LIFE BEGINS WITH DEATH
#049a LIFE BEGINS WITH DEATH
Scripture Romans 6:17-23, NIV Orig. Date 5/20/62
Rewr. Dates 2/1/85 (6-77)
Passage: 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord.
Purpose: To call attention to the new “life” that is in Christ which begins with the believer’s “death.”
Keywords: Christ the Saviour New Birth Revival Salvation
Introduction
“Life after death” is enjoying some popularity these days. Walk in any supermarket and look for the sensationalist newspapers and you will see what I mean. Most of the time there will be some outlandish article such as one I saw recently, “Five Psychics Tell Why They Believe in Life After Death.” You will even hear some of the people on talk shows discuss it usually in some metaphysical way.
I heard Paul Harvey quote Elisabeth Kübler-Ross a while back. She is a social scientist, and probably the world’s leading authority from a scientific standpoint of the death experience. “Although I do not consider myself a particularly religious woman, I find no conflict between the Christian concept of an afterlife, and my own careful studies on death.”
Perhaps, since we have access to the sensation mongers, over-zealous superstars, and sectarian scientists, we ought to see what insights God’s Word can give us. But if you really want to know about death and its implications, the only safe place to go is to God’s Word.
I. The Death that We Best Understand is the “Wages of Sin.” Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death.” There is, of course, the death of body function. Karen Ann Quinlan is the sad textbook example of a serious problem: When is a person biologically dead? After ten years, she is still alive.
Let me remind you that God didn’t will death. Its source, as this verse attests, is in man’s will to sin. Sin and its punishment are the result of man’s free will. Ecclesiastes 7:29, “God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions.” I Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto Him.”
The text speaks of moral and spiritual death as well as physical. Who would choose life without regard to circumstances? Why are there thousands of suicides? Who would choose Ethiopia?
Someone reports an on-the-spot interview by a war correspondent with a crusty Marine sergeant. He was eating cold beans from a can with his bayonet. “If I could grant one request for you right now, what would it be?” Without hesitation, the sergeant said, “Give me tomorrow!”
There’s a joke going around about a guy who asked a genie to make him owner of a new-car franchise in a major metropolitan area and wound up a Chrysler dealer in Tokyo right before an earthquake hit.
There is more to life than just living. There is a lot of difference between driving a truck, and trucking.
Thus, we are reminded that life is to sin as death is to righteousness. The human life is marked by sin. Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned.” Believers sin repeatedly. There are sins of circumstance and diversion, and there are sins of will and purpose. Romans 6:1, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin, that grace may abound?” Romans 6:15, “What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.”
We won’t lose salvation, but can lose direction, joy, and perspective, and can find shame. The unbeliever is dead before God. Ecclesiastes 3:19, “That which befalleth the sons of man befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: As the one dieth, so dieth the other.”
II. The Corollary to This Death Is Life that Is a Free Gift from God. Clearly, there is more to death than the cessation of life. Even so, there is more to quality life than breath, blood flow, and brain function. The January 1977 National Geographic contains an article, “Planet Mars,” to show the possibility of life; Dr. Michael McElroy writes: “The elements of the chemistry set are there. We have carbon. . . , nitrogen. . . , sunshine. The only real thing remaining is whether the Great Chemist was there putting the elements together in the right way.”
The life in particular here, beyond physical, is the life of faith. The scripture declares man’s uniqueness is his relationship with God. Man is unique in creation. Genesis 2:7, “. . . and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” Evolution would discount man’s fall, therefore there is his need of Christ.
There is uniqueness in his destiny. Romans 6:6f, “. . . our old man was crucified with Him that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. Now if we die with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him."
We know of what this life consists. It is, first, purposeful living. Romans 6:4 “. . . even so, we also should walk in newness of life.” John 10:10, “I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it abundantly.”
Secondly, it is life after death. It is not sensationalism. It is not metaphysical gibberish. It is not science by default. It is God’s promise to believers. Aionios is the Greek word meaning “endlessness.” It appears that way in 67 of 70 usages. II Corinthians 4:18, “For the things which are seen are temporary; things not seen are permanent.”
III. This Life that Comes Through Death Is by Jesus Christ. Romans 6:23, “. . . The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” There are those who claim that being sincere is religion enough. Judas probably thought he was right when he betrayed Jesus. The Jews surely thought they were doing God a favor when Jesus was crucified. Millions of Germans were sincere when they stood by as 6 million Jews went to gas chambers.
There are some who suggest that this life depends on church relationship. There is Baptist truth, then there is Catholic truth. While pastoring in Oakdale, I had a 15-minute radio program. Prior was West Baptist Church; after was First Presbyterian Church; then West Baptist Church to counter any opposite points.
But the scripture points us to Jesus only as the instrument of salvation. The Bible message is still John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
It is clearly this message that Jesus taught, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me” (John 14:6). This is what every born-again believer stakes his or her life on. II Timothy 1:12, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”
Conclusion
Elton Trueblood wrote in “New Life in the Church”: “There are two insights which can illumine our understanding of the Christian case. The first is the conversion which is important is not conversion from sheer paganism to nominal Christianity; not conversion from cold to warm, but from lukewarm to hot, from a mild religion to one in which a person’s whole life is taken up and filled and compelled. The second is that the most common situation in which this kind of conversion can occur is the situation of middle age.”