Where, Then, Is The Sting?

Oh death! Where is thy sting? 
Dread venom of lowest hell,
Brewed in the bitterness of hatred,
Where is thy sting,
Distilled from violence of rebellion,
Compounded of saddest separation?
This is death’s sting, and yet
Where, oh where, death, is thy sting?
 
Where does the sting incise,
Where pour out its poison,
Ghastly, grisly, doom-dealing, deadly?
In it the shame and pain of
Fruitless remorse, dull anguish,
Dry tongue cleaving, tears destroyed
In lethal cynicism, passion against God,
Rustlings of memories bringing horror,
And the incoming, ravaging darkness—
This is death’s sting.
Yet where, oh death, is thy sting?
 
How then the irrevocable loss
Of the holy, heavenly being—
Man brilliantly lit by God,
Pulsing in glory? How, where, is this loss?
Down in the mocking strata of death,
The leering, gaping grin of the grave,
The stench of corruption, glory-failure
And no-being in God. This is the sting.  
Yet, oh death, where, where is thy sting?
 
The sting is in him. Look up
(All ye that pass by). Look and see.
Do not let the divine drama pass over you,
Be over you, be gone. Look up!
 There, writhing with the sting. Oh yes,
Human enough to suffer and divine
Enough to bear. Look up and see,
All ye who pass by. See where death’s sting 
Was and is no more.
 
If a man stay and look, he will see.
If he pass by, then in a moment
He will pass by love, and will never see.
He will miss the miracle
Hid in the grim gallows. He will bypass
Love reaching out with cool arms
To embrace the sin-fevered.
He will pass by, not knowing
Where the sting has gone.  
  
Where is death’s sting? In him:
Annulled and made void: nothing.
Its poison absorbed, destroyed.
Death tried to conquer. This it could not.
This sting in man is death, fiery,
Anguish and flame of hell,
But in him—after the suffering—
Exploded myth of destruction.
In him the fire of death
Blazed to expending, and expended.
Then death, where is your sting?
 
Ask not, ‘Where is the deathly sting?’
For it is destroyed, absorbed into nothingness
By love’s holy power. Now
It is only life, life flowing,
Life in quality replete, surging up
Out of the empty tomb. Christ’s grave,
Empty through grace, is the wide room
Of man’s new spirit. Man is in life.
Man is enthroned in the heavens,
Having entered into his glory
Through man’s suffering. Man is high.
Gone then is death’s sting. 
Void in the victory—the ancient 
Annulled victory of the grave. 
Oh, death, where is thy sting?

From The Spirit of All Things, by Geoffrey Bingham, pp.90-92

Christ's Victory Over Death In The Resurrection

Because [Jesus'] resurrection is unique, it is not easy for us to follow the battle it represented in the moral–spiritual realm where evil still seeks to destroy the good, and so triumph over it. We do, however, have some indications of what happened.

 
The first is that Jesus died in triumph and serenity. He said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!’ Luke adds, ‘Having said this, he breathed his last’ (23:46). Mark says, ‘And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last’ (15:37). Matthew records, ‘And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit’ (27:50). The ‘loud cry’ may have been that of ‘It is finished!’ or ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!’, or both cries may have been made loudly, but whatever it was he appears to have had great strength before voluntarily laying down his life.

 
The cry of commendation in Luke 23:46 is a quote from Psalm 31. It directs us to the dependence of the psalmist upon God:
  

 In thee, O Lord, do I seek refuge; let me never be put to shame; in thy righteousness deliver me!
Incline thy ear to me, rescue me speedily! Be thou a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!
Yea, thou art my rock and my fortress; for thy name’s sake lead me and guide me,
take me out of the net which is hidden for me, for thou art my refuge.
Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

 
Christ—in the face of death—is dependent upon God, and sure He will deliver him.

The apostles frequently used Psalm 16. In Acts 2:24 Peter says, ‘But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.’ The statement ‘it was not possible for him to be held by it [death]’ is a most significant one. Peter explains this by applying Psalm 16:8– 11:

 
For David says concerning him, ‘For I saw the Lord always before me. for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will dwell in hope. For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption. Thou has made known to me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence.’ 

  

Paul also quotes part of this Psalm in his first recorded sermon (Acts 13:35). He adds to the quote:

 
For David, after he had served the counsel of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid with his fathers, and saw corruption; but he whom God raised up saw no corruption.  

  

Are we to gather that Christ’s body did not corrupt? The term ‘see corruption’ is a synonym for human death, involving the destruction of the body. Romans 5:12–21 makes it clear that human death as we know it resulted from the Fall. I Corinthians 15:55–56 shows that death’s sting is sin, and sin’s power is (by) the law, ie. the guilt of sin in the face of law that has been transgressed.

 
We are sure that death had no ‘sting’ for Christ. He defeated death before he died. As regards the body he died, but in the Spirit he rose, certifying his defeat of death. It is not absurd to say that his body did not even begin to corrupt. He had died to kill death, and this he did.

 
That does not mean that what to man is ‘the avalanche of death’ did not come upon him: it did, but then it was no ‘avalanche’. It was not possible for death to hold him, and its pangs were no pang. Christ trusted the Father as he went into death. Psalm 16:8 says, ‘I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.’ He adds, ‘Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices ‘ This is a beautiful state of mind. He adds yet again, ‘My body also dwells secure.’ Why is this? Because, ‘For thou dost not give me up to Sheol, nor let thy godly one [Holy One] see the Pit.’
  
Although we cannot enter into his experience of the Tomb and of death, yet we can gather it was a joyful one. He later showed to his followers the Scriptures which pertained to his death and resurrection (Luke 24:27 and 44: ‘ . . . everything written about me in . . . the psalms must be fulfilled’), and doubtless that is why the apostles quote Psalm 16—amongst other Psalms (eg. Psalms 2 and 110).

 
Death, then, through his death and resurrection, lost its sting. ‘He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.’ The penalty of sin—death—is no more. He who dies in Christ does not die the ‘second death’. He does not come into judgement. ‘Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

 
When the disciples saw Christ risen, they were at first afraid. They trembled, but then ‘they believed not for joy’. The implications of his standing before them must have been immediate. The man who had hung on the cross some days before was now alive! He was so obviously stronger than death, and never had any man been stronger than death ! Thus he must be stronger than sin and all evil. Doubtless his words concerning resurrection then rushed into consciousness. They now knew the utter defeat of sin and death. No wonder ‘they believed not for joy’!

  

  

From Geoffrey Bingham's Christ, The Conquering King, pp. 37-39

I Died: I Died

I dreamt I died that night, 

And all my grief 

Full coincided with His own. 

The thought, of course, is madness. 

One drop of His would
More than destroy 

All that I have and am, 

And render me beyond the pale 

Of reconstruction.
 

Of course, I died, 

And that’s the whole 

Of all I knew. Full grief 

Took me to depths 

From which is no recall. 

In the annihilation 

That grief Divine brings 

To a human being 

Is irreversible decease. 

A man cannot enter the Divine 

And feel His grief. 

Holiness is His love 

And not a man’s.

True God feels grief 

From His own holiness, 

But from it man feels death.
 

And so I died. 

I died down to my depths, 

Disintegrating 

In the welter of the Love 

That, lone, knows grief; 

Not universal grief, 

Not grief en masse, 

But holy grief of love 

In intimacy with each 

Of whom it made, 

For that gone dark 

Within the essence of itself.
 

I cannot tell the death— 

It was a long and depthful sleep— 

And when I woke I lived. 

I had been dead before I died 

But dying in His grief 

Did not destroy. The grief 

Destroyed the pain 

In all my filaments and fibres, 

And every granule wholly purged 

Rose to a coruscation 

Of sheer upholiness. 

His multi-coloured joyfulness 

Surged through my resurrection— 

Such coruscation!
 

I did not long to sleep again, 

To die, to live again, 

To know fresh grief. 

I said my grief full coincided 

With all His own. I know not. 

I only knew the grief of love 

Purifies from death. I died, 

And now I live again
Who never lived in truth 

Before.



From All Things of the Spirit, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, pp. 154-5