In the classic book, "The Cost of Discipleship," Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the following statement:
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
The Christian life is a life that is to be expressed in death. Not physical death, but a daily death to self. The Christian life is a life of self-enslavement to and for the good of others such that what I have the right to demand and even require I relinquish, if in my surrender, Christ is honored by my act of highly esteeming another (Philippians 2:1-4). Christianity is not a call to a “good life” or even to a comfortable life. Rather, it is a call to eternal life that demands the death of life on earth.
The life and ministry of Jesus was one consumed with death. It was not only the daily choice of Jesus (He refused to be celebrated in ways that did not honor the Father) but it was also the life goal of Jesus, His mission statement being that He came with the purpose of giving His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Who of us thinks this way naturally? Who writes a mission statement that highlights death, self-surrender and the sabotage of self-glory and worldly advancement? Who writes a statement that says, "I don't want this world" or "I will choose a path that will bring about sure and certain criticism and suffering?” Yet, this is exactly what the Christian is called to embrace and illustrate in our lives.
The way we see this is in the way Paul speaks about the resurrection. Often we celebrate the resurrection as the means of power to overcome the present challenges before us. We praise Jesus for conquering the grave because it gives us hope that we, too, can conquer in this life; that we can "overcome." Yet, I think this misses Paul's theology of the resurrection. Yes, the resurrection has crushed the demonic powers of Satan (Colossians 2:13-14) and has lifted us above the condemning power of sin (Romans 8:1). But if this is the essence of what the resurrection was for it would merely be conceived as an event that was exclusively for the good of man. But it is far deeper than that. We see this in the words of Paul in Philippians 3. Paul writes,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I
may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from
the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends
on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his
sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the
resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:8–11, ESV)
While there is so much that could be unpacked in these verses I will only focus on one aspect of it. Oozing over this passage is Paul's renunciation of himself in the honor and adoration of Jesus. Paul is zeroing himself out so that we see that he sees Christ as everything!
In verse 10 we see something powerful as it relates to Paul's understanding and theology of the resurrection. Notice the word order (or the logic) of verse 10. Paul puts his desire to know "the power of the resurrection before his sharing in Christ’s sufferings. This is not random. Paul is making a tremendous point about the purpose and power of the resurrection, namely this,
"You experience the life-giving power of the resurrection for the purposes of being empowered
to display this death destroying display of the Cross"
The purpose of the resurrection is to enable believers to model the death of Jesus so that, in our death to self, the life of Jesus might be on display (2 Corinthians 4:10,11). The Christian life is a call to die and yet the ability to die comes from the life-giving power of the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, we live in the power of the resurrection and display the purposes of God only when we are demonstrating the crucified Jesus in our intentional and continual lifestyle of self-denial.
Paul teaches us that we were saved by the life-giving power of resurrection for the purposes of growing in modeling the crucified example of Jesus. We are saved from spiritual death in order that we might display Christ's death. We are not raised or saved to be removed from such sufferings but to willingly display Christ's suffering in the abandonment of our own rights, if in doing so, Christ is seen and modeled. We know whether or not we are maturing in the Lord by whether or not we are growing in modeling His death in our lives.
This is why Paul is desperate to know the power of the resurrection. He wants to teach us this important spiritual principle:
“In order to model Jesus more truly he must embody Jesus' death more fully.
Circumstances, situations and or people that "try us" are tough because they tempt us to display everything that is natural (or ungodly) within us. However, if we can get our hearts and minds around the theological understanding of the resurrection we would grow to view such circumstances, challenges and or people as gifts to us for the purposes of modeling the crucified Christ in our lives.
The television variety show "In Living Color" had a theme song performed by Heavy D. The song began with these words: "How ya living?" Well, if Paul wrote had a hip-hop theme song for the Christian I’m sure he would have started it with these words: "How ya dying?"
Since dying to self was true before Bonhoeffer's quote we can take what Bonhoeffer said as the paradigmatic truth of the Christian life:
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
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