Death, in a word, Is Good

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive...When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. ~1 Corinthians 15:22,54

"That which was God's ordinance for the infliction of judgement becomes an effectual means for the communication of mercy. It is by virtue of the death of Christ alone, that the souls of believers are freed by death from all impressions of sin, infirmity, and evils, which they had had from the flesh; which were their burden, under which they groaned all thie days... With wicked men it is not so. Death to them is a curse; and the curse is the means of the conveyance of all evil, and not deliverance from any. In what way they have been warmed and refreshed by the influences of the flesh, they shall be deprived of it." ~John Owen

Just read this last night... even death is good news now.

John Owen on Good Friday

We might here look on Him as under the weight of the wrath of God and the curse of the law; taking on Himself, and on His whole soul, the utmost of evil that God had ever threatened to sin or sinners. We might look on Him in His agony and bloody sweat, in His strong cries and supplications, when He was sorrowful to the death, and began to be amazed, in apprehensions of the things that were coming on Him—of that dreadful trail which He was entering into. We might look on Him conflicting with all the powers of darkness, the rage and madness of men, suffering in His soul, His body, His name, His reputation, His goods, His life; some of these sufferings being immediate from God above, others from devils and wicked men acting according to the determinate counsel of God.
We might look on Him praying, weeping, crying out, bleeding, dying—in all things making His soul an offering for sin… But these things I shall not insist on in particular, but leave them under such a veil as may give us a prospect into them, so far as to fill our souls with holy admiration...
What shall we say to these things? That God spared not His only Son, but gave Him up unto death and all the evils included therein, for such poor, lost sinners as we were; that for our sakes the eternal Son of God should submit Himself to all the evils that our natures are liable to, and that our sins had deserved, that we might be delivered! How glorious is the Lord Christ on this account, in the eyes of believers!

from Mediations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ
John Owen (1616-1683))