When we say Death.
Today I sat down to mentally write out my newsletter for the week on the reason for the season, when a striking thought came to mind.
Whenever I want to write, I start out mentally conceiving the idea. Then I allow it ruminate in my head for a few days or weeks depending on what it is I want to write about. I do this so my thoughts can concretize, add weight and I would have thought things through to the best of my knowledge. For areas I am not clear on, I do a little research to ensure I am communicating what is really in my head.
However, for todays post, I had one of those very clear moments where everything just comes complete in your mind, begging you to let it out to the world. No few days/years, no overthinking, just a clean clear thought.
As believers (People who believe in Jesus Christ and have accepted his gift of salvation), when we say to die or speak of death we mean eternal separation from God.
When I say this aloud to myself, it sounds as though when we give this context, we do not really mean like to “die die” we mean the Christian version which is to be separated from God. So we don’t actually die but we are separated from God which is actually a really bad thing too. Sadly, this concern pops in my head because of the mix of reality I have suffered having existed in a world without Christ for so long, encouraged by the culture. Regardless of the reasons, when we say die, we mean it literally and every wise.
When the branch of a tree is cut off from the tree (its supply, it source, its essence), the branch literally dies. It may still look as though it has everything figured out but it is dead. What happens next is we begin to see the effects of death on the branch as the days unfold. We begin to see decay, rottenness, stiffness, hardness etc. Signs and symbols that life has gone out of the branch and it is dead. As the effect of death become more evident, we begin to see little or no use for the branch and the next logical step is to have it thrown away.
Using this illustration, you should be able to see the effects of death all around us because we still have a world full of people separated from Christ (our supply, our source, our essence), people who are literally dead. What is happening now is we see the effects of death. The depravity, moral decay, lack of humanity, rottenness, people seeking rights to molest children with the defense of preference, injustice, murder, trafficking a fellow image bearer (human being) to be used as a tool for sexual pleasure, degrading and belittling the value that Christ paid for. We see the hardness, the increasing way we get unaffected by the effects of death and get to some point where we conceive thoughts like “but they deserved it” etc.
If you pay close attention to dead things, or if you watch some archeological shows or medical shows where there’s always this morgue expert all the detectives go to, the more the days/years go by the more effect death has on the item/person. You hear them excavate a finding and can tell you how long its being dead for because of the effects of death. Death continues to have its effects as the years go by and it gets worse and worse.
So now, imagine how the world will get with this many people separated from God.
This is not to cause your heart to be afraid but to make you aware of what death is and what precious gift you have, having the life of Christ. This is also to spur you to boldly carry the message of the good news of redemption wherever you go. This is why the gospel is good news. It is here to resurrect. To bring dead men back to life literally. In what Christ has done, we do not throw away a person because of how dead they are, we seek to bring them to the one who can make them alive again. Once a person is back to life, imagine the fruit of life that each person can bear and its effect on the world.
So go… Tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere as the song writer says. Life has come to us in Jesus.
