#DailyDevotion Are You Living Or Are You Dead?

February 1st

Read 2 Tim 4:1–18

2Ti 4:1-5  I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:  (2)  preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.  (3)  For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,  (4)  and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.  (5)  As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

 

Act 10:42  And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.

Rom 14:9  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

 

Do you see a theme here?  We confess in the creeds that Jesus is going to judge the living and the dead.  Did you ever wonder what that meant?  When is the judgment?  When Christ Jesus returns he will raise everyone from the dead and all people will be judged by him.  But if they are raised from the dead aren’t they alive?  Good question.

 

Those who are alive are those who have faith in Christ and trust in the Father.  Those who are dead are those who do not have faith in Christ and do not trust the Father.  In other words your unbelieving neighbor is really the living dead or you are the dead living.  When God told Adam that the day he eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he would die, he wasn’t lying.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit and they died.  That is they died spiritually.  Obviously they continued breathing, eating and other bodily functions but they were dead. They passed on death to all their offspring.  Everyone who is born into this world is born spiritually dead.  That is why Jesus tells Nicodemas that in order to be saved they must be born from above by the water and the Spirit.  In Baptism, Jesus gives us faith in him and trust and makes us alive.  He gives to us the gift of eternal life.

 

This faith is such a wonderful thing that Jesus promises us that if we believe in him we will never die.  John 11:25, 26  Sure our bodies may assume room temperature but we are not dead.  Jesus by his death and resurrection has defeated death and the one who has the power over death.  Those who believe in him never taste death.  They are alive forever.  For God is not a God of the dead but of the living.

 

So on the last day when Jesus gets to judging who will be stand before him?  The living and the dead, that is the believers and the unbelievers.  The unbelievers will be judged as they wish to be judged according to their works.  They will be found lacking and be cast into the lake of fire to be tormented with Satan and all his angels forever. Believers enter go into heaven without their works but with the works of Christ which they did on earth and are rewarded accordingly.

 

Lord Jesus Christ give us such faith and your Spirit that we may be counted among the living when you return.  Amen.