Life and Death

I love thinking about the future. It’s fun to dream. There’s a comfort in knowing that there are always possibilities. As exciting as tomorrow can be, sometimes I have a tendency to forget about what’s going on right now!

It’s easy for us to do the same thing with the Gospel of Jesus - we throw it so far into the future that we forget what it means for us today. We know that through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ we will spend eternity with God. What an exciting truth! But this is not the totality of the good news of Jesus. The Gospel is not only about a destination, but an identity.

I remember thinking that my college professors were much more serious about what we were learning than me or my classmates were. They really wanted us to learn. As I studied engineering, it became apparent that these teachers wanted us to become engineers. I think many of my classmates (and me at times!) were only thinking about the destination. We were just trying to get to graduation day with good enough grades to get a diploma. While we only had the destination in mind, they were thinking about our identity!

We struggle in the same way as we think about the saving work of Jesus Christ. We want to make it all about a destination or outcome. We think about “life” and “death” as two outcomes: one to desire, and the other to avoid. Scripture doesn’t only talk about life and death as destinations, but as identities! Look at Colossians 2:13-14:

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

Look at the words of that passage: “dead” and “alive” are used as words of identity! It’s not that we end up dead, or we end up alive, but that we are dead or we are alive right now! We are either dead in our sin, or we have been made alive through trusting that the sacrifice of Jesus counts for us. This is not only a truth about where we will end up one day, but a truth about our lives currently.

One of the ways that Scripture talks about sin is with a legal analogy - as if there is a record of our selfishness. Paul says in Colossians, that Christ took the record of our wrongdoing and nailed it to the cross with his body, “canceling the record of debt that stood against us” (Col. 2:14).

Paul continues his talk about our identity in the book of Romans. In Romans 6:5-11, he helps us see how this affects our life today:

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be Brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him…so you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ in Christ Jesus.”

Again we see the words of identity. We “have died” with Christ and “will also live with him.” Basically in this passage, Paul points out one simply truth: only dead people act like they’re dead. If we have been made alive in Christ, we should live like it! When we sin, we’re forgetting the truth of what Jesus has done. He has brought our dead bodies alive - to live a new life to God! How disheartening it must be to the One who gave Himself for us when we return to sin.

When we make salvation solely a future destination, we open up a door for us to live however we want until we get there. Instead let’s live in the present reality of being made alive in Christ.