How can someone know for certain that when they die, they will be with the Creator, our Lord Jesus Christ?
Death is all around us. Even during all the
lying about lockdowns, people are getting sick with the Wuhan Virus and dying,
they are becoming hopeless and taking their own lives, they are mistreating
themselves and dying before their time, and all while all the other reasons for
dying are still doing their devastating work.
For me, I am very aware that I am closer to
my finish line than ever, and that I could be run over by a deadly
life-experience even before that doomsday. The realization that the human
mortality rate is 100% leaves a horribly crushing weight of hopelessness that
anyone will ever avoid the cursed experience of death.
Which means that my life-experience must
prove to me with an absolute guarantee that what comes after physical death is life.
I take no comfort from those who claim that
existence ends at death so we have nothing to worry about. I am not the least
bit encouraged by people who claim that we will keep reincarnating until we get
it right. None of that adds up.
I do not want to take my chances on some “good
works” strategy that if I just make sure I have one more good works than
bad works the holy and magnificent God who created us will be happy with us! How
could that ever be possible?!
And, I most certainly do not want to place
my faith in the evolutionary religion demanding that everything came from
nothing, that nothing could explode into the building blocks of a universe, that
non-living things could magically morphe into living things, and we will just
turn back to nothing when we die!
Nope! There is something inside me far too
alive to believe that unscientific nonsense!
Here is God’s simple declaration of how to
have assurance that death is followed by genuine and eternal life with our
Creator:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Picture a
person named Someone hearing the good news about Jesus Christ. They hear that
he is the Word of God who became flesh and made his dwelling among us. He went
everywhere doing good to people, healing their diseases, and driving out their
demons. What an amazing guy!
But then
Someone is led to the scene of history where this sinless man laid down his
life in the most humbling expression of love possible. On one side, he
willingly suffered the horrible death of crucifixion, demonstrating how far he
would go to take their place. On the other side, while in the agonies of
crucifixion, he was bearing on himself the full outpouring of the wrath of God
against their sins.
This begins
to stir a wonder in Someone’s soul as they acknowledge that no one has ever
expressed love to them like that. They know what it is like to suffer at the
hands of others, often unjustly, but not what someone would suffer for them to
the extent of bearing the full justice of God against their own sins!
And then
they hear this wonderful news that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead in
complete victory over sin, death, hell, and the grave! They suddenly find in themselves
this tugging awareness that they want to know this person. They want to know
what it is like to be in friendship with this Savior who not only suffered
death in the most horrible ways both physically and spiritually, but also had
the power of God raise him from the dead.
Which
captivates Someone’s heart and mind with the wonder that they could know the
only living Savior. They could personally know this Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus the
Christ, Jesus the King of kings and Lord of lords.
However,
as Someone begins taking steps towards the Savior King, they suddenly feel this
overwhelming awareness of how utterly sinful they are in contrast to the purity
and holiness of Jesus’ love and righteousness. They become crushingly aware
that there is no good thing in them by which they could justify the right to be
his servant, let alone his friend, or, unthinkably, his Brother!
And in
that devastating awareness of the hopelessness of their sin, they hear Jesus’
words from the cross: “It is FINISHED!!!!!!!” And in those words, they realize that this was exactly why Jesus died,
to fully deal with their sin. He dealt with the crime of it, the offensiveness
of it, the guilt, shame and fear of it, the hopelessness of it, the crushing weight
of its taunting promise to take them down, and the justice that demands their
death in payment. His death in body, soul and spirit, paid it all!
And
while they struggle to believe that this was for them, they hear the words of God
telling them that “Christ Jesus came into the world to SAVE sinners!” They hear the “good news of great joy” that there is “a Savior, who is Christ the
Lord!” They
understand that “God
so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life,” and their hearts blossom under the light of
such love.
And then
Someone hears the words of Jesus himself calling out to them, “Come to me, all you who
are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest for your souls!” In that instant, they know in
their heart that Jesus wants them. Jesus died for them. Jesus lives for them. Jesus
has already saved them.
With
their minds all changed-up about their sin so that they now hate what they once
loved, and their hearts convinced that Jesus’ victory over sin and death is
their own victory over sin and death, they receive for themselves the gift of
eternal life by putting their faith in this Savior. They confess with their
mouth that Jesus Christ is indeed the Lord who came to save them, and they
believe in their heart that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead in a
masterful stroke of divine genius to give them a Savior who died and yet lives.
When
Someone receives this gift of eternal life, they enter the realities of God the
Father, of the Son of God as Firstborn Brother, and the Holy Spirit of God
crying out in them and with them, “Abba! Father!” They know that something
inside them is now more alive than before, and that the life they may very well
lose in death has already been overcome with the greater life that will never
end.
So, when
God’s Book assures them, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen,”
they realize that the faith they have now, that wasn’t there before, is the
everlasting Guarantee that they have eternal life. Their name has been engraved
onto the hands of the Savior. Their sins have been blotted out of God’s Book of
judgment and their names already written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Someone
takes to heart what an Older Brother told them a long time earlier: “For to me to live is
Christ, and to die is gain.” They now have a temporal life that is worth living because of the God
who has made a home with them, and they have an eternal life waiting for them
on the other side of death that is a gain instead of a loss.
No
matter what storms of life come, or what threats of death arise, Someone who
has put their faith in Jesus Christ has the guarantee of eternal life because
of the certainty of what Jesus has already done. And even when
life-circumstances feel the most crushing, to simply see that the one thing
they keep clinging to is faith in Jesus Christ assures them that they are more
than conquerors in their Savior already, and that they will enter into the
fullness of Jesus’ joy on the day that death takes them home.
As you
read this good news, God’s invites you to be the Someone who experiences this
mind-change about your sin, believes in Jesus Christ for salvation, enters the
kingdom of God forever, and begins walking in the newness of life. I became a
Someone in God’s story a long time ago. Anyone reading this can become a
Someone to God today.
© 2021 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K
1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles,
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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