And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot
This grand quote from TS Eliot reminds me of something Mike and I experienced earlier this week.
We were nearing the end of our 40-day lent devotional readings by AW Tozer, From the Grave. That day’s reading was titled “Dead in Christ.”
Being veteran believers, we’re well familiar with the biblical doctrine that teaches we symbolically participate in Christ’s death at the point of salvation, namely that we die to the power of sin and are resurrected to new life in Him.
But neither of us had ever seen it in the light that Tozer shared. So it was like a “knowing the place for the first time” kind of experience.
Paul tells us that all have sinned (Romans 3:23). And that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
But there’s an eternity’s difference between being “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1) and being “dead in Christ” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
As Tozer so beautifully put it …
When we were joined to Him in the new birth, we were joined to His death…. [The sinner] is waiting to die and he will die once and later he will die the second death. But a Christian dies with Christ and dies in Christ and dies along with Christ, so that when he lays his body down at last the Bible says he will not see death. God will cover the eyes of all Christians when the time comes—they never see death. The Christian stops breathing and there is a burial but he does not see death—for he already died in Christ when Christ died, and he arose with Christ when Christ arose.... What a hope that makes it possible for the Lord’s people to lie down quietly when the time comes and whisper, “Father, I am coming home!”[1]
… and, in response, hear Christ say, “Today you will be with me in Paradise!”
Because I died with Christ I now celebrate the “free gift of God” that I since possess, which is “eternal life through Jesus Christ my Lord.” (Romans 6:23b)
The gruesome death Christ suffered in my stead is overwhelming; the pain He bore for my sake is unspeakable.
But today I’m purposefully seeing myself there with Him on the cross through fresh eyes. “That I may know him … and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Philippians 3:10).
Having died once to sin already with Him, only the power of His resurrection and eternal life in His presence await!
[1] Tozer, AW., From the Grave: A 40-Day Lent Devotional, (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2017), pp 169, 170, 172.