We earnestly pray for the recovery of loved ones and friends from a dire illness or a devastating injury. Most of the time, we wish them to maintain their existences in this life for what we believe to be their benefit, not to mention our desire to avoid the loss of their fellowship. It is perfectly natural and altogether understandable that we behave in that manner. And that it is very often God’s will to restore to health those for whom we pray can be proven from the many that Christ healed during His incarnation, as well as from our own personal experiences of recovered health in answer to our prayers.

            However, we should not ignore another perspective on this matter, namely God’s, because His view is always perfect and right. The prophet Isaiah affords us partial insight into God’s views on the death of the righteous. “The righteous man perishes, and no man takes it to heart; and devout men are taken away [i.e., via death], while no one understands. For the righteous man is taken away from evil, he enters into peace; they rest in their beds, each one who walked in his upright way” (57:1, 2). Consider the following truths suggested by these verses.

            1. As a general rule, the world takes no note of the death of a saint. Let an unbeliever die, and, no matter how wicked, he will be eulogized and celebrated. But saints are ignored, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Those who toil for the world may be lionized while those who toil for the Lord are ignored.

            2. Believers are often puzzled by the “premature” death of a useful servant of God. We recognize that someone seems to be being mightily used by the Lord, and we wonder why God removes that person earlier than another believer who seems to be much less useful or faithful in the service of God.

            3. God often takes a blessed saint home so that he might escape some calamitous judgment that God is about to visit on the people around him. In Isaiah’s time, God called some of the righteous home in order to preserve them from the catastrophe about to be wrought on Israel by the armies of Babylon. Our only firsthand experience is with this life, which makes it hard for us to appreciate the fact that God is often pleased to spare some of His own the endless burdens and grief that constitute our temporal existence. As said one minister I heard on the radio just today: “In this life, you are currently in a trial, just coming out of a trial, just going into a trial, or all three at once.” The Lord promises that “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16:33). Death is frequently God’s gracious means of delivering a saint from the trials of this life.

4.  God is pleased through death to deliver His own into perfect peace. In other words, death is not only a deliverance from trials but also a deliverance to blessings. God sometimes brings some more swiftly than we might desire into the joy of the Lord, the fellowship of His presence. What, in our more carnal moments, we might view as a tragedy, God views as the blessed culmination of redemption—deliverance from pain and suffering and from the presence of sin into ineffable and unbroken fellowship with Him.

When we are tempted to view the death of a believer as unfortunate—or worse—unkind, unfair or unfeeling on God’s part, we ought to remember this bedrock truth: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones” (Psa. 116:15). God knows that losing a loved one is painful. But He also knows the blessed purpose of that trial for those He has left behind (but for a moment), and He rejoices in the culmination of His redemptive work “in bringing many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10). Each saint taken by death represents a partial fulfillment of the Lord’s high priestly prayer: “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). And to see Him is to be like Him “because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). God earnestly desires the unbroken fellowship of our presence.