Watch the doubters jump around on this one:
Jesus made the clear distinction of not dying like the fathers in the wilderness.
48 I am that bread of life.
49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven,
that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
We have the word of Christ, that He is the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Him even if they die, yet shall they live; and whoever lives and believes in Him shall not die.
In Christ there is life, the eternal life which we long and hope for--the resurrection of the body--is not only a future hope that we look forward to on the Last Day, but is the established reality of Jesus, who Himself is raised from the dead as the first fruits. And we, in Him, have received this life from Him which cannot be destroyed--even in mortal death, yet shall we live. So that the life which we have from Him cannot be quenched by death; neither in this life as we live in the suffering and mortality of this body of death, for "by grace have you been saved, through faith" thus through faith we have been made alive together in and with Christ by the Spirit. And also, even upon bodily death, we are confident to be present with the Lord while away from the body. And on the Last Day, when God raises up the dead at Christ's own coming, we shall be raised, and transformed, "in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet". This mortal shall put on immortality, this corruptible shall put on the incorruptible.
Thus the life we have from Christ is:
1. The life of faith which we have received from God, by His grace, to a restored communion with God in Jesus Christ.
2. Even in bodily, mortal death we are not held in bondage to death, for Christ shall keep us with Him until the Last Day.
3. On the Last Day, at Christ's glorious return as judge of the living and the dead, we shall rise bodily, transformed, glorified; and we shall live forever with our Lord and God in that good and future Age that is to come. Unto the ages of ages. Amen.
-CryptoLutheran