I had some students over our house to do some painting and eat some grilled cheese and listen to the new Crowder CD. We were having a blast and one of the students said a remark that got me thinking. She said, "I am not ready to die, I have so much life to experience before I go." Now this remark came from a young lady who loves God and life so much and said this remark out of that love. This is not the first time that I have heard this remark. I have heard it from many Christians, and have said these words myself. But there is something in this quote that is not quite right.
I was reading Deitrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, a book about what it means to live in true community, not just what we American's call community, and he said something that hit me as so true, "You cannot experience true life until you are ready to die." Wow. If you think about it, the Christian faith starts with death. We are to join with Christ in the crucifixion of our old man, all the attachments to this world. Our sin demands that we die.
Bonhoeffer also said, "The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death. Since this happens at the beginning of the Christian life, the cross can never be merely a tragic ending to an otherwise happy religious life. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessarily our death and our life."
I am finding this to be true. Christ calls us to bring death to areas in our life where we want to control, and then He brings new life there, but he cannot bring new life to areas that are not dead yet. As Christ said, I cannot put new wine into an old container. Following Christ means more than saying some prayer and hoping to "make the list" when you die. It is the call, come and die, bring the old wretched sinful man here and crucify (public shameful death of a sinner) him so that I can bring you new life.
Most people wonder why they do not experience God. They do not hear him, or have a desire to. Many people never take their faith off of the basic level of forgiveness to a level of new life. Why do our lives stink, our marriages stink, our jobs stink, our families stink, our faith stink, our church life stink... It is because dead things stink, they rot and decay and smell awful. Jesus wants us to bring our lives to him fully so he can bring new life to our rancid deadness that we call life. But this will never happen if we do not bring death to EVERYTHING that we control in our life. If there is ANY area of our life that is not fully surrendered over to God, it will stink of rot and decay and death, until we bring it to Jesus for new life.
But the thing is, we have to believe it. We have to believe that what Christ offers us is far better than anything that we could come up with on our own. And then we have to have courage to put to death our attachments to this world, only to find that Christ brings life more full than what we were experiencing. This is the basis of our faith. You shall have no other god's before me, the first commandment.
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