Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
This verse is like water in the desert. You talk about the very epitome of the good news of the Gospel. This is it. From death to life.
Don't Miss the Essence of the Gospel
I want to stop there for a second, because sometimes if we're not careful, we can miss the very essence of the Gospel when we don't stop to reflect on verses like this. Here's what I mean. I think if we go through our lives and we think about who Jesus is and what it means to know Him, sometimes we can think about Jesus and His presence in our lives as an aid to a better life. That Jesus made things better than they were before—He made life that wasn't as good a better life with Him. We would be sorely mistaken because Jesus didn't just come to make bad people good. He didn't just come to make not-so-great life a better life. Jesus came to make dead people live. Let that resonate for a minute.
From death to life.
We Were Dead in Our Sins
When I say it this way, it probably does something for us that is really important. It jogs our memory. It shakes the gumball machine a little bit, just to kind of get it unstuck, because we now realize—like it says in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1—we were dead in our sins and trespasses. In other words, it wasn't just that we weren't flourishing. It wasn't just that we were stuck apart from Christ. We were dead.
But Christ came to make dead things live. That's the good news of the Gospel. It's never been any different.
Celebrate What You Should Be Celebrating
Why this is important, and why I think it's important for us to have verses like this to come back to, is if we're not careful, we won't really celebrate the things that we should be celebrating when it comes to knowing Jesus. If we don't focus on the very essence of His why in coming to earth, then we will miss the very heart of the message we're supposed to carry forward as followers of Jesus.
It says in Philippians chapter 2 that Jesus didn't count equality with God as a thing to hold on to, but He emptied Himself out, took on the form of a human servant, suffered to the point of death, even death on a cross. He made Himself low for the sake of us humans who didn't deserve the grace and the forgiveness that came as a result of His work on the cross.
Because of Christ's Death, We Could Now Live
Because of Christ's death, we could now live. That is good news. I know for some you might be hearing that and think, that's Christianity 101. That's so basic. How many people know that sometimes when something becomes familiar, sometimes it falls flat?
I don't know where you're at today. Whether you're desperate with hope that maybe there's something to this Jesus thing, or maybe you grew up in church and you know every single Bible verse by heart—no matter who you are, let it hit you fresh today. We have been rescued from death to life because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
