[We are] always carrying around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our body. 2 Corinthians 4:10 (NETFull)
Life throbs with dignity while death feeds on desecration. Life and death are two great enemies and my body is their battleground. They are both inside me plotting the demise of one another. Only one can win for eternity.
The death of Jesus was not death to life, it was death to death. He died to defeat death, both at the final resurrection and now in my body. I am to carry his death to death and apply it to whatever will not enter heaven. Pride will never make it into God’s presence, so if I humble myself now, then death dies and life lives.
Wars are won by a series of victorious battles and triumph only comes to me as I choose life in the daily skirmishes. Death ruthlessly dresses up as life. It flays a living gift and pulls on its skin to pose as life. Family, jobs, food, ministry—anytime I concentrate on a gift more than on God, then death is cloaked as life. The insidious goal is for me to worship temporal gifts until I’m attached to them when they burn in the last day.
This is a bloodthirsty war. At each offering of false life, I must club it over the head with the reminder that only Jesus with me, in me, and through me will satisfy. Everything else is death and must be put to death in my heart.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, let me carry around your death to the things of death.