The Living God part 2
A living God is a loving God. Because to live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other. They are the same thing. And God is not the God of the dead. But He IS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Which means even though those great men of God physically died... they must be still alive! Which means we are probably thinking about life and death a little bit too literally. Let me say it like this: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). In my opinion, we've all already had two deaths. We all died once when Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then we all died again on the cross when Jesus died. And here's the amazing part: Nevertheless I live! Because Christ lives in me! Death wasn't the end of the story for Jesus. Because God IS life. Three days was the best death could do. A long weekend. Jesus took death's best shot and stood victorious. The thing humanity has always been most afraid of... was proved powerless. 1 Corinthians 15:26 says, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." But look at it in the Young's Literal Translation, "the last enemy is done away--death." Did you catch that? When Jesus won the war to end all wars on the cross He defeated EVERY enemy. Even the one between our ears. "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by your wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled" (Colossians 1:21). We thought WE were God's enemies. And so when He came down in the very midst of us... we killed Him. But what we meant for evil, He meant for good. He was reconciling us to Himself. He gave Himself for us when we were yet sinners. When we didn't believe that God loved us, or even COULD love us, because of our sordid history of wicked works... He gave Himself for us. And He gave Himself to us. He gave His LIFE to us. He cleansed us (and saved us) from our sins and transformed us from sinners to saints. He didn't come to make "evil" people "good." Good and evil were on the same tree. He came to make dead people alive. We died in Adam. And only through the cross--the second death--could we receive a new birth. Only through the second death could we receive abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! We were crucified with Christ. Life died so that death might die. The last enemy IS done away. It IS finished. And now we can walk in newness of LIFE. Now we can experience the life that God always wanted us to have. We can stop trying to scrap by by the skin of our teeth. We can stop "living" with the attitude of "life sucks then you die." And we can start to enjoy the gift we've been given. We can start to receive and release the love of God. The gift of eternal life that is knowing the living God and the One whom He sent. Knowing God as Father, and knowing yourself as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. The living God is concerned primarily with LIFE. For ALL of humanity. ALL of His creation. He died to give life to us. True life. A life of living and loving. What else could make abundant life abundant? It's a life filled to overflowing with love. We have been filled with the Holy Spirit--our love receptor--and now we can know and believe the love of Christ. Know, and believe, and SHARE the love of Christ!