Jesus lived to die. While that’s true, the more important aspect of His destiny is that He lived to die. He understood – as Creator, Redeemer, and Restorer – that dying to live becomes much more important than living to die. If merely lived to die, He would be a martyr. Noble, for sure, but not redemptive or restorative. To be redemptive, He must live to die. To be restorative, He die to live.
He lived to die as our Substitute. He died to live as our Restorer.
Any redemptive schematic that ignores this ignore the very heart of redemption, but modern redemptive thinking sacrifices this aspect of Father’s eternal purpose to accommodate a false sense of equality, grace, and eternal condition. Jesus lives to die in a redemptive sense, but He doesn’t die to live in a restorative sense. He dies to pardon, but He doesn’t live to transform. He dies to impute righteousness, but He doesn’t live evermore to empower righteousness.
He does both! And, the consequence of the Cross is the Resurrection as surely as day follows night!
And, we live to die so we can die to live as well. Here is the essential tension between Scripture and modern thinking. There is more to being saved than having our sins forgiven: Jesus doesn’t don rose colored glasses through which to see us so He can’t see our sinfulness. That is a human systematic thought, the consequence of a poorly considered concept of the Cross than empties the Cross of its power to transform.
We live to die. Jesus says, “How can a man save his life except by losing it?”
And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”
You are not in control of your redemption. Complete surrender alone appropriates the Cross so you can walk in the power of His Resurrection. Consider the tragic betrayal of the idea that you could have resurrection life without living a transformed life.
