I was driving the other day and saw one of those cars which was about carrying a message as much as it was carryng a person from place to place. You know the kind. A car filled with bumper stickers which have long ago left their prescribed location, the bumper. Yes, the multitude of stickers required more real estate that just that thin strip. Anyways, being the curious type of person I am, I pulled up probably dangerously close to said bumper, to read the message. And among the various atheist (explicit marked as such) things I read, the one above caught my attention because I had never seen it before.
Now obviously this sticker meant to take a stab at those of us who often confess that we believe strongly in life after death. But my thought immediately was, “Well so do I.” A belief in the afterlife does not stand in opposition to a belief in life before death. I know that. But this bumper sticker made evident that we do not often as Christians make this clear. We are often so business making plans for heaven that we forget to talk about the time we have left here on earth and the life we have been given already now.
So let me make clear, I believe in life before death. Because I believe that real life begins at Baptism.
Romans 6:4Â We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Yes, we are blessed to walk in newness of life now. Oh there is the resurrection to come when all will be perfect, but life is now, before death. And so,
Romans 6:13Â Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
I refuse to wait for a day to come to have life, because I do not have to by God’s grace. I must admit that I have heard many in my own church body (and those outside) speak as if life only comes after death. Oh, if pressed they would admit that we have something now. But they don’t truly expect much newness in life until they breath their last. They just figure that all of us are stuck being the wretches we were born into this world being. In heaven we will be perfect, for now we will just be us.
And that is precisely the rub. What is the “us” that we are right now, before death? I say we are those brought from death to life, those whose old sinful self has been buried, those whose former ways have been circumcised from us, those who have been washed and sanctified, those who are new creations, those who are alive now, before death.
Galatians 2:20Â And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
This life I live before death is not my own, although by grace is has been given to me to live right now, in faith toward God and fervent love towards one another. It is a life lived out now by faith in the one who had life before and after death, the one who died that I might live before and after death as well.
John 14:6Â Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
I do not have to wait for life. I do not have to wait for newness. I do not have to wait freedom from the bondage of death before death. By God’s grace, it was earned on a cross and at a tomb, and delivered to me in water.
Titus 3:5-6 He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
This same life before death he sustains in me through his Word and his Absolution, and his Supper.
Let me take the risk of being redundant, but life is always meant to be lived. Right now. My faith is not about something that I will have one day, but something I have now, which will be perfected one day. Oh yes I believe in life after death. But I believe in life before death as well.
Matthew 6:10Â Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
i agree. i too believe in life before death. didn’t jesus say that he came to bring life and that we may have it to the full. i believe that means, in part, that our lives can be different in the here and now. life before death does matter! and in the words of N.T. Wright….”i believe in life after life after death” this seems to be the thrust of scriptures anyway….not heaven.
Phil,
You are correct. Christ’s death on the cross cannot only and should not only be understood from a juridical perspective especially because it reduces our salvation only to a “not guilty” verdict. What then, after the “not guilty?” Christ’s death and resurrection gives us life now. Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection allows us to change, to not be constrained by the decay caused by our own sinfulness. If the juridical or penal satisfaction views of the Passion and Resurrection which Western Christendom bases nearly its entire theology were allowed to coexist with the doctrine of theosis, then I believe that even Western Christians would have an easier time of embracing “life before death.”