I intend to write a book about death. I will call it dying to live I think, unless I can't for copyright reasons. The thing is that the Christian life (which is another way of saying the True life) is full of death. Most people avoid death. But the Christian life is inseperable from it. Every soul that has found the Path (the Way) has found that it leads through death. Avoiding death is avoiding life. If you are miserable, it is because you are refusing to go ahead and die. Dead people are not miserable. But that's only half the story. When a person dies, their life is over. When a person dies for Jesus, God raises him from the dead three days later. How's that for a mind blower? It's true. That's what the bible means when it says that Christ was the firstborn or the firstfruits.
Firstborn or firstfruits is an incredibly rich concept in the bible. It's God's way of saying "Because you offered me your first and best, I will get involved with the rest of the harvest, and will ensure that it follows exactly like the first." We offered Jesus up to God as a firstfruits or firstborn offering, waved before God. We crucified Him. The word the bible uses for this idea is devoted or dedicated or accursed. He became our our devoted thing, our offering. All these words are related, and they all have to do with Christ, the firstborn, becoming a curse for us, and by doing that, redeeming every one of us who follow so that God accepts us just like the firstborn. Too much to talk about on this for now.
When the bible talks about "receiving" Christ, it's not some religious code word for walking down to the front of a church and repeating some preselected words after someone, or for being baptized. What it means is that I literally receive the life of Christ. The story of Christ is overlaid onto my life. When I say to God, "I accept Jesus" I am saying, "I accept the person of Jesus Christ—His Life, His version of the Story, the reality that is written into His life alone." If you do that, then God is faithful to get involved in your life and make sure it follows exactly like Jesus' life. You get to participate in the death and resurrection of the Christ-Life. Over and over. One of the bible writers said of this process, "I die daily." What an awesome deal! That means that all the things that really stink in my life are going to die. I'm not stuck with them. But more than that—they come back to life in a new and better way.
The reason they come back to life better than how they died is because Jesus did. After he came back from the dead he was teleporting around and flying and all kinds of cool stuff. And his appearance was different. Even his closest friends didn't recognize him at first.
Jesus talked about the amazing change this way:
For sure, I tell you, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it will only be a seed. If it dies, it will give much grain. Anyone who loves his life will lose it. Anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it forever. If anyone wants to serve Me, he must follow Me. So where I am, the one who wants to serve Me will be there also. If anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him.
The remarkable thing is that if we love our life like it is, we will be miserable and stay just a regular seed. But if we die, we are changed—we grow roots and stalks and heads and make many seeds which I'm told can reproduce at an alarming rate if left to nature. When he says to hate your life in this world, he's not talking about how we complain, "I hate my life." What he means is to hate it, to turn your back on it, to watch it die, and trust God to raise something new in three days (ah, three days is a magical phrase in the bible, too...maybe later). Remember, Christ is the firstfruits, and we follow, like He said. It's cool. We get to be these creatures that die—maybe many times in the course of a year, maybe even every day—and come back to life new.
I wonder if it's confusing to God. First, a person receives Christ, accepts the Story. And then when he comes to the dying part, he clutches and claws with everything in him to save his own life. What's that about? Hey, you signed up for the course...now enjoy the membership benefits! It's so easy if you let it go the way it's supposed to go.
Is this making any sense? It might help to think of a child falling asleep. Ask any parent of an infant or toddler and they'll tell you what I mean. He fights it. He doesn't want to sleep. He wants his milk, he wants his juice, he wants his bottle, he wants his pacifier. And then he starts getting sleepy. He starts dozing off. But then he catches himself and wakes up. He wants his blankie, he wants his special pillow, he wants his special music. And then he starts to doze off again. But then someone creeping into the room missteps and makes a sound. He's awake again. He wants his book, he wants his mommy, he wants his daddy. And then sleep comes for him again. This time he drifts, deeper and deeper and deeper, until finally he falls. His breathing gets long and slow, his body goes limp, and he lets go. In the bible, the phrase fell asleep is another way to say died.
George MacDonald explained how we enjoy the death of Christ like this:
Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. He died that we might live—but live as He lives, by dying as He died who died to Himself.
Jesus never intended to save us from suffering or to prevent us from dying. I think someone's out there peddling the wrong version of the Story. What he offers is precisely death. He wants us to die and come back to life, just like Him. So many times a Christian suffers needlessly. It is because he still loves his life. He hasn't hated it. He hasn't died to himself, which is another way of saying: he hasn't let go of his self-made version of his story. And because the true life of Jesus only goes one Way (life-death-resurrection), that means they have not found the Way yet.
Jesus said this:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the Way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the Way that leads to life, and only a few find it.
It's really not surprising that only a few find the Way. After all, no one wants to end up dead. After Jesus predicted his own death, he told his followers, "You know the Way to the place where I am going." But they hadn't accepted that Life Way ran through Death Valley. Thomas said, "Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Jesus answered, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well." In other words, Guys, you can't accept the truth of this because you are still trying to save your own life, trying to find your own way. All you need to do is to know me, which is another way of saying, all you really need to do is receive me, to come to me and accept my Life as your life, my Truth as your truth, my Way as your way. And that means dying to live.
There is a Way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
It's a narrow Way. It's a good Way. If you really find the Way, death is not in the end, but in the middle.
The single best sermon I have ever heard—on any topic—is called Sexy on the inside by Rob Bell. It's a much grander image of sexuality than anyone in our culture is talking about. But would you expect less from Jesus? What does it mean to be single and sexual? How is it that there are highly sexually charged people who are perfectly celibate? How is it possible to be sleeping with a spouse and in some ways sleeping alone? What was really lost in the fall, and what is God's plan for restoring it back to us? Is our culture oversexed?
