Immortal Now
A reading for Friday, January 15, 2016: 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:7.
True Christian freedom comes when we realize that we have already been made immortal. We have already been accepted by God through Jesus Christ. We have already put on the clothes of the Kingdom of God. So... "Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day." We will not die.
Is that the way we live? Or do we accept the cultural and technological norms that tell us death is a part of life? That somehow God is in charge of death, and calls us through death to eternal life? That death is something to be afraid of?
Paul's encouragement is different. Paul sees life as a journey, and while we are away from home on our journey we live in our body as a tent (much like John wrote that Jesus moved into the neighborhood, pitching his tent among us in John 1). Even as that tent gets older and more worn out, that tent doesn't change the reality that we are on the journey home. We won't be asked to turn in the tent as passage home. We will simply move into the home that is already waiting for us, on that day.
By the way, that doesn't mean our life now makes no difference. Quite the contrary. This is the journey of meaning and purpose, of hope and service. We are not waiting to die, in order to live. We are living now because we do not fear death.
Truth is death is nothing for us now. We are free men and women... "for we walk by faith, not by sight."
True Christian freedom comes when we realize that we have already been made immortal. We have already been accepted by God through Jesus Christ. We have already put on the clothes of the Kingdom of God. So... "Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day." We will not die.
Is that the way we live? Or do we accept the cultural and technological norms that tell us death is a part of life? That somehow God is in charge of death, and calls us through death to eternal life? That death is something to be afraid of?
Paul's encouragement is different. Paul sees life as a journey, and while we are away from home on our journey we live in our body as a tent (much like John wrote that Jesus moved into the neighborhood, pitching his tent among us in John 1). Even as that tent gets older and more worn out, that tent doesn't change the reality that we are on the journey home. We won't be asked to turn in the tent as passage home. We will simply move into the home that is already waiting for us, on that day.
By the way, that doesn't mean our life now makes no difference. Quite the contrary. This is the journey of meaning and purpose, of hope and service. We are not waiting to die, in order to live. We are living now because we do not fear death.
Truth is death is nothing for us now. We are free men and women... "for we walk by faith, not by sight."
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