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The sermon teaches that Christian death is not arrest, annihilation, or a fearful plunge, but departure to be immediately with Christ. This hope rests on Christ’s saving work, which removes condemnation and ultimately delivers believers from sin. Heaven’s central blessing is not merely reunion with departed saints or relief from suffering, but the presence of Christ Himself. Spurgeon contrasts this hope with the eternal judgment awaiting those who reject Christ and urges hearers to seek Him before death.
Theological center: Union with Christ secures the believer’s final victory over sin, condemnation, and death, while rejection of Christ leads to judgment.
Applications: Seek Christ before death · Hope in heaven’s promise · Consider death’s true destination · Desire Christ above heaven’s gifts
Primary texts: Philippians 1:23 · Romans 8:33-34 · Romans 7:24
“Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.” Philippians 1:23 WE know that death is not the end of our being. By a confident faith we are persuaded that better things await us in another state. We are speeding onwards through our brief life like an arrow shot from a bow, and we feel that we shall not drop down at the end of our flight into the dreariness of annihilation, but we shall find a heavenly target far across the flood of death. The force which impels us onwards is too mighty to be restrained by death. We have that within us which is not to be accounted for, if there be not a world to come, and especially, as believers, we have hopes, and desires, and aspirations, which cannot be fulfilled, and which must have been given us purposely to make us miserable, and to tantalize us, if there be not a state in which every one of these shall be satisfied and filled to the brim with joy. We know too, that the world into which we shall soon be ushered is one which shall never pass away. We have learned full well by experience that all things here are but for a season. They are things which shall be shaken, and therefore, will not remain in the day when God shall shake both heaven and earth. But equally certain are we that the inheritance which awaits us in the world to come is eternal and unfailing, and that the cycles of ages shall never move it, that the on-flowing of eternity itself shall not diminish its duration. We know that the world to which we go is not to be measured by leagues, nor is the life thereof to be calculated by centuries. Well does it become every one of us then, professing the Christian name, to be questioning ourselves as to the view which we take of the world to come. It may be there are some of you now present who call yourselves believers, who look into a future state with shuddering and awe. Possibly there may be but few here who have attained to the position of the apostle, when he could say that he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ. I take it that our view of our own death is one of the readiest tokens by which we may judge of our own spiritual condition. When men fear death, it is not certain that they are wicked, but it is quite certain that if they have faith it is in a very weak and sickly condition. When men desire death, we may not rest assured that they are therefore righteous, for they may desire it for wrong reasons, but if for right reasons they are panting to enter into another state, we may gather from this not only that their minds are right with God, but that their faith is s…