Why does God allow death?

The fact is, so far from the truth are those who judge solely from present experience, that man was naturally made at the outset to live. Death was sin's wages, not then a physiological necessity. God had provided the means for prolonging his life if obedient; but deprived him of that means peremptorily when fallen. For what greater misery, or moral anomaly, than an everlasting life of sin? Death therefore is in no way a debt of nature but of sin; and here we read its knell for each even of those who stood aloof from the evil way of Cain, the ancestors not of Israel only but in due time of the Messiah. Of Adam, so of Seth, Kenai], Mahalaleel, Jared, it was alike said "he died." Now that man is a sinner, it is the one event that happens to all in the seen world; in the unseen there will be another still more solemn. "For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

This death which came in through sin we must distinguish from the judgment after death, as the apostle distinguishes them in the text already quoted. This has not always been done, and yet not to do it is to make difficult what is simple, and to obscure not a little the perfection of the divine ways. The sentence upon Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the ministration of death, sad as has been the history of the world, it would have been much sadder; but upon this I do not now need to pause. The sentence on Adam is sufficiently clear from what is actually passed upon him after the transgression, and whose meaning no one can doubt: — "Until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Of the second death this may be, and is, a type, and a warning: but no more.

But bear in mind that all instruction, which through the grace of God turns to the profit of the individual or community, is in this world; in the next the results will be seen, and these are then eternal and unalterable. Some of God's severest judgments are remarkable not only for divine wisdom in government, but even as containing mercy towards the world. When our first parents fell, we read of no "curse" pronounced on them personally, though we do read, "cursed is the ground for thy sake;" and the very penalties pronounced upon them were morally necessary, and had mercy in them. For example Adam was condemned to toil, and what would men be, what would the world be, without such a necessity? And even as to death, whilst to the Christian it has neither sting nor terror, for "all things are yours'," says the apostle, "whether … the world, or life, or death," etc., yet, even as regards this world, what would the world become, if wicked men lived on in it without dying? So even the penalty of pain in child-bearing is not wholly punitive. There are in fact al ways wise reasons for the course which God's moral government takes, nor does He willingly afflict. We should remember that that government is in view of the whole power of evil, that it has objects and results therefore infinitely beyond our comprehension, and that, even though often and deeply in sorrow, we may well trust the love of Him who has saved us, (but at the cost of the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son,) for the maintenance of His own righteousness.

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.

The life derived from Adam—the life of flesh—cannot be continued. It must be brought to an end, “On the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17), and “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). As long as man lives in the flesh, so long shall he be dominated by sin (Rom. 8:8), and because of this God is compelled to put an end to such a sinful existence. It is clear that such a state of existence could not be, by a righteous and beneficent Creator, allowed to continue for ever.

As regards death, it is the penalty of sin. It was by sin that death came to Adam, but the death that came thus to him has passed on to his descendants. Involved in his moral ruin by his sin, deriving from him his fallen, sinful nature, to be righteously exempted from the death he brought in by sin, his children must establish a right to live. Not one has ever done this. They all sin, and so death justly passes to them. In the holy government of God it would be impossible to exempt from death the sinning children of Adam, although it is not their sinning that brought death into the world. It was brought into the world by the sin of Adam. It came in thus under the government of God as penalty for sin, and it necessarily passes to all that sin — which all do. Righteously, therefore, all die.

Because, as it says, he would then have lived for ever. That is, death could not then have touched his body and he would have been doomed to continue for ever in his sinful condition; physically beyond the touch of death's hand, but spiritually dead and alienated from God. His exclusion from the tree of life looked like further judgment, and so it was, but it also contained within itself the seeds of ultimate blessing, inasmuch as in God's own time Death was to become the door to eternal life. If physical death had been impossible to man then not even incarnation would have made it possible for Christ to die, and consequently Adam would have been shut up to his ruined state without hope. Thus early was God's judgment made to subserve the designs of His mercy, and pave the way for that climax of the ages — THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

But that is a very different thing, as a little consideration will assure us. Death was indeed God's judgment upon the race as vitiated and corrupt, but — inasmuch as it was corrupted by another's sin and not its own, — a judgment which was a merciful discipline for it, a witness to the fallen creature of its own condition, an appeal to it by its own frailty and helplessness to look higher than itself for help, an admonition so to number its days that its heart might be applied to wisdom. What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the ground cursed for man's sake? What should we do without the need of the sweat of the brow? What, without the ministry of death itself? Surely a blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the Father of spirits for our profit, chastening of a holy hand that we may be partakers of His holiness, and in its own nature contrasted with that final sentence which is "Depart from me, ye cursed." The first death and the second death are contrasts and not the same.

Thus death has place in God's dealings with man this side of eternity only; and indeed, though it be the brand upon sin; yet still as part of a discipline of mercy. As the removal of man from the place for which he was originally created, and the sundering of all sweet, familiar ties, sending him out alone, naked as he came into the world, but with neither the ignorance nor innocence with which he came into it, to meet he knows not perhaps what, yet fears with a true instinct, if he knows not, ― death is the constant appeal to him as to the ruin in which he is, ― the "Adam, where art thou?" of God who seeks him. Whatever, then; the final issue, death has no part in it. For even the second death is no repetition of the first, but that in which it is swallowed up and lost; while the saint inherits life eternal.

When God created man, stamping upon him His own image, He did it with a great purpose in view. His delights were with the sons of men and He had great things in store for them, but it seemed as though His purpose was to be frustrated since man, having refused God's claim, had ruined himself and was found lying under the power of death, a poor, disobedient, self-willed dupe of God's arch enemy. What was to be done? God was not baffled. He had eternal life for men who had brought themselves, by their sin, under the power of death — something greater than they had lost by their folly.