A Name of Wondrous Love . . . The Life
 
You may have recently read about an improved way to do CPR. We all know what that technique is, don’t we? It’s what to do when someone’s heart has stopped beating. So far I haven’t had to use CPR. Hopefully I’ll remember it so that when I need it, I can possibly help save someone’s life.
 
When Jesus calls himself the life, he isn’t referring to my physical life. Of course, he is also the Great Physician of my body, the One behind all the medical techniques and marvels of today. With these words, however, he is referring to spiritual life. And he plainly points this out when he continues, “I am . . . the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
 
Get the point? Without Jesus, people are spiritually dead beyond the point of resuscitation. They still walk and talk, work and play, marry and bury, but as dead people. When God looks at them, he sees only spiritual corpses bound in unbelief for hell’s bonfires, not people heading for his heaven.
 
But just think what we have in Jesus. Because of him, we know that life is more than a progression of days and months and years. It’s an eternity with our loving God that begins already in part here on earth and reaches its fullness in heaven. Because of Jesus, I know that life is not just something to be lived out, but to be lived for him in loving service.
 
Because of Jesus, I know that my grave will have two doors, not just the one marked “Entrance” but also the one labeled “Exit.” When my Savior says he is the life, he means more than that he will show me the life.
 
He means that he is my only source of eternal life.
 
How can we be sure? Doesn’t the Easter season remind us so vividly? Our Savior’s tomb is empty! He is risen! He is risen indeed! He has canceled our sin, conquered death, and cracked open heaven’s doors for us. In our Savior’s resurrection is divine proof of sin’s pardon and heaven’s hope. He is the life, and only in him do we have the life that counts.
 
We know that Jesus lives. He is the life. We marvel at his wondrous love.
 
© 2011 Northwestern Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.®
 

Dear Friends,

Please join us this Easter for worship and growth in faith in Christ. The life of Christ is the death of fear.

Pastor Kant