follows: "What were you afraid of, you people whom I created, and whom I did
SERMON 229H 297 you've got one less left, by my reckoning. I mean, if you were going to live, for example, 30 years, once this day is done, it is withdrawn from the total of those you are going to live, and added to the weight of those ensuring you are going to die.12 And yet they say, "Years are added to a person's life." Well, what I say is that they are subtracted from it; what I look at, you see, is the total that's left, not the one that has passed. You say they are added; why?
"Because the person who had lived for 50 years is now 51." Fifty-one years in which he's living, or which he's going to live? For exam¬ ple, he was going to live 80 years; of that he has had 50, 30 remain. He's lived one more; the total he's lived is 51; for what he's going to live, 29 remain. One has been taken from this total, one added to that. But when it has been added, you don't keep the total it has been taken from. Fearfully, he lives another; 28 are left. He even lives a third; 27 are left. By continuing to live, he is deprived of the time to live; and life, by being spent, dwindles—and is no more; because there is no means at all by which the last day can be avoided.
The resurrection of Christ is the thing that defines the Christian faith; and it assures us of eternal life
3. But along came our Lord Jesus Christ, and addressed us, as it were, as follows: "What were you afraid of, you people whom I created, and whom I did not abandon? O humanity, ruin was your doing, creation mine. O humanity, why were you afraid of dying? Look, I die; look, I suffer; so there, you shouldn't fear what you were afraid of, because I am showing you what to hope for." There you are, that's exactly what he did; he gave us a demonstration of resurrection for eternity. The evangelists pinpointed it in their writings, the apostles pro¬ claimed it throughout the world. It was because of their faith precisely in the resurrection that the holy martyrs were not afraid to die—and yet they were afraid to die. They would more truly die, you see, were they to fear dying, and out of fear of death to deny Christ. Anyway, what does denying Christ mean, but denying life? What could be crazier than denying life by loving life?
So the resurrection of Christ is what determines and pinpoints our faith. Thus it is also written, in the Old Testament as well as the New, that we should repent and receive forgiveness of sins in the man in whom he defined faith for all, raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).13 This is what defines our faith, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can live, provided you live; that is, you can live for ever, provided you live a good life. Don't be afraid of dying a bad death; be afraid indeed, but of living a bad life. What astonishing perversity! You are all afraid of what none of you can escape, and you don't do what you certainly can do. To avoid dying, you can do nothing; to live a good life, this you can do. Do what you can do, and you will have no reason to fear what you can't do.
Nothing, after all, is so certain for anyone and everyone as death. Start at the beginning. People are conceived; perhaps they come to birth, perhaps they don't. They are bom; perhaps they grow up, perhaps they don't. Perhaps they go to