And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
Revelation 12:11 KJV
Revelations 12:7-12 speaks of the overcomers. They were those who were accused day and night by the accuser, however, one of the major instruments of their overcoming was not loving their lives unto “the death”. Psalm 48:14 as so says that God leads us unto death. It is important to know that death itself is a creation of God and does not belong to the devil as Revelation 1:18 says. There had been a death, even before the fall of man. Revelations 13:8 shows that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world. God designed death as a medium for our transformation. This death is not one leaving his body, that is called sleep for a believer which is simply a believer closing his eyes to the physical and opening his eyes to the Spiritual. The death that leads men to ultimate death has been destroyed. A believer has escaped the first death as John 5:24 says, through the resurrection life that we have in Christ. His spirit man has been raised up from the realm of the dead, but his body and his soul are still acquainted with death and so there is a need to go through a dying process for his complete resurrection.
Death simply means separation. If the separation occurs between a part that depends on the other to live, the dependent one is considered dead. Man originally lived in the environment of God and needed God to survive. When he sinned and was removed from the life of God, He died, living his soul to rule his body. By this death, his soul became a dead soul and he put all of creation into the bondage of death. In Isaiah 26:19, the Lord also says “Your dead ones shall live, together with My dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust; for your dew is as the dew of lights, and the earth shall cast out the dead”. This speaks of them who die in Christ and His body being the medium for their resurrection. This is the death in consideration: the death of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 2:10 shows that this death is how God intended to bring many sons into glory.
The last three hours of Christ death, that hour of darkness as seen in Luke 23:44, was very significant for all humanity. Christ dying on the cross did not die as a Jew for Jews. His people rejected him and so he died as a man for all men and so He said, “if I be lifted up, I will draw all people to myself”. Because He was sinless, He could not die. That last moment was where He took all humanity and all creation with sin into Himself. He became a burial ground for the old creation and the foundation for the new creation. By grace, He tasted death for all men when he satisfied the demand of justice for sin for the whole world. He also did not come out of the grave alone. After destroying everything of the old creation permanently, together with His dead body, we arose in Him. This was similar to the exodus of Israel where the nation Israel was born in Exodus 14. They entered the red sea with Pharoah, signifying their dying, and all of Egypt was buried and the nation Israel was born. When the Israelites were leaving the Wilderness to the promised land, they also passed through the Jordan and were circumcised, signifying the cutting away of everything relating to the old creation.
Job 14:14 says ” If a man dies, shall he live? all the days of my appointed time, I shall wait till my change comes”. Although at this point, redemption had not been secured for all humanity, Job was hopeful of a change to come. The appointed time spoken here is the time of one’s life on earth. We receive our bodies as a loan and will be judged based on what in it. This body must be given back to God for His glory. Jesus says that if anyone would be worthy of Him, he must give up his life and take up the cross and die with Him. Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 4: 6-11 that he bore in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus will be expressed in Him. The idea of dying connotes a process. We choose to die to the world around us, our ideas, our desires, our passions, that the life of Jesus will be expressed in us.
Final thoughts: Romans 5-7 describes sin as a husband and the only way to be free according to the law was to die. A dead man is unresponsive and so the nudgings of sin. As we reckon or account ourselves dead in Christ and alive in Him, we trade our life for His. This reckoning is done by identifying with Christ’s death in words, and deeds, not yielding our members which are now the Lords as instruments of unrighteousness. We are faced with a choice every day to sow to our dead flesh or die to it and live in life with Christ. Here is where we can identify with his dead body and live with Him perpetually.
Prayer: Lord Jesus thank you for your death that forever separated me from sin. Today I identify with your death as my redemption and my deliverance. I choose to embrace my cross, dying to my will, passion, and the rudiments of this world that Your life be expressed in Me. Amen.
Scripture: Romans 6
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