Trinity Lutheran Fort Wayne

We, like Paul — so far as God’s Law is concerned — are “dead while we live.”

But Paul continues: “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24–25).

Our plight requires much more than self-revelation, self-consciousness or self-determination to go a different route. It requires a resurrection. It requires two resurrections, Christ’s and ours. We need more than a healing. We need life’s rescue from the grip of death. We need Christ and His life. We need Jesus speaking to us sinners who are bound and dead in a tomb of sin, the ultimate “curved in on ourselves”: “Lazarus, come out!”

This life, the only true life, is completely oriented outside ourselves: Christ justifies. Christ forgives. Christ frees. Christ lives for me and makes me alive. Christ lives outside Himself for me. Christ empowers and invites me to live outside myself in praise to God and out of love for my neighbor. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5).