Most Christians know they should prepare for death. The difficulty is that we often think of that preparation too narrowly and too late. We prepare documents, make medical decisions, purchase life insurance, discuss funeral preferences, and perhaps choose hymns or Scripture readings for the service. These choices are not unimportant. Prudence is a Christian virtue, and love for one’s family includes practical foresight. But none of these is the deepest preparation for death. The deepest preparation for death is the ordinary life of faith.

This is the burden of William Perkins’s Salve for a Sick Man, first published in 1595. Perkins was one of the most influential English Reformed theologians of the late sixteenth century, and his full title makes his purpose clear: A Salve for a Sick Man, or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature, Differences, and Kinds of Death: as also the Right Manner of Dying Well.¹ Perkins does not write merely to help Christians manage their final hours. He writes to teach them how to live now so that they may die well when death comes.

This distinction matters. We often imagine that dying well requires a certain final scene: a clear mind, gathered family, meaningful last words, peaceful composure, and perhaps a pastor reading Scripture beside the bed. Such scenes are mercies when God gives them. But many Christians do not die that way. Some die suddenly. Some die under sedation. Some lose mental clarity long before the end. Some are unable to speak. Some die in circumstances that appear outwardly confusing, painful, or lonely.

If dying well depends on managing the last visible moments, then many believers will seem to fail through no fault of their own. Perkins offers a better approach. The Christian does not learn to die well by improvising faith at the deathbed. He prepares to die throughout the whole course of life.

Perkins begins with Ecclesiastes 7:1–2:

A good name is better than precious ointment,

and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.

It is better to go to the house of mourning

than to go to the house of feasting.

The choice of text is significant. Ecclesiastes sends the living to the house of mourning because death teaches wisdom. Feasting has its place, but mourning tells the truth. It reminds us that our lives are short, our sins are serious, our relationships matter, and our hope must be anchored beyond this world.

Perkins does not sentimentalize death. He defines death as “a deprivation of life as a punishment ordained of God and imposed on man for his sin.”² That definition is stark, but it is necessary. Death is not merely biological decline. It is not simply the last stage of natural existence. It is theological. Death is bound to sin, judgment, and the curse. David Sceats observes that Perkins’s definition is explicitly theological. Perkins makes no attempt to escape the ethical implications of death. He acknowledges both God’s general decree against sin and his sovereign application of that decree in particular deaths.³ This is part of what makes Perkins useful. He will not let us soften death into a mere medical process. We must face death before God.

Yet Perkins also insists that Christ changes everything about death for the believer. Death must be considered in two ways: first, in itself; and second, as it is altered and changed by Christ. Considered in itself, death is the wages of sin, the enemy of Christ and his members, the curse of the law, and even “the suburbs and gates of hell.” But in Christ, death ceases to be a plague and becomes a passage from this life into eternal life, “a new wicket or door whereby we pass out of this world, and enter into heaven.”⁴

This distinction is the heart of the Christian art of dying. Christians should not speak as though death itself has become good. Death is still an enemy, and the grave is still grievous. The separation of body and soul is still contrary to the goodness of God’s original creation. But Christ has conquered death in such a way that the believer may now pass through it without condemnation. Death remains an enemy, but an enemy pressed into service by the risen Lord.

This is why Perkins can say that the death of the righteous is a blessing. The Christian can say, “My grave is my bed, my death is my sleep.”⁵ This is not denial; it is faith. The body sleeps in the grave, awaiting resurrection. The soul is freed from sin and brought into the presence of Christ. Death does not destroy those who are in Christ. It brings them to their Savior.

Perkins also connects this confidence to providence. Reflecting on Joseph, he argues that believers are armed against impatience, grief, and discontentment as they consider God’s providence. If our hearts are persuaded that all things in sickness and death come to pass by the providence of God, who turns all things for the good of those who love him, then the believer may be confirmed against fear and sorrow.⁶

This does not mean that death ceases to hurt. Perkins does not offer a thin comfort. The Christian still grieves, the body still weakens, and families still weep. But grief is placed under providence. The dying believer is not abandoned to chaos. He is not overtaken by a force outside the Father’s rule. Even sickness and death come under the government of the God who works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28).

For Perkins, this confidence does not lead to passivity. It leads to preparation. “The preparation unto death,” he writes, “is an action of a repentant sinner, whereby he makes himself fit and ready to die.” It is, he adds, “a necessary duty commanded by God.”⁷ This preparation has two parts: general and particular. Particular preparation concerns the time when death is near. General preparation concerns the whole course of life. This is Perkins’s great contribution for ordinary Christians.

General Preparation for Death

By general preparation, a man prepares himself “to die through the whole course of his life.”⁸ Since death is certain, but its time and manner are uncertain, the Christian must prepare every day. Death may come slowly or suddenly. It may give warning or none. The believer therefore cannot postpone readiness until the final illness.

Perkins identifies several duties that belong to this lifelong preparation. The first is meditation on death. “The life of a Christian,” he writes, “is nothing else but a meditation of death.”⁹ To modern ears, that may sound severe. But Perkins is not calling Christians into gloom. He is calling them into wisdom. Meditation on death is not morbid fascination. It is not staring at the grave as though death were ultimate. It is learning to live beneath the truth that life is short, sin is serious, judgment is real, Christ is precious, and eternity is near. The Christian who remembers death is better able to resist vanity, repent quickly, forgive sincerely, love deeply, and suffer patiently. Death rightly remembered does not shrink life. It gives life weight.

The second duty is prayer. Perkins says Christians should pray that God would enable them to “resolve themselves concerning death continually.”¹⁰ He urges believers to pray that God would enlighten their minds and fill their hearts with grace, so that they would rightly consider death and esteem every day and hour as though it were the day and hour of death.¹¹

This is not fatalism. Perkins is not asking Christians to detach from earthly life. He is asking them to receive earthly life truthfully, as fragile and ordered by God. We need such prayer because no one naturally faces death well. Left to ourselves, we avoid it, deny it, fear it, or try to control it. We need grace “to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). We need grace to believe the promises of God and entrust ourselves to the providence of our heavenly Father.

The third duty Perkins speaks of is the daily practice of Christian obedience. Perkins says, “Whatsoever a man would do when he is dying, the same he ought to do every day while he is living.”¹² This is a searching sentence. What would a Christian wish to do on his deathbed? Confess sin. Trust Christ. Forgive enemies. Pray. Bless his family. Loosen his grip on the world. Hope in the resurrection. Perkins says, “Do these things now.”

This is not theatrical spirituality. It is ordinary sanctification. The one who would live forever with God must begin now to live for God. Perkins says that the Christian must begin in this world to rise out of the grave of his sins and live in newness of life.¹³ Dying well begins with being made alive in Christ and then walking as one who has already passed from death to life.

General preparation, then, is not complicated. It is the Christian life lived with death and resurrection in view. Meditate on death. Pray for readiness. Live in daily repentance and obedience. Trust providence. Commend your soul to God. Cast your works on him. Perkins urges believers to practice these duties throughout life, leading them daily in faith and obedience, commending their souls into God’s hand, and casting all their works on his providence.¹⁴

Particular Preparation

Particular preparation becomes necessary when death approaches. Perkins does not deny the importance of the deathbed. He simply refuses to make the deathbed the first school of faith. When sickness comes and death seems near, the Christian should renew the graces he has practiced throughout life: faith, repentance, prayer, submission, and hope.

Perkins especially emphasizes reconciliation to God in Christ. Against the Roman doctrine of deathbed rites and unction, he says that the one facing death must first seek to be reconciled to God in Christ through faith and repentance. “All other duties come second and are of little or no effect without this.”¹⁵ This is a necessary evangelical ordering. The dying man’s greatest need is not religious ceremony. His greatest need is Christ.

Perkins then offers meditations for the dying believer. The first is the special providence of God: The death of every person, and especially every child of God, is not only foreseen but foreappointed by God.¹⁶ The second is God’s promise: Blessed are those who die in the Lord.¹⁷ The third is union with Christ: Believers die not outside of Christ but in him, joined to him according to the covenant of grace.¹⁸ The fourth is God’s presence: God has promised His special, blessed, and comfortable presence to his servants when they are sick, dying, or distressed.¹⁹

These meditations are pastorally rich. They give the dying believer solid ground. My death is not outside God’s providence. I am blessed if I die in the Lord. Death cannot sever me from Christ. God will be with me in the valley. These are not vague comforts. They are doctrinally formed consolations for the hour when earthly supports are removed.

They also show why lifelong preparation matters. The deathbed should be the place where long-taught promises are renewed, not where basic Christianity is introduced. Perkins laments what he calls a “notorious fault” among those who have lived long in the visible church but, when they are sick and drawing near to death, must finally be catechized in faith and repentance as though newly received into the church. “What a shame,” he says, “that a man who has spent twenty, thirty, or forty years in the church should only at the end begin to ask what faith and repentance are and how his soul might be saved.”²⁰

This warning remains timely. Churches should not wait until the hospital room to teach Christians how to die. Pastors should not save the promises of God for the final crisis. Parents should not shield their children from every serious thought of mortality. Believers should not postpone repentance until illness forces the question. The whole ministry of the church should prepare Christians to live and die in Christ.

Every Lord’s Day is part of this preparation. In worship, God teaches his people to confess sin, hear pardon, sing hope, receive Christ, and look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Every sermon should, in some way, prepare dying people to meet the living God. Every prayer of confession trains us not to carry sin to the grave unrepented. Every assurance of pardon teaches us where comfort must be found. Every Lord’s Supper proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes.

This is not morbid ministry; it is faithful ministry. A church that never teaches its people to die has not fully taught them to live. A pastor who never prepares his people for death has left them unprepared for one of the most certain trials they will face. A Christian who never thinks of death will find it difficult to live wisely.

Perkins gives us a better way. We must face death truthfully because death is, in itself, the wages of sin. We must face death hopefully, because in Christ it has been altered and changed. We must face death daily, because no one knows when it will come. We must face death pastorally, because the people of God need to be taught before they are dying.

To prepare to die before you are dying is simply to live now as one who belongs to Christ. It is to repent today rather than tomorrow. It is to forgive before resentment hardens. It is to pray before fear overwhelms. It is to meditate on heaven before earth is stripped away. It is to learn providence before dark providence comes. It is to know Christ before the final hour.

The Christian’s hope is not that his last hours will be impressive. His hope is that Christ has already passed through death for him. Therefore, whether death comes slowly or suddenly, peacefully or painfully, with clear speech or with silence, the believer may entrust body and soul to the Savior who has promised, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19).

Notes

1. William Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man; or, A Treatise Containing the Nature, Differences, and Kinds of Death; as Also the Right Manner of Dying Well (London, 1616), Kindle, loc. 1–11. See also Richard A. Muller, “Perkins’ A Golden Chaine: Predestinarian System or Schematized Ordo Salutis?” Sixteenth Century Journal 9, no. 1 (April 1978): 69–81.
2. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 25.
3. David Sceats, “‘Precious in the Sight of the Lord…’: The Theme of Death in Puritan Pastoral Theology,” Churchman 95, no. 4 (1981): 5.
4. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 114.
5. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 1–11.
6. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 628–43.
7. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 298.
8. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 341.
9. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 341.
10. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 370.
11. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 385.
12. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 399.
13. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 413.
14. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 947–62.
15. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 517.
16. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 620.
17. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 635.
18. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 650.
19. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 650.
20. Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man, loc. 560.

©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Everett Henes

  

  Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.

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