Here are some questions based on last Sunday’s sermon text (The Song of Solomon 8:6-7), in case they’re helpful to you for personal growth or group discussion…

• In the Bible, “death” means separation from God and each other—it threatens to bring an end to love and all good relationships. This is the choice we’ve made in our sin, and now death has a claim on us all. Here at the crescendo of the Bible’s love song, the Bride (poetically representing God’s people) sings to her beloved Bridegroom (representing God), asking him to do something so that their relationship could survive death itself. Are you afraid of death? Of your own death? Of the death of others? Why or why not? Do you care that death threatens to end your relationship with God? What would it mean for you if you knew that your relationship with God was over (because of your choice, your sin), and that there was no hope of restoring it?

• In the Incarnation, God committed himself to his relationship with his people so fully that he took our nature to himself, to become his own nature in Jesus. Because of the bodily, human resurrection of Jesus (God and man united in one Person in eternal life), we know that God will be with us forever, and that not even death can separate us from him. Because Jesus lives, we also will be raised from the dead to live with him forever. Do you believe this? Why might this be hard to believe? Why would someone believe this?

• Death will not separate us from the Lord… or from our brothers and sisters in Christ. You will live in relationship with other believers forever. How does this resurrection perspective change the way you can relate to your brothers and sisters in Christ now? (Think of specific people in the church, some you’re getting along with, some you’re not.)