Remembering Death

Remembering Death

The seventeenth-century puritans seemed obsessed with death.  Jonathan Edwards wrote as his ninth resolution:
 

"Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death."

This practice reflected Psalm 90:12:
 

"So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

When we hope in Christ for our eternity, thinking about our mortality brings great enthusiasm and purpose for our present living.  In our text this week, Ephesians 2-3 will have us look backward to death rather than forward.  Christians are people who were once dead but are made alive.  New creatures are defined by their alive-ness because what they were is defined by their dead-ness.  Paul will call the Ephesians to cooperate with one according to the aliveness in Christ.

How would he have them see themselves because of their new life in Christ?
How does their aliveness together contrast with their prior deadness?
What might that mean for you in your present relationship with God and his church?

Making home together,
Loren