the conflict is not difficult to forecast. It may be as an infant of days, or it may be as a centenarian, but the end has to come; to that monarch all must bow.

We are mistaken if we imagine that Adam had immortality in himself; no creature possesses that; they are all maintained by God, who alone has immortality essentially. When it was no longer God's will to maintain it in the world, man became mortal, and his strength in fact wears out, according to the ways and the will of God; when such is God's will, he has a life of more than a thousand years - only three score and ten when He thinks fit. It is God's will that life should come to a close, that we should die, sooner or later; except those who shall be alive at the coming of Jesus, who shall be changed, because the Lord has vanquished death.

Adam brought in sin and death, and death passed upon all his descendants irrespective of their own personal disobedience. Babies die who have not sinned. It is impossible that God could allow man to continue for ever a life of sin. Life may be lengthened out to nigh a thousand years, or it may be closed in as many minutes, but it must be brought to a close, for man is by nature sinful.

Death is the stamp upon a fallen creation — the solemn witness upon God's part of the ruin which has come in. Every where, in every language, whatever the darkness of man's mind, whatever the religious corruption of those not wishing to retain God in their knowledge, it has testified plainly to men's souls of wrath against the creature He has made. Why else undo what he has done? Why take again the life that He has given? He is not a child, to break and cast away His plaything of an hour.

However, it is God's prerogative to answer all the proud reasonings, and bring down the lofty imaginations of the human mind. He can write the sentence of death upon nature, in its fairest forms. "It is appointed to men once to die." This cannot be avoided. Man may seek to hide his humiliation in various ways to cover his retreat through the valley of death, in the most heroic manner possible; to call the last humiliating stage of his career by the most honourable titles he can devise; to gild the bed of death with a false light; to adorn the funeral procession and the grave with the appearance of pomp, pageantry, and glory; to arise above the mouldering ashes a splendid monument, on which are engraven the records of human shame. All these things he may do; but death is death after all, and he cannot keep it off for a moment, or make it ought else than what it is, namely, "the wages of sin."

The fleeting character of man's existence comes home to one when suffering in body from the pressure of God's hand. Fully did the Psalmist realise it when he said, "Jehovah, make me to know mine end and the measure of any days what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold Thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth; and mine age is as nothing before Thee: Verily every man at his best estate is altogether vanity" (39:4-5). The sinner can rightly look for nothing but death. He has forfeited all claim to continue in life on earth; and, as far as he is concerned, he can give no answer why death should not seize upon him. The saint can look beyond it, though owning God's hand upon him in government because of his transgression. The full explanation of this must be sought for elsewhere. One has died, the Just for the unjust, to make atonement for those who should believe on Him. Further, He is risen from the dead. So saints will either share in resurrection from the dead, or be preserved alive on earth to enjoy millennial blessing under the sway of the Lord Jesus Christ. In one or other of these two conditions every saint must have part, both the fruit of the Lord's atoning death.

The loss of a child. Faith will teach you to kiss a striking Lord; and so acknowledge the sovereignty of God (in the death of a child) to be above the power of us mortal men, who may pluck up a flower in the bud and not be blamed for it. If our dear Lord pluck up one of His roses, and pull down sour and green fruit before harvest, who can challenge Him? For He sendeth us to His world, as men to a market, wherein some stay many hours, and eat and drink, and buy and sell, and pass through the fair, till they be weary; and such are those who live long, and get a heavy fill of this life. And others again come slipping in to the morning market, and do neither sit nor stand, nor buy nor sell, but look about them a little, and pass presently home again; and these are infants and young ones, who end their short market in the morning, and get but a short view of the fair. Our Lord, who has numbered man's months, and set him bounds that he cannot pass, has written the length of our market, and it is easier to complain of the decree than to change it.