2 Corinthians 5:15: "And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again."
It is an odd thought to think that we must die in order that we may live. To think that true life comes from upon the brink of death is what nature continually confirms. Think of the strange wonder that the soil is enriched with the biological compost of what has come and died before. However, it is a much odder thing to think that a dead man could do anything at all other than die. But this is exactly what Christianity asserts.
It is on the cusp of death that life is born. In the case of eternal life, it is met through faith. When we offer ourselves up to Christ in faith and we accept the reality that we are, in fact, already deceased, then we are able to begin life anew. Only once the obituary of our life is written can we begin to live the life that is everlasting. However, and this cannot be overstated, we should be warned that there is a time limit, an expiration to this opportunity to live.
When our bodies do perish we have missed the date. No longer will we be able to be slain by faith because we have already been murdered by disbelief. This is the rub: either we will live by faith or we will die by non-faith. There is no middle ground, no DMZ, no neutral forking road by which we can safely choose faith in God. We are either already dead or we will accept our dead state and seek to be made alive in Christ.
It is by God's grace through Christ that we have been made alive, but we do not live that life until we accept that we are dead in sin. By accept that death we put sin to death in ourselves through Christ. It is thus Christ who causes us to be made alive but He also assists us in putting sin to death utterly so that we truly can live without sin in Him. Amen that God has done all this for us and let us never lose sight that we are alive in Him and in Him alone!
No comments:
Post a Comment