WE MUST LOOK at one other passage on this question of everything in Christ being made alive: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). “In Christ shall all be made alive” for they are alive—alive by the very fact of being in Christ. In him was life—and everyone and everything which is in Him by surrender has life inherently, by the very fact of being in Him. It is not something added as an extraneous gift; it is something inherent by the very fact of being in Him. That includes the total being—body, mind, spirit, and all the possessions and acts. Nothing in Him dies; everything outside Him dies.
Your money, if kept outside Him and His purposes, dies—dies because it has no soul. Your deeds decay outside Him for they have no eternal purpose and hence have no eternal life. Your relationships, including marriage relationships, die if they are not in Him. They have no eternal meaning and hence no eternal life. So in heaven “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matt. 22:30), but those who are married in Him live on married in Him, for the marriage has, like everything else in Him, eternal life. No new marriages are made in heaven—they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but marriages that are in Him when the participants fall asleep awake in a more glorious marriage than ever. All is permanent and secure and safe in Him. Outside of Him nothing is permanent, secure, or safe—“in Adam all die.”
Pathetic attempts to keep the person and his influence and his memory alive by big monuments, eloquent inscriptions, and expensive burials are all mere rouge on the face of a dead man. Death reigns. In Christ, Life reigns, and nothing but Life reigns. “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). There is no victory, nor sting, for there is no death—not in Him.
We thank Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, for the death of death and for the defeat of defeat. We thank Thee that in Thee everything is alive—alive with meaning, destiny, goal—alive forevermore. I am grateful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I mingle with life and I therefore tingle with life. Glory be!
