There are things in life that are natural: peanut butter and jelly; pizza and beer; salsa and chips.  Another thing that is natural in a world sense is this: a child buries a parent.  That is the natural order of things, or that is how it should be.  What is not natural is this: a  parent should NEVER bury a child!  Unfortunately, that has just recently taken place in my congregation.  This last Sunday, a 22-year old member of my congregation passed away (on All Saints’ Day).  The family was naturally distraught.  So why is it that a parent is now burying their child?

Sin.  Because of the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, we now have a world that has been infested with sin, from the top to the bottom, inside and outside.  Paul writes to the Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23)  Because of that, sin has become the “unnatural natural” part of life.  That means that we will have unnatural things as a result of the sin that we inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and a result of the sin that we commit daily in our lives. 

But praise be to God that there is a natural result to this “unnatural natural” called sin.  The natural result is Jesus Christ and what it is that He has done for us.  Later to the Romans, Paul writes, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 6:9-11)

For His saints, for those who die in the faith, we have the assurance of life everlasting.  The Psalmist writes, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” (Ps. 116:15)  This is the joy that we have.

When we face the unnatural things of this life, we are ever reminded of the natural result of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has made all things natural, that is, holy and sinless.