Pillar 7: Ressurection, Life and Death

Brothers and Sisters it has been a week of tests and trials.  Thank God we made it through.  I'm so glad that God is so gracious to tell us to cast all of cares upon Him.  I'm not sure I could stand to bear the burden of the cares of this world.  Glory be to God.  Now for the final installation of Pillars of the Faith.

Time is always the enemy of man because man is finite.  Given enough time, man can accomplish anything.  However, none of us has enough time.  We all die, we all run out of time.  But if you are Christian, you really do have all of the time in the world, because Jesus is risen!  Read on.  

Adam and Eve were never meant to die.  They were created to be eternal, like the angels.  They were made in the image of God, and God is eternal.  When sin entered the world through their folly, death became a part of life.  But it was never meant to be that way.

If you read the last post, you would know that God must punish sin, and the punishment for all sin is death.  What is often misunderstood among believer and nonbelievers alike is the meaning of the word death.  Let's look at 2 scripture verses to give us a better idea of what the word of God is saying to us:

1.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

If we read the verse as a whole we can clearly see that Paul is drawing a contrast between death and eternal life.  If Paul merely means a physical death, then it would make sense to compare that with physical life.  But Paul makes it a point to use the word 'eternal' to qualify his usage of the word life.  Not just 'life' but 'eternal life.'  So we are not just reading about death like an obituary, we are reading about damnation, an eternal death.

2.  “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Matthew 25:46

Here Matthew is comparing eternal life to eternal punishment.  This is the same eternal punishment referred to by Paul who called it 'death.'  

So we can substitute the word death as it is used in several verses as damnation, or eternal separation from God.  Looking at death this way, we can begin to understand the significance of the resurrection of  Jesus Christ.  

The entire Christian faith hinges on Jesus rising from the dead.  It is based and rooted in the idea that our savior has power to save us from the eternal damnation that will befall each of us if we do not repent and believe.  If Christ did not rise from the grave then our faith would fall apart overnight.  Jesus first became sin, died, and then defeated damnation, and rose.  He became sin and shed his own blood to satisfy the atonement.  He rose again to show that the grave itself, or damnation itself, has no power over Him.  



Our Lord has defeated the ultimate enemy.  He has slain death, and in doing so demonstrated the ultimate power to forgive sins, because sin and death are inseparable.  

Brothers and sisters, because He rose, we can trust that He is everything He said.  He is a true and living God.  He can be trusted to do all He said He would do.  All we have to do is trust Him.  Taste and see that the Lord is good!

Next time we will begin a new topic: Dysfunction and the Black Family---a Biblical Perspective.