Death is our mortal enemy — an enemy that Jesus defanged (Hebrews 2:14–15), and one day will utterly destroy (Revelation 21:4). He revealed his omnipotent power over death by raising people from the dead (Mark 5:41–42; Luke 7:11–17; John 11:33–34). Through his own resurrection, he revealed that all authority in heaven and earth is his (Matthew 28:16). D-Day over death for all who believe has arrived (2 Timothy 1:10), and V-Day’s future has been secured (1 Corinthians 15:25–26).

How then should we pray for God to heal our dying loved ones? On the one hand, until Jesus returns, death is an inescapable reality for everyone (Hebrews 9:27). So praying for healing isn’t always God’s will. In the case of a dying great-grandmother, for example, we may be more in line with God’s will not by praying for healing, but by praying for her to finish well (Philippians 1:23), trusting that because her Savior has conquered death for her, she will never see it, not even for a second (John 8:51).

On the other hand, because Jesus robbed death of its life-stealing power by bearing the full wrath of God for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21), we sometimes should pray that he would snatch our loved ones from the grasp of death. We can pray for miracles, asking him to spare us the sorrow upon sorrow that comes from seemingly untimely deaths (Philippians 2:27), even as we trust him for his answer, whatever it might be.

‘She Can’t Breathe’

In a recent article, I shared how God humbled me and taught me to trust him through my daughter’s battle with cancer when she was 8 years old. Despite our prayers for God to spare her life, she drifted closer and closer to death’s door. The new “promising” experimental treatment we authorized further robbed us of hope when it gave her a life-threatening side effect called VOD of the liver.

The worst part was how she was laboring to breathe. That’s the final line to cross before death, isn’t it — no longer being able to breathe the breath of life (Genesis 2:7; 3:19)? Our doctor told us that if she continued to struggle, they would have to put her on a ventilator. They would sedate her and strap her down before intubation so that she could not pull out the ventilator. Taking that step could mean that my wife and I would never speak with our daughter again.

Then it happened. It was two o’clock in the morning when the pediatrics ICU doctor woke me up. “We have to put your daughter on a ventilator right now. She can’t breathe, and her carbon-dioxide level is past the emergency benchmark.” Everyone had been dreading this moment, but here it was. Desperate, I called my wife so she could rush to the hospital, perhaps in time to speak one last time with her baby, but she didn’t pick up the phone. My daughter was dying, and the person she loved more than anyone on earth wouldn’t be there to hold her and say goodbye. I was broken.

Waiting and Praying

Then, like the voice of an angel, the nurse whispered to me, “Dad, if you are not comfortable, they can’t make you do this.” And so, when our doctor returned with the ventilator, I told her I wanted to wait and pray. The doctor’s countenance morphed. Her voice steeled. She said that if they didn’t intubate my daughter right then, she could go into cardiac arrest. The doctor warned me repeatedly, but each time I firmly told her I wanted to pray and wait. I’m no doctor, and as a rule, I hear and receive doctors’ recommendations. But in this moment, I couldn’t shake the sense that God wanted me to pray and wait.

“God calls us to pray, believing that there is nothing too difficult for him.”

Eventually, everyone left the room, and I dropped to my knees. “God, you said if we ask you for a fish, you won’t give us a serpent. If we ask you for bread, you won’t give us a stone. God, I am asking you to give me my daughter’s life.” I prayed through the night. Each hour I prayed, my daughter’s carbon-dioxide levels dramatically improved, and her breathing grew stronger. In the morning, her doctor came into the room and removed the order for the ventilator, and the following week, he let her come home for a weeklong visit before her second round of chemotherapy.

Our daughter, who had been at death’s door only a few days before, was home with no detectable cancer to be found in her body. God and God alone did that.

Amazing Providence

My daughter was cancer-free, but she was far from being out of danger. Because the first round of chemotherapy had almost killed her, her bone-marrow specialist wanted her to skip the final two rounds and go straight to receiving a bone-marrow transplant. Our oncologist disagreed and told us he believed bone-marrow transplants work best when even the imperceptible levels of cancer are reduced by the final rounds of chemotherapy.

Because they couldn’t agree, they left the decision with us, giving us the weekend to decide whether to continue with two more rounds of chemo or go straight to a transplant. So my wife and I went away for a night to pray and seek wisdom from a multitude of counselors. We called friends with medical backgrounds, although we hadn’t spoken to some of them in over twenty years. And how God providentially answered our prayers seemed even more amazing than how he miraculously strengthened my daughter’s breathing.

Oncology Expert

We called Judy, who used to attend a UCLA Bible study with me. I had heard that she worked as an oncology nurse at a children’s hospital in Los Angeles. She told me that the doctor who trained our oncologist was actually at her hospital. Then she said, “You won’t believe this, but the doctor who wrote the national experimental protocol that your daughter is on just walked past me, and I’ll check with her!” Both doctors agreed that under our circumstances, we could go straight to the bone-marrow transplant and skip the final two rounds of chemotherapy.

Bone-Marrow Expert

Then my wife, who years ago had spent a year in medical school, called a former classmate, Larry, who suggested that we reach out to the UCLA bone-marrow transplant department. When we pulled up their webpage, my wife recognized a high-school classmate, LaVette, and I recognized one of the doctors, Ted Moore, with whom I had attended a UCLA Bible study. We called the number listed, and my wife’s high-school friend picked up. She said she had never answered that phone but had just so happened to be walking past it when it rang. Dr. Moore was in a meeting, but she would have him call us back as soon as he was free. Within the hour, I answered the phone to “Hey, Bobby. It’s Ted.” The unassuming UCLA student I knew from sixteen years ago had become Dr. Theodore Moore, a renowned expert in bone-marrow transplants. With complete confidence, he counseled us to go straight to the transplant.

VOD Expert

Finally, we called Dr. John Vierling, a liver specialist. My wife and I had met him years ago when her cousin asked my wife to sing at the funeral for Dr. Vierling’s son. Our concern was whether having a history of VOD would make the risk of undergoing a bone-marrow transplant too great for our daughter, because a major risk from these transplants is contracting VOD. As God would have it, Dr. Vierling was an expert on VOD, and he counseled us that we could safely proceed with the transplant.

Through the unveiling of his amazing providence, God had answered our prayer. We authorized our daughter to undergo a bone-marrow transplant at City of Hope eighteen years ago. Eighteen years later, she is a walking cancer-free miracle of God.

He Holds Every Breath

I know my daughter’s story is just one among many stories that end so differently. We journeyed through our trial with four other families — three children my daughter’s age and one adult, all of whom had similar types of cancer. We prayed for each of them, but none of them survived. God does not answer every prayer for healing. So, how might he have us pray when our loved ones need a miracle?

“Our primary prayer is always that God would prepare the hearts of our dying loved ones to see Jesus.”

First, armed with the trust that God sovereignly ordains our prayers as a means to accomplish his ends, we freely pray for miracles, as Elijah did (James 5:17–18). Honestly, before God healed my daughter, I would pray for God to heal others, but I didn’t necessarily expect to see a miracle. For that, I repent. God calls us to pray, believing that there is nothing too difficult for him, including healing our loved ones on their deathbeds.

At the same time, however, we pray with the kind of faith that does not rest on God saying yes to our prayers (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). By his grace, we can accept his answer when it’s no, as David did (2 Samuel 12:16–23), and we can submit to his will and worship him when we can’t understand his answer, as Job did (Job 1:21; 42:1–3).

Christians also embrace the reality that, until Jesus returns, everyone we love will die, and our lives are but a vapor in light of eternity, whether we die at age 10 or 100. So our primary prayer is always that God would prepare the hearts of our dying loved ones to see Jesus, and that he would grant our unbelieving loved ones repentance and faith toward Jesus. Our first prayer for our daughter was for her soul’s salvation.

A wise friend reminded me, when we were enduring our trial, that God holds the pen that is writing our story. Everything God writes is good: in the end, we will see his story as good, and in the present, we believe it to be for our good. So yes, pray for a miracle, and trust that God holds your loved one’s next and last breaths.

Audio Transcript

Today we have a pair of solid Bible questions that, at first, don’t seem to be related, but they are. They’re united by Paul in Colossians 3:9–11. So I’ll lump them together in this episode. The first one is from a listener named Aaron. “Pastor John, hello! In light of Colossians 3:9–11, that we have put off the old self, and put on the new self, what role does ethnic identity now play in the Christian life? And why does Paul relate this identity to putting off the old self?” And the second question, on this same text, is from a listener named Justin. “Pastor John, hello, and thanks for considering my question. Paul says in Colossians 3:11 that ‘Christ is all, and in all.’ That seems very significant to me! Can you explain it?”

Yeah, it does sounds significant because it is significant. And it is beautiful. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what that means for us? “Christ is all, and in all.” So let’s read it in context. Here’s Colossians 3, starting in the middle of verse 9:

You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here [and the here means “here in this church, in these relationships, in this group of people who have put off the old and put on the new”] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:9–11)

Old Self, New Self

So Paul moves from individual newness in verse 10 to corporate or church or relational newness in verse 11. And it’s crucial to see that movement. A lot of people would like to deny that it moves that direction. But it moves from individual to corporate. Verse 10: “You have put off the old self [very individual] with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

“The church is made up of people whose old self has died and whose new self has been created in the image of Christ.”

Now, in order to understand what he’s going to say about the newness of the new relationships, we have to get at the essence of what the newness of the new self is. The church is made up of people whose old self has died and whose new self has been created in the image of Christ. God in Christ has brought a new creation into being, our new self. So, then, what is the central mark of the old self that died and the new self that lives? This is going to shape all our relationships.

In Galatians 5:24, Paul says that those who belong to Christ “have crucified the flesh.” So the old self, that which died, is called the flesh. What’s that? Romans 8:7 says the flesh is “hostile to God.” It’s insubordinate. It’s unable to please God. It’s our old rebellious self. When we became Christians, that self died.

What about the new self? What’s new about the new self? What marks it? The new self is the humble, believing self. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20). That’s the new me, the me of faith. So I died; my old self died. The new life is the new life, or the new person, of faith. In other words, my hostile, insubordinate, spiritually paralyzed self died, and a new believing, trusting, dependent, humble self came into being.

Christ in Us

But here’s the crucial link with the statement “Christ is all, and in all.” Galatians 2:20 says, “The life I now live . . . I live by faith.” Yes, but it also says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” In other words, another way to say that all Christians have put on a new believing self is to say that all Christians are indwelt by Christ. The essence of our newness is that we are not just Christ-trusting and Christ-treasuring, but we are Christ-inhabited. Our new life is Christ in us (Colossians 1:27). He is our inner life; he is our life (Colossians 3:4). If he were not there, we would be dead.

“We are not just Christ-trusting and Christ-treasuring, but we are Christ-inhabited.”

Therefore, when Colossians 3:11 says, “Christ is all, and in all,” the “in all” is the same as saying, “We have put off the old self and put on the new.” Our new self, individually, is Christ-inhabited — the Christ-indwelt self. Christ in us is our newness, the newness of every member. This is what it means to be a Christian. Every Christian should be able to say this.

Then from Christ’s place within each of us, he makes himself our supreme treasure. That’s what Paul means in Philippians 1 when he says, “To live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21) — and in Philippians 3 when he says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). So “Christ is all” means Christ has become more valuable than all, and it means whatever besides Christ has value for me, it has that value because of its relation to Christ.

Death to Old Boasts

Now we can relate all of this to the relationships in the community in verse 11. So verse 11 says, “Here [in this church where the old self has gone and the new self is put on] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

Jew and Greek: the age-old hostility — some with covenant privilege, some without it and unclean latecomers.
Circumcised and uncircumcised: those who conform in all the traditions of the privileged people and those who bear no marks of that privilege.
Barbarians: the foreigners — uncultured, foolish by Greek and Jewish standards, with weird languages.
Scythian: the distant people to the north of the Black Sea, the epitome of unrefinement and savagery. Josephus wrote, “Scythians, who delight in murdering people, are little better than wild dogs.”
Slave and free: the opposite poles of the economic strata of society.

If Christ is all, and if Christ is in all, what becomes of those relationships? Once we boasted in our culture and our intellect, like the Greeks, but now Christ is all. Once we gloried in our tradition and our religious rigor, like the Jews, but now Christ is all. Once we got our strokes because of our ethnic pedigree, but now Christ is all. Once we reveled in not being like the barbarians and the shabby Scythians, but now Christ is all. Or once we resented not being the cultured, not being rigorous, not having the cultured pedigree, not having wealth and refinement, but now Christ is all.

Once we tried to find our significance and our happiness and our security in what we were in relation to other people or in distinction from other people.

“We’re Jews.”
“We’re Greeks.”
“We’re circumcised.”
“We’re free.”
“We’re American.”
“We’re rich.”
“We’re smart.”
“We’re strong.”
“We’re pretty.”
“We’re witty.”
“We’re cool.”

But then that old self died, a new self was born, and the core essence of the new self is that it knows and feels, “Christ is all.” “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” “To live is Christ.”

Our New Identity

And when someone asks, as I think one of these questioners does, “Does that mean that all the differences, the cultural and ethnic and racial differences, are canceled out because Christ is all?” the answer is no, it doesn’t. No Jew, no Greek, no barbarian, no Scythian, no slave, no freedman remains unchanged here. Everybody’s changed by discovering that Christ is all. Lots of things change for everybody. But none is obliterated.

I can see your Jewish nose. I can see your Greek forehead. I can hear your barbarian accent. I can see your Scythian gestures. I can see the hole in your earlobe left over. I can see the refinement of your bearing. None has ceased to be, except that Christ is in all of you. He is your new identity, and everything about you is being renewed after Christ. And shining as the mark of your new identity is this: “Christ is all.”

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14811424/unity-in-truth-by-love-overview