The end of the year of our Lord, 2024 is quickly approaching.  “End-of-years” supply us with an opportunity to reflect on end-of-life.  Numerous blessings are found in living lie “backwards” to have the days of our lives illuminated by the reality of our mortality.

The Heidelberg Catechism, a 16th-century reformed confession, has a helpful question and answer in Lord’s Day 16, Question and Answer 42

Q. 42. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die?

A. 42. Our death is not a payment for our sins, but it puts an end to sin and is an entrance into eternal life.

Specifically death as both the culmination of the believer’s sanctification (i.e. “an end to sin”) and also the last obstacle of the life of faith of God’s children (i.e. “an entrance into eternal life”). Louis Berkhof, a Dutch-American theologian, wrote the following in his Manual of Reformed Doctrine on “Physical Death”

Why does God cause [believers] to pass through the harrowing experience of death? In their case death must evidently be regarded as the culmination of the chastisements which God has ordained for the sanctification of His people.  The very thought of death, bereavement through death, the felling that sicknesses and sufferings are harbingers of death, and the consciousness of the approach of death, – these all have a very beneficial effect on the people of God. They serve to humble the proud, to mortify the flesh, to check worldliness, and to foster spiritual-mindedness. (pg. 334 – emphasis added)

In his Systematic Theology, Berkhof fleshes out the above summary,

While death in itself remains a real natural evil for the children of God, something unnatural, which is dreaded by them as such, it is made subservient in the economy of grace to their spiritual advancement and to the best interests of the Kingdom of God. (pg. 670)

With the daunting view of death and the service it has been brought to render to God’s economy of grace – Berkhof further elaborates about the union of Christ and the believer,

In the mystical union with their Lord believers are made to share in the experiences of Christ. Just as He entered upon His glory by the pathway of sufferings and death, they too can enter upon their eternal reward only through sanctification. Death is often the supreme test of the strength of the faith that is in them, and frequently calls forth striking manifestations of the consciousness of victory in the very hour of seeming defeat. (pg. 671)

I have so many thoughts on this topic but only give one now – surely there is benefit for living well, when we think of dying well.  The union between Christ and His people will not fail and so may this relationship be tested, nourished, and ultimately proven – for each person for whom “to live is Christ.”