Dead, Dying, and Dying: The Strange Hope of the Christian Life BY PIERCE HIBBS • AUGUST 18, 2014 • When did you die? Michael Allen Rogers wrote recently that he died in 1957, when he was just eight years old.[1] Personally, I’ve had several near-death experiences, but I didn’t really die until 2006, partway through my undergraduate studies. The experience was simply unparalleled. All I can say of it now is that the breaths I have taken since then have been of clean air, filtered by the very speech of God—and I am done with death. With Rogers, I refer here to Paul’s words in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” This is not merely a metaphor, and when we consider it as such we sap the vigor of God’s Word.[2] We must ceaselessly fight the tendency to live as if God’s promises in Scripture were second-rate abetments to our first-rate worldly problems. If our crucifixion with Christ were metaphorical, that would mean that we are primarily physical and only secondarily spiritual. Scripture would have it the other way around. True, we are body-spirit image bearers, and Scripture prevents us from dichotomizing the two. However, there does seem to be a hierarchical relationship in place. Scripture puts a great amount of weight on the heart, the inner workings of the conscience, and our allegiance of faith—all internal, spiritual facets of our being (e.g., Deut 6:4 tells us to love the Lord with our heart and soul; and Jesus adds the word mind in Matt 22:37). The body tests and confirms the demeanor of the soul, divesting it of pretension; our physical responses betray our spiritual condition and lay bare our heart’s treasure (Luke 6:45). Though it is our physical bodies that will be resurrected, they will be so only because of the faith-wrought union we have with Christ—a spiritual union (indicated by the sense of “abide” in John 15:4, as well as by Gal 2:20; 3:28; Col 1:27; Rom 8:10; 2 Cor 13:5; and Eph 3:17).
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 18:37:22 +0000
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