All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these, you did not do it unto me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. The Genesis narrative teaches us that it came into the world only by the sin of man.
Death is a curse, and the whole creation has become involved in the curse.
The sin of man has necessitated the whole series of events which in the Bible records and which we call the story or redemption. Death can be conquered only to the extent that sin is removed. Every healing is a partial resurrection, a partial victory of life over death. We have witnessed a transition from despair to hope throughout biblical history to the already, while we anticipate the not yet. God has freely given us the gift of eternal life, a gift so undeserving.