Bird's-eye view
Psalm 116:15 stands as a profound statement of God's sovereign care over His people, nestled paradoxically within a song of thanksgiving for deliverance from death. The verse declares that the death of God's saints is "precious" in His sight. This does not mean that God delights in the abstract event of their dying, but rather that He places an exceedingly high value on their lives, and consequently does not hand them over to death lightly or arbitrarily. Their death is a weighty, significant, and costly event in the courtroom of heaven. It is an affair over which He presides with meticulous attention. For the world, death is the final tragedy, the ultimate loss. For God, the death of one of His own is the final, triumphant entry of a child into glory, an event so significant that He orchestrates it with perfect wisdom and love. It is a declaration of value, a statement of ownership, and a promise of ultimate vindication.
Outline
- 1. The Lord's Valuation (Ps 116:15)
- a. A Costly Matter: "Precious" (Ps 116:15a)
- b. In the Divine Court: "in the sight of Yahweh" (Ps 116:15b)
- c. The Final Graduation: "Is the death" (Ps 116:15c)
- d. The Covenant People: "of His holy ones" (Ps 116:15d)
Context In Psalm 116
This verse appears in a psalm overflowing with gratitude for being rescued from the very brink of death. The psalmist recounts being entangled by "the cords of death" and tormented by "the terrors of Sheol" (v. 3). He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord delivered him (vv. 4, 8). It is in this context of celebrating life preserved that he makes this astonishing statement about death. The logic is this: God does not treat the lives of His people as cheap or disposable. The reason the psalmist was delivered is precisely because his life and potential death were of great consequence to God. God does not allow His enemies to snuff out the lives of His saints at will. He holds the keys of death and Hades. Therefore, when He does ordain that a saint's earthly life should end, it is not a defeat or a tragedy, but a sovereignly-timed, purposeful, and precious event that serves His ultimate glory and the believer's ultimate good.
Key Issues
- The Meaning of "Precious"
- God's Sovereignty Over Death
- The Identity of the "Holy Ones"
- Death as Defeated Enemy
- Comfort for the Grieving
A Weighty Departure
In our therapeutic and sentimental age, we have a tendency to flatten the meaning of words like "precious." We think of something delicate, sweet, or cute. But the biblical meaning of the Hebrew word yaqar is far more robust. It means valuable, costly, weighty, rare. It is an economic and judicial term. When a king considers something precious, it means he is willing to pay a high price for it, and he will not give it up for a trifle. This is how God views the death of His saints. It is not a small thing to Him. It is not an everyday occurrence that He notes with detached indifference. The death of every one of His covenant children is a momentous event in the history of redemption, an event that cost the infinitely precious blood of His own Son to transform from a curse into a blessing.
Verse by Verse Commentary
15 Precious in the sight of Yahweh Is the death of His holy ones.
Let's break this down into its constituent parts. The world sees the death of a Christian as no different from any other death. It is a biological event, a tragedy, a loss. But God's perspective is the only one that establishes reality.
Precious... As we noted, this means costly, valuable, held in honor. God does not treat the death of His people lightly. He does not "spend" their lives cheaply. Psalm 72:14 says of the king, "Precious is their blood in his sight." This means a good king does not needlessly send his subjects to their death. How much more does the King of heaven and earth value the lives of those He has redeemed? This is a profound statement of God's love and protective care. He is not trigger-happy with the lives of His saints.
...in the sight of Yahweh... This is where the valuation takes place. It is not precious in our sight. In our sight, it is often a source of deep grief and sorrow, and rightly so. We are creatures of time and space, and we feel the sting of separation. But in the transcendent, eternal courtroom of God, the perspective is entirely different. The event happens under His direct gaze. No saint dies by accident. No martyr's life is taken without the Father's express decree. It is an event that has God's full and sovereign attention.
...Is the death... The great enemy. The wages of sin. The last foe to be destroyed. And yet, for the believer, this enemy has been defanged and declawed. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, death itself has been transformed. It is no longer a penal curse, but a doorway into glory. It is no longer a descent into Sheol, but an ascension into the presence of Christ. It is the final act of our sanctification, our ultimate deliverance from the very presence of sin. God values it because it is the moment He brings His child home, the moment the work of grace is consummated.
...of His holy ones. The Hebrew is hasidim, which refers to His loyal, faithful, covenant people. These are the ones set apart by His grace, those who have received His lovingkindness (hesed). This is a family affair. This is not a statement about humanity in general. It is a specific promise to God's elect. Their death is precious to Him because they belong to Him. They are the bride of Christ, the children of the Father, the temples of the Holy Spirit. A father does not watch the death of his child with indifference. He watches with profound love, sorrow, and, because of the resurrection, triumphant hope.
Application
This verse is a fortress for the people of God. First, it is a profound comfort in the face of grief. When we lose a brother or sister in Christ, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We grieve, yes, but we do so knowing that what we see as a tragic loss, God sees as a precious and triumphant homecoming. Their death was not a mistake or a failure of His plan. It was a weighty and meaningful event, ordained and overseen by their loving Father.
Second, this verse is a wellspring of courage for Christian living. We are called to take up our cross daily, to mortify our sin, and to live lives of bold witness in a hostile world. This may cost us everything, including our lives. But we need not fear, because our lives are not our own to protect. They are in the hands of our sovereign God, and He will not let one of them fall to the ground apart from His will. And if He calls us to seal our testimony with our blood, we can know that this final act is not a defeat, but is precious, valuable, and glorious in His sight. He will vindicate His martyrs.
Finally, this verse reorients our entire understanding of reality. The world fears death above all things and arranges its entire existence around avoiding it. But the Christian knows that death has been defeated. Our Lord Jesus walked into the tomb and walked out again, carrying the keys. For us, death is not the end of the story, but merely the end of the preface. It is the beginning of life as it was always meant to be lived, face to face with the God who valued us so much that He gave His only Son, so that our deaths might be precious in His sight.