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Pastor's Blog September 23, 2021
"View of God in Romans XXIX"
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Over the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at statements that Paul makes about how the Christian life is undergirded by who God is and how he reveals himself to us. We've looked at food (eating meat offered to idols vs. not eating meat offered to idols) and worship (observing certain Jewish feast days and not observing certain Jewish feast days), and both items advocate that what is important is that we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:6-8). But why is the crux of eating and worshiping the fact that "we are the Lord's?"
The reason is found in Romans 14:9, which also shows us something about the character of God in Jesus Christ: "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living" (NASB). This passage reveals three things about the Lord Jesus, and those three things immediately impact our lives.
First, Jesus died so that he can be the Lord of everyone, both the living and the dead. The categories of "living" and "dead" are all-inclusive of humanity, which means that everyone belongs to God because of Jesus' lordship!
Second, the fact that Jesus is Lord of the living and the dead because of his own death and resurrection means that everything we do is directed to Jesus. Not everyone realizes that they belong to God. But those who recognize this fact are confronted by the beautiful truth that everything we do is oriented to the Lord, because Jesus holds the entirety of our lives and deaths in his hands!
Third, because Jesus is the Lord of the living and the dead by means of his own death and resurrection, we can know that our lives are not our own. We belong to Jesus and not to ourselves - which means that we aren't expected to figure out how to live and die well, as much as we are invited to entrust our living and dying to the Savior who knows how hard and messy it is to live, and how foreboding it can be to die.
Friends, if you are struggling today with how to live your life - or if you are weighing your mortality and impending demise - I encourage you to turn these matters over to Jesus, the Lord of the dead and the living, because he will take care of both. Remember, you belong to the Lord!
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God bless,
Pastor Nathaniel Gamble
