The world thinks that we, the church, are weird. They think we are strange, even foolish because not only do we follow the teachings of someone who died nearly 2000 years ago but we believe that he rose from the dead. As far as the world is concerned, “dead is dead,” and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. This has been the “problem” of the church since the beginning; Paul wrote: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.… But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23). Even when we don’t fully understand “how it works,” we accept this by faith.
Unfortunately, we don’t always think it through very deeply. Our strange faith goes deeper than believing that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and rose again to give us eternal life; it goes deeper than believing that we will live forever in God’s presence in heaven after we die. Faith in Jesus is our own death sentence. Faith in Jesus necessarily leads us to our own spiritual death. Don’t take that sigh of relief just yet. Spiritual death is not merely symbolic death. Created in God’s image, we are spiritual beings, though we have physical bodies, and both body and spirit can and will die.
In fact, Jesus called his followers to die with him. When Jesus told his followers in Matthew 10:38, “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me,” he wasn’t telling them to wear a cross necklace or to put a cross icon on their car. He was telling them – us – we need to die with him so we might live with him. And he wasn’t talking about some time in the future; in Luke 9:23 he said “daily,” and that means dying spiritually right here, right now. Paul explained this in great detail, telling the early church:
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (Romans 6:6-8)
Again, that’s not a statement of anticipation for a future state of eternal life but the recognition that by putting our faith in Christ, we necessarily die to sin and to ourselves. This is why Paul could write with confidence: “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).
The gospel, the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus, is not merely a promise for eternal life after physical death but a promise for new life in the here-and-now and into eternity after our own spiritual death to sin and self. Even though many remember Jesus’ death and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection each year, many don’t understand that our own resurrection requires our own death. There is no resurrection without death. New life now requires death to sin and self now. We die with Christ now so that we will live with him forever.
The Good News of the gospel is new life after death. Our mission and message is to invite people to death in Christ to find life in Christ. This is not easy news to receive and believe, and the world thinks we’re foolish. If we want the world to believe it, we need to live it, dying to sin and self and living with Christ, each of us as individuals and all of us together.