Death is the Way to Life

I don’t want anyone to think I don’t think life is valuable. Only God can create life. Anything else is just a pot full of chemicals. Life can come only through what God has designed in the core of our DNA. You can’t see it, you can’t make it, you can only manipulate it. Only God can make life, so it is more valuable than all the things that you can have or make or accomplish. In the second between life and death, the pot of chemicals hasn’t changed, the DNA is still there, everything that is physical is still there. You can’t even measure the weight of the departing life. People have tried to measure what left the body at the moment of death, which is impossible. You simply can’t measure what it means to be alive.

Given that, we are obnoxiously obsessed with staying alive at all costs. We kind of believe a little bit in our hope of heaven, but right in our neighborhood we have medical clinics, pharmacies, therapy units, hospitals, rehab centers, on and on. For most of us, pre-medicare, we pay significantly more each month to have a “Please, Doctor, Don’t Let Me Die” policy than we do on our house payment and our car payment put together. We trust a little more in the temples we have built, with their white-jacketed priests and their many acolytes and scribes than we do in the God of Creation to whom we owe everything.

Why are we so afraid of death? Because we have never experienced it. We haven’t had any messages come back to us beyond the grave. We don’t have our own Lazarus walking around who had the unfortunate experience if having to face the separation from life and loves by dying twice over. Now, mind you, my beloved Bobbi has had the experience of being no longer alive inside a temple of medicine. Hers is the experience that I trust will be mine, through faith: She simply felt a peaceful, boldly unafraid, secure in Christ sleep. However, God allowed her to reawaken to this good life, which is much to my pleasure. Yet we shall all die, lest Christ returns before our turn comes up. But make no mistake: the Bible still calls death an enemy that will be defeated.

Life is what God created as he made the world; Death was introduced through sin by Satan’s temptations to turn our back on God’s goodness and trust instead in the lies that try to tell us life is better when we live on a knife-edge of trusting ourselves instead of our Creator. An old television show was called “Father knows best” which was a feel-good non-dysfunctional family with a loving, positive, encouraging dad who never yelled at his wife or kids, but led them to make good choices. Believe it or not, that old black and white teleplay some of us are old enough to remember echoed the values of a father in the house who behaved like a Good God was helping his daily wisdom and we would watch for 30 minutes each week what it was like having a loving, even tempered, guiding. Amp-up the title of the program to “Our Heavenly Father Knows Best” and you are in the realm of God’s love care for our life.

When we consider what God would have us do with our lives, the Bible presents us with.....

A Paradox of Death and Life

Life is good; life is God’s creation; life is what allows us this opportunity to be together today and think about God’s goodness opposed to evil’s destruction.

Yet our daily life is not something to be held onto as if our eternal souls depended on it. In fact, Jesus tells us just the opposite:

Luke 9:24 “24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

You see, life that is lived only to keep living becomes cynical, selfish, and more and more full of pride in ourselves, which is a boulevard like the Las Vegas strip, calling us into pleasure and indulgence—and sin.

Jesus offers another alternative, a path to start living our eternal life in the here and now, by dying to self and living in Him: “whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” That is not about joining a Jesus gang; it is about putting our hopes and dreams and future in the hands of the only one who cares more for us than we do ourselves. True life is life in Christ.

Now let’s dive into what that really means, in the book of Romans, some really exciting stuff in chapters 5 and 6, as we consider.....

Law and Grace and Life

What is law? Law is code of the limits on our lives and the prescribed punishments for breaking the law, along with the prescribed freedoms set out in that law.

For instance, law says no one may drive an automobile by themselves on public roads without first passing a written test and being examined to test one’s ability to steer, stop, and control that automobile safely whether alone on the road or in the midst of heavy traffic.

OK. You have to have a license to drive a car. When you get that license, you study and agree to follow the basic rules of the road and important local and national laws that help you drive safely to protect yourself and others.

Get caught breaking those laws, and you will pay price. A fine, or other restrictions on your driving. Or surrendering your right to drive. Or being held in prison for a certain amount of time. Or having your car confiscated by the authorities appointed to oversee our compliance to the laws of driving.

But continue to follow the rules and laws and you continue to have the privilege and freedom to use a car on public roads for personal benefit and for the good of your family and the community where you live.

God’s law is simpler than our laws, but the application is the same.

Follow God’s laws, and live your life in the richness of God’s goodness with tremendous freedom and opportunities for happiness. The good life.

Go against God’s laws, and face the punishment of losing the gifts of God’s goodness. Starting with being guilty before a holy God whose greatest gift to us is life, and so losing your right to live. Yes, the Bible tells us it is that serious.

When God finds us guilty, this same God whom we cannot escape or cajole or bamboozle, we are sinners subject to death. We have earned the wages of sin, and lost the opportunity to live forever in God’s goodness.

But God has a plan for us to get right with him again: to be reconciled to him, in a verse that includes law and grace and life:

Romans 6:23 ESV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Redemption is Costly

Sin’s wage is the death of our eternal souls, since sin cannot exist in the presence of God’s holiness which inhabits eternity. And the wages must be paid. But the promise of the Gift of God in Christ Jesus is secured by Jesus himself stepping in and taking our wages. Not because we are good enough to deserve it. No, we can never deserve the gift of Christ. That gift came from the heart of God’s love, who saw that the inclinations of our hearts are continually evil, and sent his Son to provide for us a sacrifice for sin:

Romans 5:6 ESV

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Why would Christ do this for us? It makes little sense that God would sacrifice his son to save a sinner like me.

Romans 5:7 ESV

7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—

It is all because of God’s love, God’s desire to make it possible for every one of us to enjoy the eternal life with him that our souls are designed for:

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Sin broke the relationship with God we were meant to have. It made us his enemies, because of our unfaithfulness. The Old Testament uses the illustration of adultery to show us how it affects our relationship, turning us into enemies of the One who loves us. The amazing thing that we call Grace makes a way for us through Jesus Christ, to be bought back and brought back to the right to eternal life:

Romans 5:10 ESV

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Grace Pays Our Fines

Romans 5:20 ESV

20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

Grace Brings Us Back to Life

Romans 5:20–21 ESV

20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Don’t Take Grace for Granted

Romans 6:1–2 ESV

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Here’s the severe answer to that one:

Hebrews 10:29–30 ESV

29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”

Baptism, Death, and Life

Romans 6:3–4 ESV

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:5 ESV

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:6–7 ESV

6 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. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.

Romans 6:8 ESV

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

Christ’s Life is Eternal

Romans 6:9–10 ESV

9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

Our Life of Grace is In Christ

Romans 6:11 ESV

11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.