Life and Death

The last few weeks have been filled with waves of death. A school shooting. An assassination. Another school shooting. A friend’s mother. Another friend’s husband. No matter how hard I try to distance myself, death is never far away.

The Bible talks a lot about life and death. The essence of salvation is that sin marks us for eternal death, but Christ died to bring us new life—eternal life that starts the moment we believe.

Yet our new life still involves death. Because, although it sounds like a contradiction, in our new life, we are called to die to self.

I’m reminded of what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3, when he talked about setting aside his confidence in his own abilities. He listed all his honors & successes, then called them garbage. He wrote that he wanted to become like Christ in His death to attain resurrection. In effect, Paul described dying to self.

But here’s the catch: Paul put to death what many would consider the best parts of his past. He left behind—or put to death—his greatest strengths, honors, and status. Yet Paul called all these things garbage.

Actually, “garbage” is a polite word. The original Hebrew word means animal excrement, something worthless & detestable. The King James translation was spot on in using the word dung.

Is that how you and I describe our strengths? Are we willing to die to our honors and successes and call them dung?

Crucified with Christ

Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24, NIV). And Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 NIV).

But what does it mean to be crucified with Christ? Is this a literal or a figurative statement? Most, if not all of us, will not actually face death by crucifixion. So does that mean this is just figurative?

Figurative language creates a picture and aims to evoke emotions. And Satan would love us to stop there. The devil would be pleased if our response to the biblical phrase, “being crucified with Christ,” stopped at being purely emotional. However, a saving relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ is not merely emotional, it’s transformational! It’s literally life-changing. What God transformed on the inside is revealed on the outside—in how we live.

The apostle Paul understood this when he told the Philippian believers to work out their salvation (Phil 2:12). Not work for our salvation, but work it out. The reality of spiritual new life is a gift from God, purchased for us by Christ. But it will be revealed in the way we live. We “work out” what the Holy Spirit has already “worked in.”

Just because dying to self is spiritual doesn’t make it any less real. The devil wants us to think of the physical as real and the spiritual as imaginative. But the application of spiritual truth will always impact the way we live: our decisions, our choices, our attitudes.

A.W. Tozer described being “crucified with Christ” this way: Picture a man on a cross:

1. he is facing in only one direction;
2. he is not going back; and
3. he has no further plans of his own.

That’s what being crucified with Christ means. We face in only one direction, we’re not going back, and the only plans we have are God’s plans for us.

Consider a powerful illustration of new birth—renewal—in the life of someone who did not think he needed it.

There once lived a man who believed with every ounce of his being that he was on a holy mission to do God’s work, passionately defending God’s Word and God’s reputation. Stamping out what he thought was a virus that would corrupt every righteous follower of the one true living God. A virus God selected him personally to eradicate. Until . . .

Until God interrupted his mission. That person was a Pharisee named Saul, who we know as the apostle Paul. He started out spiritually blind, and the Lord got his attention by causing him to be struck physically blind. But his story did not end there. Through his amazing transformation, he became one of the most brilliant apologists for Christianity the world has ever seen. So if anyone understood what it meant to die to self, it was Paul.

That’s being crucified with Christ. That’s transformation. The death that surrounds us in this life can’t touch the new life in us. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, new life is ours.