PERSPECTIVE

Don Atkin

FACING DEATH – Part 3

As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;

We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

Death cannot separate us from the love of God.

–        Romans 8:36-39.

Here’s a quote from Jay Ferris:  “Only the love of God can produce ‘more than’ people. ‘More than’ loves, because it is love that makes people ‘more than.’ ‘Less than’ takes, for it has nothing to give.” 

The cross stands between the “less than” believers and the “more than” conquerors.  First, we discover God’s love for us in the cross.  We then realize that, for us to bear His image, we must follow Him to the cross.  Paul said, “I die daily.” 

It is the daily process of dying to self that releases us to love others, even as we have been loved ~ to love others with the love by which we have been loved. 

Apart from His resurrection life within us (and flowing through us), we remain “less than” the people we are intended to be.  It is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that makes us “more than” people, more than conquerors, who know by revelation that God is for us.

It is this new creation, the resurrection life within that emboldens the brethren to lay down their lives for their friends and their enemies.

Before the cross, we are “less than” what we can be.  Beyond the cross, we just don’t matter to us anymore.  That’s what happens.  And, that’s what is necessary to equip and enable us to live or die in His purpose.

Love, found in the cross, enables us to die to self in serving others. 

Love, found in the cross, enables us to serve others in death.

Love, found in the cross, enables us to be revealed as sons of God.

“For Your sake.”

For your sake.