The final season in Flavel’s book, Keeping the Heart, is when we are warned by sickness that our dissolution is at hand. This season is about keeping our hearts even unto our physical deaths. We will be looking at the usual fears that accompany nearing death and looking at principles of Godly wisdom to correct our flawed views of this final enemy to be conquered. Here is Flavel on season 12:
The last season which I shall mention, in which the heart must be kept with all diligence, is when we are warned by sickness that our dissolution is at hand. When the child of God draws nigh to eternity, the adversary makes his last effort; and as he cannot win the soul from God, as he cannot dissolve the bond which unites the soul to Christ, his great design is to awaken fears of death, to fill the mind with aversion and horror at the thoughts of dissolution from the body. Hence, what shrinking from a separation, what fear to grasp death’s cold hand, and unwillingness to depart, may sometimes be observed in the people of God. But we ought to die, as well as live, like saints.
I shall offer several considerations calculated to help the people of God in time of sickness, to keep their hearts loose from all earthly objects, and cheerfully willing to die.
1. Death is harmless to the people of God; its shafts leave no sting in them. Why then are you afraid that your sickness may be unto death? If you were to die in your sins; if death were to reign over you as a tyrant, to feed upon you as a lion doth upon his prey; if death to you were to be the precursor of hell, then you might reasonably startle and shrink back from it with horror and dismay. But if your sins are blotted out; if Christ has vanquished death in your behalf, so that you have nothing to encounter but bodily pain, and possibly not even that; if death will be to you the harbinger of heaven, why should you be afraid? why not bid it welcome? It cannot hurt you; it is easy and harmless; it is like putting off your clothes, or taking rest.
This truth is so easily overlooked by those captivated by the fears of death. Christ eradicated the sting of death in His own atoning death. Just as He died and was raised, so will we die and be raised. Christ already went ahead of us, and the proof of this is in His resurrection! Given that we have so sure a salvation—indeed, it has already been demonstrated in Christ’s resurrection—then how can we live in such a way as to pretend the resurrection never happened? Why do we approach death as though we have no victory in Christ? Why do we think of death in ways adopted from the fearfulness of the world without Christ? Should the fears that come from those rejecting so great a salvation be what mark us? No. Such a fear is without foundation, and is indeed living as though our own Faith is itself without foundation. Do you believe in Christ? If you do, then this belief ought to manifest itself in your death.
2. It may keep your heart from shrinking back, to consider that death is necessary to fit you for the full enjoyment of God. Whether you are willing to die or not, there certainly is no other way to complete the happiness of your soul. Death must do you the kind office to remove this veil of flesh, this animal life which separates you from God, before you can see and enjoy him fully. “Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” And who would not be willing to die for the perfect enjoyment of God? Methinks one should look and sigh, like a prisoner, through the grates of this mortality: “O that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest.” Indeed most men need patience to die; but a saint, who understands what death will introduce him to, rather needs patience to live. On his death-bed he should often look out and listen to his Lord’s coming; and when he perceives his dissolution to be near, he should say, “The voice of my beloved; behold he cometh, leaping over the mountains, skipping over the hills.”
Death should not be a prospect that incites fear or dread in us, but excitement and even longing. People so often have birth and death reversed. The birth of one into the world is celebrated—a baby who will have to have all the trials, temptations, and put up with the carnality of his own flesh, having no sure salvation unless given to Him by God. The birth of a child ought to be a time of mourning: not because birth is a terrible thing, but because of the deceitfulness and wickedness of the world to which this child is being born. At such a time, the child himself is carnal, and needs to be raised with much fear and trembling before God unto faithfulness. Thanks be to God that He has given parents so many graces! For it is a beautiful thing to see a child being raised faithfully in such a wicked and perverse world. Celebration is to be had when the child comes to victory in Christ, and this consummation is complete upon our death. So it is then that death itself—for the believer—is the greatest cause for celebration: such a one has left the filthiness of his own sin to be perfected unto the bliss of an eternity with Christ! And that is what we live for! We do not lose anything in death. We only gain the full apprehension of Christ! One who lives in constant fear of death does not yet know manifestly in their lives what they are truly living for. They have yet to grasp forward—viewing this life as a means to that end. All things should be viewed as rubbish compared to knowing Christ, and this knowing is finally made perfect in the resurrection of the dead. Christ is your life! Not this dying and decaying body that we currently find ourselves in. No, our life now is a living death—living only because of our new birth in Christ, and death because of our own wretched sinfulness. So, we look forward to the time when we can finally cast off this body of death and take on a new and perfect body: a body with which we can serve our Lord perfectly and without limitation. Can we ever be bestowed with a greater privilege? Death is no true death, but the death of all things we ought to cast off. Death is but a passage into life.
Next time we will be looking at three more helps for the season of preparing for death.