Day 3 – Life Through Death

In our last lesson, we saw that as Christians, we have passed from death to life through our salvation. Let’s take it a step further by finding out how we pass from the old life into God’s new life.

As with many aspects of the Kingdom of God, we find this to be a paradox – something that seems self-contradictory. In a nutshell, it is this: in order to live, we must die. This can sound confusing, because we are used to seeing it the other way around. Normally speaking, first we live, then we die. This is how we order everything about our lives on earth

But the Kingdom of God doesn’t always work the way we expect it to. Jesus often said things like, “The greatest is the servant,” “The first shall be last,” and “If you hold on to your life, you’ll lose it.”

The whole concept of redemption is life coming out of death – victory coming out of defeat. Jesus told his disciples about this in Jn 12:24 (NLT): “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.”

In this context, it makes sense: new plants come from seeds that are (or at least seem) dead. And so when we remember that the whole Kingdom of God operates on the seed principle (Mk 4:26, 30), it all starts to make sense.

Sin brought death, and Jesus had to die a sinner’s death to bring God’s life. And the same principle applies to us. For us to experience the life of God, we must first die – die to ourselves.

Consider:

What other “paradoxes” in the Kingdom of God can I think of?

What other aspects of the seed principle can I think of?