Life for the dead isn’t just physical life for dead people. To be sure that is a reality in the kingdom of God. The lessons from today both talk about dead people coming back to life! In our sermon our focus was the new life that God gives us. Paul talks about the new life that we enjoy as a child of God. This is a radical change from when we were spiritual orphans.
During a heated argument, an Arab struck and killed another man. Knowing his certain fate when he was found out, he fled across the desert until he came to a big tent of a tribal sheik. He confessed his guilt and asked for protection. The old sheik swore an oath by Allah that he would protect him and brought him into his tent. The next day, his pursuers came looking for the fugitive, but the sheik wouldn’t let them take him. “But, sir, don’t you know who he killed?” “I have no idea.” “He’s killed your only son!” The sheik was shocked and confused, but after some time he looked at the man he swore to protect and said, “You have killed my son. But I will make you my son. You will inherit all that I possess.”
In a similar way, we, by our sins, killed Jesus Christ. But God, knowing full well what we’d done to his one and only Son, adopted us and said, “I will make you my sons. You will inherit all that I possess.” That Son whom you and I killed died for us. He died so that we could be his brothers and sisters.
That story sounds borderline unbelievable and ridiculous because we wouldn’t do that. No one that we know would act that way. The only way to shake us from our unbelief is by the power of God the Holy Spirit through the word. Verse 16 says it this way: The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Go look at the stack of papers sitting on your lap – the Bible. Those words cannot change.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Romans 8 – Life for the Dead.
Book(s): Romans
Series: Our Greatest Needs
Tag(s): Lent
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg