Life in Death

It’s been a year since my fiancé passed away, and my entire life feels completely different.  I’m not going to write a post about how the Lord has used this for my good, because – to be completely honest – I do not believe I have found that yet.  Instead, I want to write about how I’ve lived in death; or, more accurately, how Christ has lived in me.  ”For,” I can say with Paul, “through the law I have died to the law, so that I might live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).

Like Paul, my life is not simply these short, temporal, terrestrial years in servitude to the law.  I know the depths of my sin and my utter impotency to achieve reconciliation with the Holy God.  In fact, I have put all of that to death.  All the sin, all the regulations, all the imperfections, and all the self-righteousness died in me because “I have been crucified with Christ.”  The life of slavery is over; that is, my living death is done away with at the cross of Jesus who loves me.

And what life I have left is not my own: it is Christ’s; “Christ lives in me.”  I know that my entire being, my whole existence, is hid with Christ on high, and that this “life I now live in the body” is only a shadow, a mere preparation, for the true life which is to come.  This life is the valley of the shadow of death.  And walk through this valley “by faith in the Son of God.”  Whatever may come, come; for He “loved me and gave Himself for me.”  This is what the song means: “Heart of my own heart, whatever befall/ still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.”

And this is enough.  I do not need answers, I do not need explanations; all I need is to remember that He “loved me and gave Himself for me.”  Do you really comprehend what that means?  The only perfect, spotless, beautiful, majestic, powerful Prince of all creation loved me, a rebellious, tainted, hateful, weak worm.  He loved me.  And He gave His own precious – valuable beyond every measure – life for mine, whose life was nothing more than open rebellion and hatred against the very one who rescued me.  He suffered in my stead: not the cross only, but the full, unabated wrath of His own Father, the Holy God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.  This is all I need because what more is there?  Of what may I complain, when He tells me “I love you” and “You are Mine forevermore” with such gracious and merciful love?

I miss my fiancé with every fiber of my being, and I still bear my same love for her.  And I know not how the Lord will use her death for my good.  But, more than all this, I know Christ Jesus, the Living Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  This thought, this knowledge, is what enables Paul to say, “I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  Knowing Jesus is more than enough for my soul.