There is no chance after.
This line, emblazoned on the wall above my desk, comes from the undisputed best of C.S. Lewis’ fiction: Till We Have Faces. It may seem a strange book to many Christians, the retelling of a Greek myth that you’ll only be very vaguely familiar with (Psyche and Cupid) from the perspective of Psyche’s sister. Travelling in her head is an increasingly unpleasant experience as the story continues.
The book turns, and I won’t spoil it more than I have to as you should read it and experience it, into a passage of sublime beauty. The protagonist is confronted with themselves and undone. They are told by the character in the myth that echoes Christ, that they must die before they died, for there is no chance after. This causes them to change deeply—they are in essence converted—dying to their pride and learning to see the world differently.
This death allows Orual, the protagonist, to perceive that her earlier antagonism towards the divine was because she couldn’t see properly, and that the ‘gods’ are lovingly visible in the world and the lives of ordinary people. She had to die in order to learn to see.
I could tell the whole story in more detail but it does need to be read. What I’d like to do is explore the principle: we need to die before we die. After all, there is no chance after.
The Christian Life
To follow Jesus is to join him in his death and resurrection. We must die in order to live. That’s what baptism is, but it’s also what repentance is. All repentance is always a kind of death. It certainly feels like it. We wouldn’t sin if it wasn’t in some way enjoyable or preferable, at least to begin with, even if that ‘enjoyment’ fades to ash quickly. We should acknowledge that repentance isn’t some easy thing, it requires us to turn ours backs on something we’ve held close and cherished. Yes, the thing we’re holding is poison, but we aren’t good at discerning that for ourselves.
The Christian life continues to be a pattern of death and resurrection: down and up again. When the Lord is sanctifying us, it can feel like death. We become aware of our failings, our idolatries, our nature that turns away from God and goodness. After that death comes resurrection: we discover that life in Christ is better than what we turned away from. Then we repeat the pattern again with whatever the next thing is; as Calvin famously said, the human heart is a factory for idols.
We need every day to squash our pride, or whatever our besetting sins are, and live instead to Christ. The choice in essence is whether we want to die now, or after we die. The second one is not a good choice.
We can endure if we see resurrection
The pattern, once we start to discern it, is everywhere. The little resurrections that follow the little deaths of our repentance and forgiveness give us the confidence that what God says is true such that we can jump into the things that to us seem bigger and hairier. We die before we live.
That’s why we can do hard things. That’s why we can follow the Lord wherever he might call: to the end of the street or to the end of the earth. That’s why we can face up to the most difficult battles we’ll face: whether in our hearts or in our lives. We can do these things because Jesus has conquered death and hades, rising victoriously from the grave with a triumph of captives following after him. Because he rose, we rise. That means that we can do the thing he’s calling us to do, whether that’s repenting of our sin, forgiving those who wound us, loving our neighbour, or our enemies, or doing something that seems utterly bonkers to the watching world. We can do these things because the ‘death’ involved is small and passing, a light and momentary thing (2 Corinthians 4), and resurrection follows. After death, comes life. Inexorably.
Once we see the resurrection, once we start to realise that the magnitude of how Jesus has upended the world is written into the fabric of everything, we can do exactly what he tells us to. We can follow his commands, imperfectly but with intention, because the grave is empty and this is Jesus’ world. Once we start to read the pattern of the story and realise it’s the story, baked into reality, we can do the thing that seems like loss because it will be gain. We know it will because he’s alive.
Don’t get this backwards
Some Christians get this backwards, thinking that dying means rising exactly where you died. That, in essence, is the prosperity gospel. The mistake can be applied to more than finances, though. The Lord does not promise that we will get something ‘back’ which takes the place of the thing has died. He does promise us himself.
If you go and do a crazy thing and move across the country because you think the Lord is calling you this does not mean that it will go well (don’t ask me how I know). Calling does not equal ‘success.’ Or it does, but for Jesus success is obedience. You’ve been successful. He will give you himself, he will mortify your sin, he will teach you his ways. Your success in ‘ministry,’ for example, has little to do with your obedience. Life follows death doesn’t mean ‘success follows obedience,’ but it means that life does. Blessing follows obedience, but that may not be physical or tangible blessing. Others may not want the blessings you are given.
What I can tell you though is that despite it all, he will be with you. And that’s what life is: Christ with us. Die before you die, dear friends, because you will learn to see.
And there is no chance after.
Photo by Kenny Orr on Unsplash
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nuakh 