From Death to Life

If you didn't know, this is how your story is going to end...

Have you ever known someone who knew everything?  Having mastered the rather simple task of getting their life in order, they moved on to the more difficult task of convincing the rest of the world that they are right.  When I was a financial adviser I had a high school history teacher explain exactly what I needed to do to build my career.  This wasn't a guy I had ever met.  He just knew what I needed.  Because obviously High School history teachers know how to build a financial practice.  Far too often we get "advice' from well meaning, ignorant people.

The way we react is much different when the words are coming from the mouth of an expert.  We all have the family member who diagnoses people with all sorts of medical ailments based on their own internet research.  Rarely do those warning cause a loss of sleep at night.  However, the same warning coming from a doctor who is pointing at a scan of your body is taken much differently.  If you have been in those situations then you know the weight that is felt when certain words are used.  There is no death, yet.  But it seems inevitable.  The sentence is accepted.  Processed.  Grieved.  Internalized.  Real.

For some that sentence is later waived.  Through the power of a healing God people who should have died are saved miraculously through a sudden change or miraculously through the advancements in medicine that God allows the human race to develop.

On that day, when the good news is recieved, it is worthy of a celebration.  You are going to live.  Those words are expected, taken for granted, and unworthy of a celebration the day before a diagnosis.  However, when faced with the reality of death, a pronouncement of healing is a cause for celebration.

Romans 6:13 says this:

Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 

Sin has sentenced us all to death.  Like an untreatable disease that ravages our physical body, we are unable to defend ourselves against the death sentence of our own sin.  And just like the joy that comes from hearing a Dr. say "cured", those who have surrendered to Christ are called to celebrate like only those who have been saved can celebrate.  Without understanding the reality of our impending, deserved doom, we cannot understand how Jesus is a Savior.

What does it mean to live as someone who has been brouth from death to life?  If you talk to people who have lived this out in the physical world, it always means change.  Perspective changes.  What we value changes.

I had a friend in high school who liked to use and sell drugs.  Actually, I had a lot of those friends, but one in particular that I spent a good amount of time with.  As I got more serious about my relationship with God, and he got more serious about trying to be the next Scar Face, we spent less and less time together.  While I was in college I heard that he had been in a bad car accident.  He didn't remember what happened but from what the family was able to piece together from the EMT's who arrived on the scene, he had been thrown through the front windshield of his car and was found barely alive on the side of the road.  The next time I came home for a break I called him and we got together.  There was a park where we used to play basketball and we got some food and sat at a picknick table.  We had to sit in the shade because the doctors had told him that the scars on his face would be permanent if he spent anytime in the sun.

I remember very clearly sitting there that day, wondering what it would take to get him to come back to Jesus.  With this in mind I asked him about the accident and what he remembered.  He said the only thing he could remember was lying on the side of the road when the emergency crew arrived and hearing them come up to him.  "Were you scared?" I asked, hoping that the trauma of that moment would make him more open to talks about eternity.  "Yes.  I was terrified."  In that moment I was filled with hope.  Maybe this is what was needed to get him to get his life back in order with Jesus.  Then he finished his sentence...  "I was scared to death they were going to search the car.  I had three pounds of marijuana hidden in the back seat and I have two strikes.  If they had found my stash I would be in prison right now."

I had no words.  To this day, I don't understand how a person who is that close to stepping into forever, can be so consumed with something so physical.  There was no thought about his life.  No thought about if he was ready to meet God.  No thought about his injuries.  The fact that he didn't die that day wasn't even a big deal to him.  The fact that he didn't go to prison was.  Although he would go to prison later.

There are so many dead people in this world.  Dead people, one mistake, one accident away from making that death complete and eternal.  So many dead people clinging to dead possesions and dead dreams.  So many people living death to the fullest and celebrating what they call life.

That's our reality.  That is our death.  But by the grace of God we would all be in the same boat.  We have been saved.  Saved from death.  Saved from hopelessness.  Saved from meaninglessness.  And saved to life.  To purpose and hope.  To meaning that will last longer than our physical bodies.  Saved to a future that we can't earn and don't deserve.

The Bible says that we are saved by Grace.  By God's choosing that we are someone He wants to save.  God wants to redeem us.  In order to understand this grace, we must undersand the depth of spiritual and physical death that exists without Jesus.

We have been brought from death to life in Christ Jesus, by grace.  Let's live like that.