DAILY DEVOTIONAL – April 22, 2021
“A Singular Certainty”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are the Risen King of Life. During this time in Your Word, lead us in the confidence of Your Promises that we might know and live in the fulness of Your salvation even now. Amen.
Scripture: John 12:23-26
23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
Devotional – “A Singular Certainty”
Are you prepared to die? I’m not asking if you are financially prepared or prepared in your other earthly affairs, I am asking if you are prepared in your soul? Are you prepared today, now, to stand before your Maker and Creator God? When is the last time you were asked or asked yourself that question? Scripture certainly exhorts us to do so. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” James 4:13-5 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”
It’s true. We live now, right now, only because the Lord of Life and Creator of our souls wills it. In His perfect wisdom, love, and mercy, only God knows when that moment will come when He calls us into His presence and into either judgement or salvation; judgement if we are found not to be in the faith, and salvation if we are found to be worthy of life through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther said, “Although we do not wish to call the life we have here a death, nevertheless, it is surely nothing else than a continuous journey toward death. Just as a person infected with a plague has already started to die when the infection has set in, so also because of sin and because of death, the punishment for sin, this life can no longer properly be called life after it has been infected by sin. Right from our mother’s womb we begin to die.”
To the world that is blind to see its sinful and dying condition, it probably seems cold and morbid for me to suggest asking ourselves that question each and every day. “Am I prepared to die?” That question will only seem odd or cold or morbid if we are not prepared.
Living with and in the ever present reality of our death is the only way we can live this life we have been given to the fullest; both today and after we die. Jesus regularly confronted His disciples with this thought and regularly brought them face to face with this reality for the sake of bringing them to a life of repentance and forgiveness and the joy that comes with knowing for certain that we only truly live once we die. One of those times Jesus confronts His disciples with this is in the text we read from John 12, “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.” Where was Jesus going? To die on the cross so that He might rise again and bring with Him the lives of all who believe and trust in Him.
No doubt our Lord Himself lived in the ever present reality of the death He came to die for us. We hear this from Him in the very next verse, verse 27, when Jesus says, “27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Jesus lived a perfect live of righteousness and joy, even in His agony, because He lived by faith in the Words of God; the Word of God that says we will die because of our sin, but that God has provided salvation from death through death – through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, who has died in our place so that death is no longer our certain end, but our certain and eternal beginning of life with God.
God came in the flesh to beat death at its own game, to defeat death by dying Himself and defying its power by rising again on the third day; turning the perishable into the imperishable and turning mortality into immortality for all who put their faith and trust and hope in Him. We need not live in fear of death or live anxiously in this life. God tells us that He has seen every one of our days before one of them came about, that He cares for us more than the sparrows who don’t lose sleep over what they will eat the next day, that He knows the hairs on our head, that He knows the depravity of our hearts and still came – born to die – that we would be forgiven and given a new heart that fears, loves, and trusts God above all else.
Are you prepared to die? When we know the Word of God, believe the Word of God, and trust the Word of God, we can answer that question by saying, “Yes, I am prepared, because I have already died with Christ…and been raised with Him!” That is the confidence we see in people like the Apostle Paul who says in Galatians 2:20, “ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Jesus was faithful to fall to the ground and die and bear the first fruits of life and salvation for us, just as He promised, and because of His faithfulness to that promise, we can have the confidence to live our lives in answer to the question “Am I prepared to die?” because we believe what Jesus also says, “where I am, there will my servant be also.” My friends, Jesus is Risen, He is risen indeed! The tomb is empty. He is not there. He is at the right hand of the Father, and for all who have trusted in Christ, followed Him to the cross, and died with Him, so are we.
Thanks for joining me for another daily devotion, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
