Nothing To Fear

I was flipping through the pages, and stumbled across something that King Solomon said to King Hiram. The Lord had given him rest on every side, he said, and had put all his enemies beneath his feet, so now he could build a house for the Lord. That reminded me of someone else who was involved in building a house, and who had been given rest on every side, and whose enemies were under his feet, so I flipped back to the book of Hebrews, and read about Jesus.

God has put everything in subjection to man. But, as the writer of Hebrews points out, we don’t see everything subject to man … but we see Jesus. And if there is anyone worthy of a good look, it is Jesus.

Perhaps one of the most amazing things about Jesus was the remarkable faith that he demonstrated when he … died. (It occurred to me that I don’t have quite enough faith yet to die … but then I remembered that the just are supposed to live by their faith.) Every time I think about this, I am amazed. Keep in mind that, unlike the rest of us, Jesus had a choice in living or dying. He said no one could take his life away—he could give it, or keep it. It was up to him.

But if he kept his life, he would be alone, because until the seed falls into the ground, it cannot be fruitful. In the ultimate example of obedience, love, and faith, Jesus gave his life.

That leads to something we generally have a great deal of difficulty in grasping. When you die, you lose control. That is why it was the ultimate act of faith for Jesus to die. Once dead, he had no control over anything. He had demonstrated mastery over the elements, over disease, and over dead persons (by raising them from the dead) and he chose to put himself totally and completely in God’s hands.

Don’t pussy-foot around this issue by theorizing that it was only Jesus’ body that died, or that he just set his body aside while he went off and handled more important business. No, the scriptures make it perfectly clear that he died.

There, in the complete absence of human faith—no one really believed that God would raise Jesus from the dead, and the only one who had believed was lying dead in the grave—God did the impossible; He gave life to the dead. Jesus experienced what we have yet to learn: that God is full of faith, and that He keeps His word.

Jesus mastered death, not by raising himself from the dead (remember, he was dead; it was God who raised him up) but by dying in faith. He proved that death is nothing to fear, because God, all by His lonesome, can restore life.

Jesus died in faith so that we can live in faith, knowing with certainty that God is faithful.

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