Articles
To Truly Live
To Truly Live
The bumper sticker read, “He Died for Me, So I Will Live for Him.” I began to wonder how people understand this idea of being alive for and in Christ. It is a Biblical truth, after all. Ephesians 2:4-5 states rather directly, “God…made us alive together with Christ Jesus.” What does it mean, though, to be alive in Christ?
For starters, “alive with Christ” is a spiritual reality. Having our soul revived to life is something you cannot perceive with your senses. You do not feel God’s grace placed upon you. You will never see the stain, guilt, and condemnation from our sins wash away in the waters of baptism. Yet we know the event has happened because by faith we trust that God has done what He promised He would do when we obeyed. The ensuing result is that we will be raised with Him on the last day to exist in heaven for all eternity. Infinite life will be ours because we have been made alive with Jesus.
However, it is equally important that we realize being “alive with Christ” is not solely a spiritual event but involves a physical dimension as well. Despite what many people want to believe, our actions (and inactions) play a large part in defining who we are. In Ephesians 2:3, Paul describes the actions which characterized and defined us as spiritually dead, saying, “…we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.” Being “alive” demands that the physical actions demonstrate just the opposite of being “dead.” Romans 6:13 instructs, “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” The apostle adds in Romans 12:1, “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
When God gave life to our souls through the blood of Jesus, that spiritual event was the gateway to a new life in both intangible and tangible ways. By faith we trust that sin’s effects are removed, resulting in a pardon from eternal condemnation. Through that same faith, though, we have been given a chance to submit ourselves to the pattern of living that God demands of those who have been brought back to life. We can submit, physically, to the actions that define us as being HIS child. Put the two together and we will begin to understand what it means to truly live.
