Dying...Death

Balloons and games. Upbeat and frilly. Happy-go-lucky and carefree. Positive and filled with pleasure.

What have I just described? A daycare? A strawberry festival? A circus? No, that is a description of the modern day local assembly of believers who meet in a building incorrectly referred to as the church. But when a true Christ-seeker immerses himself in the New Covenant Word of God he will see many common threads that dispel those fleshly descriptions I mentioned. One theme that is not addressed much today is the numerous references to death, both Christ's and ours. Without a Spirit-filled understanding some of the verses may seem morbid and doctrinally gothic, but without DEATH there can be no LIFE!

Without the death of Jesus the Messiah there can be no salvation for anyone. And not just His death but His substitutionary death meaning He must have died and offered His sacrifice freely to us. And if by the power and leading of the Spirit of God we embrace His death we receive His life and, conversely, we ourselves must die completely. What enjoyment can we derive from the very corpse that nailed Jesus to that wooden altar and was judged "guilty". There is "pleasure in sin for a season" of course, but after we have tasted the goodness of God why would we dig up the empty shell and openly parade the enemy of our Lord? By faith the seeking disciple must go to Golgotha, and reckon himself crucified. Dying, dying, dying,...death. Who will deliver me from this body of death? I am crucified with Christ. I am dead and my life is hid with Christ in God. There can never be a resurrection without a death. No newness of life until the old man is dead. And we not only have excused the behavior of our old man, we've developed a living relationship with the man of death that would have cast us into hell if left to himself. The flesh is the enemy of our Savior and he must die. Crucified and buried. And we must awaken every morning with the tomb intact with the decaying sarcophagus still dead and the resurrection life of our Savior exploding inside our hearts.

The life of this world is actually death, and the death to this world is actually life. He who has the Son has life and he who has not the Son has not life. Everything about this world is an enemy of the Master who we embrace and follow and on an appointed day the King of Life will appear and we will know even as we are known that HE IS OUR LIFE FOREVER!!!!

So die...and make room for Him.