…because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19
Life is promised to Christ’s people. This does not mean their natural existence. That they have received from Adam, and, through their sin, it has become a curse to them, rather than a blessing. Should they remain unpardoned, the fact of continued existence will become to them the dreadful of calamities, since it must be an existence in God’s holy abhorrence of sin for ever; driven from every glimpse or hope of forgiveness.
The life which comes to us through Christ is of this sort-I trust you know it in your own hearts-it is life spiritual, given to us in regeneration. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead soul, that dead soul then receives the life of Christ. No man is alive unto God spiritually, except through Christ. Because Christ lives, we live. When a dead soul gets into living contact with the living Saviour by the power of the Spirit, then it is that spiritual life begins. The very first evidence of spiritual life is trusting in Jesus, which shows that us the first symptom is alliance to Christ, the cause of the life must be somewhere here, namely, union with Christ. One of the very first outward signs is prayer-prayer to Christ, and that, again, rises from the fact that Christ gives us of His life, and then that life goes back again to Him…Do you not see, “Because I live, ye shall live”? Then no sinner ever will live spiritually apart from Christ. Though you and I cannot quicken them, yet we can preach the gospel to them, and faith cometh by hearing, and where faith is, there life is. It is no use trying to raise the dead by preaching the law to them. That is only covering them up fairly with a lie in their right hand; but preach of dying love and of rising power, to tell of pardons bought with blood, and to declare that Christ died a substitute for sinners-this is the hopeful way of bringing life to the dead. It is by such instrumentality that souls are brought to life eternal. Because Christ is alive, His elect in due time receives spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and, although once they were dead in sin, they begin to live unto righteousness.~ C.H. Spurgeon
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm
Yes! Faith cometh by hearing not through religious celebrations that are man ordained! Nor through chocolate bunnies and men in red suits!!
I was thinking on Lazarus and the rich man and was reminded of what Abraham replied to the rich man when he wanted to go back and warn his brothers so they could avoid that place of torment:
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
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Good Word, sis!
Have a blessed day, amen! \o/
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👍🏻🙏🏻
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Amen.:)
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