As for you, you were dead in your sins. Ephesians 2:1.
Jesus raised three people from the dead during his earthly ministry.
1. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” Mark 5:22-13. Can you imagine? His little daughter. You see, I have a little daughter. She has a cough right now and it does not occur to me to fear for her life. But if I lived during Jesus time……
So Jesus went to her bedside, but she had died while he was on his way there. Jesus took her limp hand between his own rough ones and spoke life over her little body. “Talitha koum!” (little girl, I say to you, get up!)
And she did. She got up. She was just alive, then dead, then alive again – within a matter of minutes. Jesus, Life Restorer.
2. Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. Luke 7:11-12. The son of a widowed woman, whose future was now coated with unimaginable loss and inevitable poverty. She had lost her husband and her son; there was no one to care for her heart or body. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” Luke 7:13.
So Jesus, His heart turned over within him at the sight of her suffering, helped her. Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. Luke 7:14. The bearers of death stood still at his touch. Death cannot move forward in the presence of Life Everlasting. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. Luke 7:14-15.
3. Jesus’ close friend Lazarus died from a rapid sickness. Jesus arrived at the grave of his friend after he had been buried four days. He wept with the man’s sisters, Mary and Martha, then stood in veiled glory before his friend’s grave. Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. John 11:43-44.
Three dead souls, raised by the power of Living Grace. Is that not what we all fight against – old death? As for you, you were dead in your sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world …All of us also lived among them [the dead] at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Eph.2:1-3.
Death is the great equalizer. Jairus’ daughter, in her fresh innocence, was just as dead in the first moment that the breath left her tiny body as Lazarus decaying in his grave after four days of stink and loss. Just as dead as the ashes and bones in the graveyard I passed a few days ago. Just as dead as Jesus wracked on the cross after days of torture. Dead is dead. Ugly dead means the same as pretty dead.
When my soul was dead, before Jesus, Life Restorer, it was ugly dead, like Lazarus. Perhaps yours was pretty dead, like Jairus’ sweet daughter. But dead is dead – lifeless, inert, empty, gone….
We all fight old death. The shame, the injustice, the strongholds of our past life as a dead soul. We wonder if our old soul will rise again, like a zombie, to haunt and devour. Will the cocoon suck us back into darkness, take back our wings and colors, un-make our regeneration?
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10.
Do we really understand what Jesus has done for us? He came to breathe Eden life over us. We are dust and breath, earth and heaven, a complex creation. He bought us back from the grave. We leave old death to stink and fester, while we rise above it, more
than conquerers. He vanquished death. He made the grave un-true. There is no death for the saints; there is only passage. We leave this world someday for another, a better, world. We are immortal. We once were dead, now we are not. Now we live. Through Christ, the black hole of old death releases us to “life to the full.”
How to escape the fear of old death?
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” John 11:44.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, CLOTHE YOURSELVES with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Col.3:12-14.
Take off your grave clothes. They are the rags of old death. Replace them with the white linen of virtue and holiness. Wear the clothes of the Living, not the dead. Leave the shrouds of darkness in the grave and step boldly into the light of Life.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Cor.5:17.
That journal holds a record of my world-overness. The world breaks every one, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. Ernest Hemingway. This fallen place broke me in pieces and it is all recorded, raw and tear-stained, under the shelter of the caterpillar promise.
twisted and bloody, his skin pierced and ragged, His head bowed under the full weight of the madness of this spinning, savage planet. God, wrapped in flesh, was crucified. He hung ingloriously on a cross. A cross is a spiritual symbol to us, but to the Roman culture it was ugly and rough, like an electric chair or a hangman’s noose. God became a curse. A life of dust, a death in agony. Then they buried Him in the same dirt out of which He created our race of image-bearers. The end of God. All of hell howls in triumph, gibbering in dark victory.
Take heart, for (unlike this particular saint) the Cross is a finished work. All is ours, whether in heaven or on earth, for we are among those covered by the caterpillar promise, the resurrection covenant. Jesus Christ died, was buried, and burst through the gates of hell. He redeemed our tattered stories and knit them into the tapestry of grace. We do not bear the weight of unfinished sin, but the weight of heavenly glory. All was resolved at the Cross. All is grace.
In Search of Sanctuary 