// Friday, February 15, 2008 // 10:19 AM // Starbucks //
I’m still listening to that Ben Folds Song. I’ve been listening to it non-stop for four days now. It still doesn’t get old, and when I stop and focus hard on the lyrics, the emotion is still there. Hasn’t been dulled yet. It’s amazing that music can do that to you. To this day, every time I hear the Rhodes roll the opening chord of “Heart of Worship,” I remember being in my 85 Dodge Caravan, driving home from high school, listening to that song on the radio for the first time. I get a bit teary, I must admit.
Ok, so today the thought that’s bugging me big time is the whole idea of being “dead to sin.” It’s something we throw around a lot in our church-world. I’ve said many times, to myself and to a crowd, that because of Christ’s sacrifice for us, we don’t have to live under the weight of sin any more. (Which, by the way, reading Romans 5:10 makes me think is a bit incorrect, it’s his resurrection that gives us the power to defeat sin in this life. If he just died, we wouldn’t be “saved through his life.”) But what does it all really mean?
Romans is a confusing book, it seems like every time I read it I feel like Paul just says the same things over and over ad nauseum. But Romans 6:11 stuck out to me today.
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
When I was writing it in my journal, I slipped up and wrote this…
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ Jesus.”
I just left out the words “to God,” nothing major. But it got me thinking, the whole concept of being alive “to” something doesn’t quite make sense to me. And for that matter, being dead “to” something doesn’t make sense either. In this world, you’re either alive or dead. There’s a very defined line, that once you cross over it, you’ve passed from the “alive” category into the “dead” one. You can’t be “alive” to water and “dead” to oxygen. One bit of death’s finality means death in the whole body.
And now that I’m thinking about it, that’s not entirely true. Every day, even now, things in me are dying. Things in me are being born. My entire body is turning over and being recreated. I’m literally being held together by strings, and those strings are even dying and being reborn.
But that’s not what sin is, according to Paul. Sin isn’t something that dies and has the potential to be reborn. When it dies, it’s gone. And to bring it back means we “offer” ourselves back into it (see verse 13). It doesn’t just happen to us. So maybe sin is a bit like a nerve cell. Nerve cells, at some point, stop re-growing. You have all you’re going to have, and you can’t get them back when they’re gone. So when you’re dead to sin, it’s like being brain-dead. Your body keeps functioning to some level, but the processes that used to be controlled by certain nerve cells are no longer able to work.
Ok, that’s a very imperfect analogy. I need to keep thinking about it. But how in the world do you become alive “to God” in Christ Jesus? There’s no coincidence that I left it out when I wrote it down. It doesn’t even register to me. What does it mean to be alive “to something?” I’ve always just thought life is itself a complete thought in itself. It either exists or doesn’t exist, it doesn’t need an object to be alive “to.” How do you become alive to something new?
I’ve written and deleted this paragraph 3 times, so what I’m about to say is in no way a good conclusion. But maybe it starts with viewing God as a relationship. I have experienced what it’s alike to meet someone (my wife), and feel like I’ve somehow found a new life. Somehow, although nothing internally has changed, I’ve “come alive,” and in a large extent I’ve come alive to love. So how do I count myself “alive to” my wife? By spending time with her, enjoying her presence, learning about her, working hard to please her. That’s how I come “alive to” her.
And maybe that’s what coming alive “to God” is like. So today, how can I count myself dead “to sin” but alive “to God”? The answer is in the same verse, tagged at the end. “In Christ Jesus.” It’s not an insignificant phrase. Jesus is fully alive “to God,” he made that abundantly clear when he was on earth. He didn’t move a muscle without watching the Father and imitating what the Father was doing. His whole life was derived from the Father, he had no life apart from Him. And because of the life Jesus has given me (through his resurrection), I can do the same thing.
Here’s to living my life “to God” today. I’ll let you know how that works out.
