A young lady studying to become an ELCA pastor once told me her personal calling was to fill people with a sense of resurrection living. “For too long,” she claimed, “we have lived under the shadow of the cross. We need to talk about LIFE, not death; LOVE, not sin; LIBERATION, not repentance. We need to start being people of the RESURRECTION!”
Lest it go without saying, dead to her was the life-giving Word. Her personal calling has been the devil’s broken-record message since he convinced the first woman to move on from talking about death: “You will not surely die!” (Genesis 3:4)
Words have meaning. Without death, the word “resurrection” is nonsense. Without the burial of Jesus’ lifeless corpse, the empty tomb would be empty of any worth. So too, you can have no life in you without first being put to death: “He that is dead is freed from sin.” (Romans 6:7 KJV)
This is a freedom neither death by natural causes nor suicide could achieve. No act of the flesh can rescue from eternal death. God, Who alone has the authority to take life, needed to take matters into His own hands. Quite literally, nails through the hands of His only-begotten Son. Because Jesus rose from the grave to which your sins brought Him, you may now boldly sing that His death has set you free: “Death is swallowed up in victory!” (I Corinthians 15:54)
Resurrection living is no guilt-driven denial of sin. The Gospel personally calls you out of those old ways to walk according to God’s inerrant standard of right and wrong. To that end, the Apostle points you first to your spiritual birth: “We are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4 KJV)
Even without Satan’s prompting, the sinner would gladly avoid any talk of death. Thus, Luther’s Small Catechism teaches that “newness of life” begins with a fearless look at yourself in the mirror of the Ten Commandments: “that the Old Adam in us is to be drowned by daily contrition and repentance, and that again a new man should daily come forth and arise.”
Counterintuitive as it might be, true resurrection living requires calling out spiritual death for what it is! Our Easter hymns do a splendid job defying Satan and decrying the grave out loud, but the first person of the unholy trinity (sin, death, and the devil) deserves no less attention:
Sin that once did blind me,Get thee far behind me,Come not forth again! (TLH 347:5)
Such talk of sin does not drag you down. Dead to your God in Christ, let your old man be dead to you too! By this defiant battle cry, a new man stands up out of the waters of baptismal grace with a genuine desire to follow through on faith: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. . . . If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:11,13)
Feed that inner man breakfast by reciting the Apostles’ Creed, by praying the Lord’s Prayer in confidence that you do indeed receive what you ask, and by keeping a steady diet of rich Lutheran meat.
That ELCA pastor had either long forgotten, or never learned in the first place, the sweet, life-giving Gospel of “Christ and Him crucified.” People of the resurrection talk openly and regularly about such things as repentance, sin, and death, without fear. Breathe freely this day under the all-protective shadow of the cross, and go about your work with joy!
God, Who alone has the authority to take life, needed to take matters into His own hands. Quite literally, nails through the hands of His only-begotten Son.
is pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Hecla and Aberdeen, South Dakota, and Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bowdle, South Dakota.