Die to Live

A film franchise whose central character is a suave secret agent is soon to release another installment. No doubt this film will be filled with pulse pounding car chases and super stunts that dare to imply the Bond character lives forever. Movies may ‘imitate art’ but they are not real life, certainly not the life God intended for us to have before sin came in. Oh yes, sin again needs to be addressed because it stands stubbornly in the way of a stable relationship with Jesus. We like to drag sin around with us sometimes like an old sack of potatoes. We just won’t put it down, perhaps for fear of being unrecognizable without the extra weight. Argh!

How much better it would be to obey the Lord and die to sin. Take Lot’s wife. How much better it would have been for her to press on to the better country prepared for her than to long for the likes of sinful Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 19 retells this historic event. Verse 17 reads that the angels of the Lord warned Lot and his family not to look back when fleeing the city. His wife didn’t listen and it cost her life. Contrast her foolishness with the wisdom of the Apostle Paul. He said things like…

·  I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.  (1 Corinthians 15:3142-44) 

·         I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.(Galatians 2:20)

·         Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:11) 

All sinners saved by Christ are called to put off the old man and put on the new. Cancer shouldn’t have the market cornered on waking up to the truth that real life is hid with Christ. In fact, cancer should make it easier to help shed the old man as the disease certainly does do much to alter one’s body image. Think as you honestly look at your body; are you really able to stop the aging process? Bodies function magnificently even in their corrupted, sin-stained state, but they must die in order for us to inherit and inhabit the body Christ has prepared for us and that body will never wear out. (Revelation 21) Let the old man go. Die to self to live in Christ.

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