Living Truths

Mark 12:24-27 Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.”

Despite darkness of evil and unbelief in the world, we know that Almighty God is working out His plan, is in control, and in the end we win. But, do we live in that reality. I read that Sin and death are grim realities in the world, but these are only temporary intruders, as it were. The God of Creation is the “living God”; and “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16) is our living Savior, alive forevermore. The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “living” as: Dwelling; residing; existing; subsisting; having life or the vital functions in operation; not dead. It is appropriate, therefore, that the term “living” is applied over and over again to great truths of the Christian faith. For example, the Holy Scriptures are called “the lively oracles”. “Lively” and “living” represent the same Greek word “zao”; thus, the Bible is God’s “living word.” Jesus Christ called Himself “the living bread which came down from heaven,” sent down by “the living Father”. He also promised that all who believe on Him would find “living water” flowing through their lives.

Jesus has opened for us, through His substitutionary death and justifying resurrection, “a new and living way, which he has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20). Furthermore, He has thereby “begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Nothing dead about it.

The Lord Jesus is the foundation of the great house of the Lord into which we come through Him. “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  (1 Peter 2:4-5). In this holy temple, we are therefore urged to “present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is [our] reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). Our God is, indeed, the God of the living! Live like it!