Tell Out My Soul

“To live with the Lord, we must die with the Lord.”

This is a line from the lyrics of a song called Now we Remain, written by David Haas. We heard it in our Good Friday service this morning. The song is about living the Christian life in the aftermath of the crucifixion. Now we remain, we live with the Lord. Now this is good news, and that is why this day of the year, even though it reminds us of suffering and death, is still called Good Friday. On Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, and so we know that we have been raised with him, just as he promised.

But this is not the only part of this story of redemption and salvation. It’s not like we can sit back, breathe a deep sigh and say, “phew, I’m saved, that’s the hard part done.” The resurrection could not have happened without the crucifixion, and this over arching theme informs our lives as Christians too. In other words, to live with the Lord, that is, to have life eternal in him, we must die; die with the Lord. Life in Christ and death in Christ go hand in hand, and they are intertwined.

Dying with the Lord means that, from now on, we cannot blithely go forward in a way that is centred on the self, there is a death involved. The death of our own primacy, and the death of the ego. This is the “dying to self” that Jesus talked about. We are to die to sin. And just as we live and die with the Lord, we are to also carry our cross, just as Jesus carried his cross, walking the same path that he did when he staggered on his way to Golgotha. But in the end there is the promise of glory and eternal life with Jesus.