It’s been said that the music that is popular when you become a Christian is what you regard as “church music.” I became a Christian, baptized on my twelfth birthday, in 1982, so my go-to music is the contemporary Christian music of the 1980s – Petra, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, 2nd Chapter of Acts, and Rich Mullins. While Mullins’ song “Awesome God” seems to be an enduring staple of worship services, another song from his first album was highly influential in my spiritual development.
The chorus to the song “Live Right” includes the lyrics: “Live like you’ll die tomorrow/ Die knowing you’ll live forever, live right.” The song encourages us to deal with the issues of living everyday life with immediate intentionality – saying and doing what you need to say and do when you know it’s needed because moments slip by and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. As a young teen, it would have been easy to adopt a “live in the moment” approach to life (and as an adult, that struggle continues to be all too real). Fortunately, those lyrics, coupled with a brand-new faith, reinforced the Good News of new life in Jesus that begins in the here-and-now and continues into eternity.
Unfortunately, many folks live from the world’s perspective, doing whatever one can to survive as long as possible which makes every thought, decision, word, and action a matter of life or death desperation. Yes, there are important decisions we need to make and actions we need to take in everyday life that are matters of life or death; I warned our kids early on about the deadly nature of drugs, telling them about my high school classmate who tried cocaine just once our senior year and died within minutes. While that’s an extreme example, people make all kinds of decisions about health, finances, and relationships in desperation, hoping just to survive to the next moment but experiencing dire consequences. At the other extreme, people make all kinds of foolish decisions for the sake of a brief moment of pleasure – and perhaps for the next brief moment of pleasure and the next one – expecting it to last forever or at least long enough to find the next substitute. Somewhere along the expanse between those two extremes are folks weighing the possible costs and benefits and deciding, “I’ll either make it or break it.” Regardless of the specific actions, that worldly perspective is always a gamble, life or death, so roll the dice and see what happens.
On the other hand, the gospel perspective isn’t a question of life or death; it’s a sure thing: life FROM death. While the world is scrabbling desperately at life until death, disciples of Jesus are dying to live. The foundation of the gospel is established on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:3-4); what makes the gospel “good news” is that through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection and our faith in him, by God’s grace we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-2). Paul stated it simply: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). That’s the gospel: life from death.
We enter gospel life ourselves by dying to live. We receive new life when we turn to God in repentant faith, joining Jesus in our own spiritual death, burial, and resurrection in baptism (Romans 6:3-5). We continue in that new life, again, dying to live, which Paul explained writing, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”(Galatians 2:20). In Christ, there is no uncertainty regarding life and death; in dying to live in Christ, what lies ahead is the certainty of new life, eternal life. Church, that means we no longer have to fight in desperation just to survive; we need to “Live like you’ll die tomorrow/ Die knowing you’ll live forever.” So live right, right now.