Day 3317 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:5 NIV

The promise of the Gospel is resurrection unto new life from the wasted ways in which we’ve lived wrapped within the death of sin.

But it seems that the confusion brought about by our selfish delusion, dilution, is that we’ve never come to terms with the death which must precede new life. It’s like we love the outcome but still seem utterly unhappy with the required input. Which is an oddity in all honesty. Because how can a new life come if the old’s never gone? How might Christ begin us again if we’re still walking the tired and torn we’ve already traveled? How might we share in His everlasting if we’ll not shed this imminently ending?

Indeed, I fear our fear of fatality is inspiring inside only a feeble futility in terms of faith and our following faithfully into the forfeit our Father has asked of us.

Because we don’t want to lose. Not anything. Not ever. No, to us who’ve long believed life here the only life there is as it’s the only life we’ve known, we know only to grasp and grip and never let slip anything, anyone, any of everything that we may see that seems as if it might add to the depth or worth or tangibility of our time in this temporality.

Yes, we reach and writhe for all that might make our time here seem less fleeting than both truth and reality so often remind. That’s why we all spend our days so focused on so many distractions. It’s why we cling with a vice-like companionship to cellphones and celebrities. It’s why we ache for opportunities to share our opinions, to make known our priorities, to make loud and clear our voices so that we might feel heard as if our being heard accomplishes our being seen leaving us an undeniable evidence that we are here.

That we are here.

To me that’s a sorrow of increasing proportions. That we’re here. It’s the same feeling shared by Paul’s honesty in his second letter to the church in Corinth. 2 Corinthians 5:6 to be exact. It’s where we see him share something that’s begun growing in my own mind, my own heart, my own walk. “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.”

Because, just as Paul makes note of just a couple verses prior, “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” 2 Corinthians 5:4

“So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

For to be mortal is to be still subject to death. Mortality is the counter to immortality. Our impermanence as defined by our bodily death still to come means we are not yet able to experience the fullness of His promise and the permanent peace which it provides. Because we are mortal, subject to death, awaiting our end as there is simply no escaping that every life owes a death. And yet that’s the beauty of Christ’s calling us into that tomb in which we share in His surrender. It’s “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

That’s among the most brutally honest outlooks on life that I know of, that I’ve read of, that I’ve ever heard of. Because this life isn’t the party so many pretend it to be. It’s not this perfect existence filled with nothing but fun and fellowship and a future uncorrupted. No. This world shows us every day a deeper darkness, a more deadly danger than the day before. Mankind’s enthusiasm with sin and self and serving the both becomes only bigger, shines only brighter, weighs only heavier as the reality of billions of misspent lives and missed opportunities are becoming all but accepted and expected anymore.

This life is just death waiting. And because of the growth and rapid spread of sin, it seems as if death isn’t all that willing to wait as it continues to steal lives every single day.

And for any down this narrow any length at all, the gravity of the downfall only hurts worse by the hour. Walking alongside empty faces void of meaning, incapable of hope almost. Walking ourselves as if hope remains an idea waiting to be found down here inside something we can have, hold, hoist upon our hearts as if they’re still empty thrones, vessels void of purpose and worth. Walking through torrents of torment and trial and doing it all while crying a testimony that’s finding us new things to testify against our old selves, our old ways.

Not wanting any to be where we’ve been nor to stay where we are. Not ourselves nor any others.

No, in Christ, knowing how valuable everlasting life is to Him, it only becomes more impossible to not ache for that opportunity to see what He’s always known was worth dying for.

But you see, that’s just it. It’s the culmination of His mission that we’re about to embark upon celebrating once again. We’re just hours away from Palm Sunday, the celebration of Christ’s triumphant arrival at the end of His life. Death is a massive aspect of what we celebrate at Easter. And that is indeed a very peculiar thing to celebrate. Isn’t it? Yes, most certainly. None of us know to celebrate death as to us death signifies only the ceasing of life.

It’s our end, our eruption into an unknown, our arrival at our exit from all we’ve known, all we’ve been, the moment in which we cannot try to be or believe anything anymore. It’s our vanishing point.

And we’re terrified of it.

But the question our faith demands is why. Why are we still so afraid of death? Why do we still refuse to talk about it? Why do we still seek so sternly to run from it? Why do we insist to carry on as if death is the end? Is such not possible only if we doubt in the accomplishment of Christ? Can we not only still fear death if we’re at least fairly certain that we’re either still going to die or that we’re living a life worthy of such a loss? Or is it even deeper than us?

Do we simply not truly believe in Christ?

Because the simple fact is that if we really did, if we do believe in Christ and His resurrection and His invitation to come and taste and see and step ourselves into that tomb, well then what’s there to fear? If we hold to this hope that He came to lay down His life to atone for our sins and to be raised again so as to overcome the death that is our sin, then of what are we afraid, from what are we running?

If not life itself?

You see, that’s the gravity of what this Gospel, the Gospel is meant to accomplish in us. It’s an utterly changing of everything we’ve ever known into a way of life we’ve never imagined before. Death becomes life. Burial becomes birth. Loss of life accomplishes finally finding life. He takes everything we’ve been, everything we’ve known, everything we’ve assumed to have figured out and flips it so violently that nothing we’ve known should be considered anymore.

In Him all things are new, thus the need, not the request, not the suggestion, not the hint of perhaps considering, no, the need of leaving the old.

That’s what we tackled in yesterday’s post. This most severe surrender into which we’re called to share. The laying down of a life, letting go of this way in which we’ve lived and sought with all our souls to keep living. This demand of death seems to us who assume ourselves alive a most troubling request as it seems to us the antithesis of what we’re supposed to do, to be, to believe. Because again, we assume that death is the end of life.

And so we cling to the corresponding assumption that life cannot be found in death. And so we find ourselves avoiding death instinctively, not realizing that we’re actually only avoiding life.

Because it’s just the most impossible part of all this for us to understand. It makes no sense to this semblance of understanding we think we have. We’re a people who are hesitant at best, utterly resistant at most, of letting go of anything. We’re hoarders. We hold onto everything that we might be able to convince ourselves we might need at some point. But of what are we more convinced we need than life? And so what are we so clearly holding onto more tightly than anything?

Life.

But here’s where our misunderstandings get in our way and trip us up. The life we’re holding onto is the way in which we’ve lived it. We’re clinging to chaos. We’re stuck to selfishness. We’re tied to turmoil and tragedy. Our time as we’ve spent it has been laden with lunacy and laziness. Life as we’ve known it has been starved of life as we’ve instead lived lost within the death that is the wage of sin. And yet because it’s the only life we’ve known, it’s thus the only life we know we’ll have.

And thus belief becomes the bridge we either boldly cross or refuse to consider.

That’s the gravity of His grace and that grave and the both accomplishing for us the Gospel that demands of us a share in His death if we’re to share in His life.

I shared yesterday a few of the more obvious struggles He’s so kindly helped me see and patiently began to help me work on in my life. The weakness I welcome as if a warmth I can’t live without. The distractions I invite to steal away my attention from the things I know matter more than the material and missives of a misplaced mankind. The fears I feel in terms of failure and feeling foolish. I know well these ways in which I’ve wasted my life thus far.

But still, granted, all that is my perspective, my walk, my mindset. And so perhaps the question we considered yesterday remains rather unresolved for you in your perspective, your walk, your mindset. Why the necessity of death in this faith? Why the weight of our surrender always hanging over our heads? Why this sharing in the hard and heavy? Why can’t we just enjoy the peace and happiness of what He’s done for us?

Yes, why should anyone embrace the suffering that comes inside this faith that demands we daily die to our inherent selfishness and the sins which such misplaced devotion so clearly desires, demands? Isn’t it painful sometimes? Doesn’t it hurt? Isn’t it hard to feel the stings of sorrow and sadness, the realness of the weight of repentance, the sheer humiliation which seems the basis of humility? Isn’t it hard?

Absolutely. But, and please do consider this question carefully that I’m about to ask:

What’s harder, striving for something new, something better even if you fail along the way and it hurts every single step, or settling instead for the safety of something already seen, already known?

What’s more painful, the sting of shame which comes so often inside this ongoing sanctification began by salvation or the weight of never knowing the fullness of our potential as such remains entirely hidden behind barricades such as comfort and complacency? What’s more grueling, setting our sights on a hope we know we can’t reach on our own or never knowing hope because we insist upon the glory of our doing this all alone? What’s more foolish, more terrifying, living in fear of the death that He proved is only the beginning of life or denying that such is possible and thus never knowing life at all?

Personally, and again, I understand that I’m not you, but perhaps what He’s teaching me and helping me see might help anyway, I’d rather die trying to be something more than I’ve been than to reach comfortably the end of my life filled with an inescapable wonder as to who I could have been, what I could have done, who I could have helped. I can’t tolerate that thought. Not anymore, not after knowing only that lack of urgency, that lack of willingness, that utter void of interest to live.

No, did that for decades and so I’m done being done.

Because He has finally convinced me to pick up my mat and walk home. Why? Why risk the embarrassment of falling, of failing again? Why does He call us to do what He so clearly knows we’re not up to, able to? Well, that’s the fun part as that’s what we get to learn little by little, step by step, trial by trial as such hardships harden us into who He always knew we could be, who He always knew we should be. That’s why He died for. Wasn’t to make us feel good or safe or secure or loved or known or welcome to remain as we’ve always been.

No, He gave His life because He knew, still knows that we can be so much more than we’ve been so far. Because He’s the One who died the death that what we’ve been so far so fully deserved. And so if He knew that there was a better way of life that I could live, a peace I’d never known, a purpose I’d never found, and a worth that was worth Him dying to help me see, then it must be worth my death to find it too. It must be worth me losing everything, every hope, every dream, every plan, every priority and preference.

If He was willing to enter that tomb to give me the chance at everlasting life, well then I’d have to be a fool to not follow Him and see what He’s always seen.

And the cool part is that through Him and that victory He accomplished over the debt we owed, we don’t even have to fear that death part as He proved that death isn’t our end. No, our death, the death of the old us, no, that’s where we finally begin.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold