You only die once
There's no second chances, so make sure you die loving Jesus
One Republic released a song late last year called Something I Need. I was listening to the song on the radio the other day and some of the lyrics caught my attention. The chorus kicks off with “and if you only die once, I wanna die with you ...”.
It seems so “Romeo-and-Juliet-romantic”, the notion of dying with the one you love and choosing to be with them in your dying moments.
I’m not sure if the One Republic guys meant to, but they have picked up on the idea that humanity does only die once - a theme the Bible also talks about.
Death will come to all of us
Christians know that we only die once. There are no second chances. Hebrews 9:27 says we are “destined to die once, and after that to face judgement”.
But unlike the line in the song, we don’t get to choose when we die or even who we die with. The time of our death is only known by God himself.
Don't be like the rich fool
Jesus talks about only God knowing the time of our death in a parable know as The Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21). In the parable we learn that not only does God know the time of our death, it is He who chooses the time of our death.
But we read that the rich fool has been greedy and stored up much grain for himself with no reference to God. This man thought that he would get to enjoy his grain for a long time to come, but God says “Fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” (Luke 12:20) And that night the man dies.
It's a helpful reminder that we do not know when our lives will be taken from us, so we need to focus on the right things and make sure our relationship with Jesus is secure before it's too late.
A positive end
Rather than following the romantic notion in the One Republic song of wishing to die with the girl or guy who we love, we should want to die loving Jesus. He's the only one who can give us life to the full today, and he's our only hope for eternal life after death. As it says in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 ...
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory."
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
With that hope in our hearts, our goal shouldn't be to die like the rich fool, but to come to the end of our lives and be able to say what Paul says at the end of 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Or to change the words of the song a little bit, we should sing “because we only die once, I’m gonna die lovin’ Jesus!”
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