"I Die Everyday!"

 In my last blog, I wrote about the process of adding manure to the soil to mix, with whats there, to create a new possibility for better growth.

Today I am thinking about Jesus’ dying on the Cross on Good Friday that led to a new, and gracious, life of God’s possibilities in our world.

In the New Testament we hear some muddiness about dying In John we read:  

²⁴Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ ²⁵Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ²⁷She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’(John 11)

In Romans the Apostle Paul writes: 

7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.(Romans 14)

Then in 1 Corinthians he writes:

³¹I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Cor. 15)

 

So this is the wonder I have this morning: What do we, what did Paul “die” from?

Name the dying,

  

What does Paul die to everyday?

I am going to take a huge leap here.  

What I am thinking is not about proper exegesis.  It is my thoughts on this issue about Paul’s statement: ³¹I die every day!   And Jesus words ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. 

I will call this dyings “little bitty deaths.”   In Paul’s case he is talking about dying to habits that could possibly, or do, offend the ways of God/Jesus.

In many ways we do the same.

I will suggest that every time we feel guilt, or shame, or failure our psyche make a shift, a growth spirt, in our emotional make-up.

When we hurt, or are hurt, or feel isolation, or have physical pain, or feel emotionally  abandonment.  

                                        We die a bit.

Lets say we learn a bit, or change in some way, or grow-up in ways that otherwise we wouldn’t.

And I will suggest that as Christian — or any other God fearing people  — we find something inside of ourselves that causes us to pay attention to our human nature that bumps up against God’s will.  

       And we die to them

We die to those things that we would otherwise fine quite fine and acceptable to the human mind.  But are not to God.

Because of our desire to live as Jesus taught, and modeled; we willing give-up what comes so natural to our being.

We put away things like unkindness, or hatred, and revenge etc. 

And we choose to be forgiving, gentle, and caring to our neighbors — close and far away. 

7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.