Are You Dead Yet?

Luther: 'He who does not perish really perishes.' (LW 51:25)

Kierkegaard: 'I should have perished, had I not perished.' (Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, 245)

C. S. Lewis: 'Die before you die. There is no chance after.' (Till We Have Faces, 279)

The Lord Jesus: 'Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies . . .' (John 12:24f)

The problem we face is that we want to live so badly,  dying is as far away from our thinking as it can be.We know everybody dies, everybody! It can't be avoided no matter how hard you try. The key is to die before you die, that's what Luther, Kierkegaard, Lewis and Jesus were saying.  When a person believes in the death, burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and trusts him alone to be saved from sin and death and eternal damnation, he is united with Christ in his death and his resurrection. The Apostle Paul said: "We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."   Romans 6:9-11

Are you dead yet?