If someone were to say that religion is supposed to bring about an abundant life, I think we’d all agree. If another were to say that Jesus came to give life, there should certainly be rousing approval. Christ came to give life back to the world, for as John writes in his Gospel, “In him was life” (John 1:4).

Yet, it doesn’t take long before we come across other statements in the Gospels where Jesus says he came to bring death. For example, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” The key is in seeing how death and life come together in his following statement: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it (Luke 9:23-24).

So how do we understand our Lord? How can he both come to bring death but also come to bring life? And where is he coming up with this stuff anyway? For the answer, we ought to look back to Jesus’ Bible, or what we call the Old Testament.

Take for example Genesis 12:1-3. Here we have Abram, part of the mass of a humanity clouded by the fallen dust of Babel’s tower and still wandering east of Eden. Abram is no better than the rest. Yet, God speaks to him words of life. He makes promises to Abram that he will give to him a great people in a place to call his own. God promises his presence to Abram along with a fascinating purpose. You could call these promises “The Four ‘P’s” – presence, place, people, and purpose – but Paul calls them the gospel (see Galatians 3:8).

These four ‘P’s were the very bricks that the dreams of the Babelites were made of: having one place to live, as one people, with the blessing of God’s presence and a fulfilled purpose, resulting in a great name (see Genesis 11:1-9). Yet, the only way to these promises of life was through death. In order for Abram to obtain the promises, he had to trust God and leave all of the false ways of seeking these things. God called him to “Go” from his country, or land (place). God called him to “Go” from his kindred and his father’s house (his people and the presence of their gods). And all this put together meant giving up any claim to the fame of a great name (purpose). Who would remember Abram now as anything more than a traitor, an abdicator?

So the only way to obtain the promises of life was to walk through death: death to the presence of false gods, death to the overestimation of people’s power, death to the pride of place, death to the human creation of purpose. Yet, through trusting the promise and leadership of this mysterious God, Abram would be led back into life the way it was always supposed to be, which fundamentally is friendship with God (see James 2:23).

This is where Jesus got his crazy ideas – and he lived them out to the fullest. Through his death he makes our death possible. Through his resurrection he has made real life possible. Jesus went and died and lived. Through faith in him we follow him into death; through trusting him we follow him into resurrection (see Romans 6:1-11). Go and die and live – this is God’s recipe for fixing a world gone wrong.

Questions for Consideration

• What do you most hate about the idea of Jesus calling us to die? (if Jesus’ call doesn’t rub you the wrong way then you might want to check your pulse)
• Where is the Spirit of Christ seeking to lead you away from falsehood?
  • People
  • Place
  • Presence
  • Purpose

• What do you most love about Jesus calling us to resurrection?
• Where is the Spirit of Jesus seeking to empower you into resurrection?
  • People
  • Place
  • Presence
  • Purpose

¹⁸ So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹ All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

²² “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

9 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. ² The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. ³ Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

⁴ “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. ⁵ And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

⁶ “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.

⁷ As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹ “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

¹⁷ So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”