Death part 3: "Choose Your Death"

In my previous two blogs I have explored the concepts of the fear of death and death as a blessing. This last installment discusses the opportunity each of us possesses to make a choice about our spiritual death.

Obviously, each of us will physically die. We have no choice about that. But how we die is somewhat up to us. Some choose to live a lifestyle of risky behavior that puts them at risk of an early death (e.g., mountain climbing, joining a gang, driving drunk, hang gliding, signing up for active military service, etc.). In addition, people have committed suicide in a wide variety of ways (I’m sure a macabre list exists somewhere on the Internet).

Spiritually speaking, each of us also has a choice regarding how we die. If we die unreconciled to God, then the Bible explains that each of us will be destroyed as God removes all sin and death from the universe in the lake of fire (Rev 20:11-15). This is the outcome I chose when I first sinned, and it is exactly what I deserve (and you do too), for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). I would be outraged if Microsoft did not pay me my wages for I worked hard for them! Similarly, we’ve all earned death by our deeds against God, our friends, and our family.

Fortunately, there is another option and God does offer us a second chance to choose how and when we die spiritually. Jesus came to provide the option of spiritual death now, followed by eternal life (both spiritually and physically). His admonition on the prudence of giving up your life pervades the Gospels: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man gain in exchange for his soul?” (Matt 16:24-26, Mark 8:34-37, Luke 9:23-25, John 12:24-25).

I pondered these scriptures a lot during my college years. It was self-evident to me (and those around me) that I was living for myself. I spared no effort to get the best possible grades, yet my life lacked real meaning and “I” was literally unhealthy for myself. My self ambition sabotaged my desires for a great social life. I experienced a great deal of angst in my attempted relationships with women simply because my life was so self-focused. I kept losing my life despite all my efforts to save it. I knew I needed to give it up, but I could not figure out how to do it (a guy in a hole can’t rescue himself!) and there were no disciples around me to offer real help.

Thankfully, I met true Christians ten years ago. Knowing that I had not yet given up my life for God, they took the time to teach me how to be a disciple. Suddenly all the scriptures started to make sense to me! In Luke 14:31-33, Jesus explains that it will cost you everything to become his disciple. “Or suppose a king is about to go to war aginst another king. Will he not first sit down and consider wehther he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

God has 20,000 men and each of us has only 10,000 men. None of us can hope to win against God. The only terms of peace are unconditional surrender. As I counted the cost and wrestled with my decision to become a disciple, it literally felt like I was dying. It stands alone as the biggest decision I have ever made. I gave up various sins, treasured beliefs, philosophies, & practices, changed the nature of my relationships, and left the security of my social system behind. I lost my life, but gained so much more in the promise of Mark 10:29-30, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Nicodemus was a well-studied Jewish teacher in Jesus’ day who struggled to understand how a man could possibly die and live a new life. John 3:4-6 records, “’How can a man be born when he is old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.’”

Romans 6:1-14 is the key scripture for understanding this spiritual death and rebirth. Verse 7 explains the need to die: “anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” God must annihilate our sin one way or another. If we wait for him to do it at the second death of Rev. 20, then our physical bodies will die along with the sin. At the end of the Lord of the Rings, Gollum is so taken by the ring that he bites off Frodo’s finger, ring and all, but in so doing falls into the lava pit at Mount Doom, finally destroying the ring. The question we all must ask is, "Is my sin really worth it?"

The alternative is to connect ourselves with Christ’s death and let him take our sin to the grave. It’s as if I was walking around with a bunch of static electricity (sin) my whole life and not being able to find an electrical ground to get rid of it. I just kept shocking people. Baptism was the “grounding moment” where (according to Romans 6:1-6) I participated in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Miraculously, my sins were washed away without me having to physically dying myself! It’s not that I’m perfect now and I know I still zap people, but I’m not enslaved by my sin anymore.

“All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death…. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:2-6).

Of course, this only works if we have faith while we’re being baptized (Col. 2:12) and if we’ve first repented of our sins (Acts 2:38). Before I had really sinned, my minister Grandpa gave me a very emotional bath and rite of passage in front of hundreds of people at age 11, but it wasn’t a Biblical baptism. If you’ve had a different baptismal experience than Romans 6, I beg you to not give into the temptation to rewrite your life history to make it Biblical. Instead, take the time to inquire, reexamine your faith, and read what the Bible has to say.

Once we have died and been reborn, God gives us a fresh start to live a new life! “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). But what sort of life ought we to live? Here are some scriptures that I love because they help me stay on track.

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again (2 Cor 5:14-15).

Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness (Rom 6:12).

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20).

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1-3).

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).

I have yet to die physically, but praise God that I have died spiritually and have the chance to start a new spiritual life. Of course, I must follow Jesus’ teaching and put myself to death daily so that Christ can live through me. Here are some things where I am tempted to take back over in my life: work, schedule/time, finances, leadership, and home improvement. None of them are bad in and of themselves. In fact, they are gifts from God as long as my old self stays in the grave with Jesus!

I urge you to consider your choice about when you will die spiritually. Will you put it off until you die physically in the second death of Revelation 20? Or will you choose to accept the spiritual death of your self that God offers in this life through baptism into Christ? (Acts 2:38, 22:16) The choice is entirely yours. It is the biggest choice you will ever make and therefore it deserves your greatest consideration.

If you have already died and been reborn with Christ, I urge you not to let your self resurrect itself. Keep crucifying it daily. The paradox is absolutely true: by losing your life, you really will save it for eternity!