UNDEATH

Please forgive this crude illustration right from the start, but it illustrates the point. My computer was dying, so I killed it. Ah but then I brought it back from the dead and restored it. I had a picture of the kind of life I wanted it to live (computer geeks would call this the recovery partition and a full back up). Needless to say after hours of work yesterday my computer is alive and well today. Who would have thought that I have the power of undeath in my hands?

Actually God would. Ponder with me.

• "But you haven't seen the half of it yet, for in the same way that the Father raises the dead and creates life, so does the Son. The Son gives life to anyone he chooses.
  John 5:20-21 MsgB

Jesus had miraculously healed a cripple on the Sabbath, for which the religious leaders were giving Him a hard time. Such miracles were only the beginning. Like the Father, Jesus would soon bring life to the dead too. Now this meant more than just the resuscitation of life to a corpse like Jesus would do with Lazarus in John 11. God is not God of the dead but the living! (See Mark 12:18-27) Like the Father Jesus had come to bring life to the spirit and soul of a man—to give eternal life.

You and I have received His miracle of life through faith in Christ. God now wants to use us as His hands of life to touch those we know that they too might also have life in His Name. Life always multiplies. The Father raises the dead. Jesus does the same. Now the power of undeath is in our hands. The apostle Paul puts it this way.

• 15 Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. 16 To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?
  2 Corinthians 2:15- 16 NLT

Apart from Christ we are dead and smell like the grave. But we have been saturated with His life. Our hands have been washed and have the smell of undeath.

Some may resist our touch—it offends them. But like my computer Christ has given us a picture of what their lives can become. We’ve been given the ministry of recovery and if we stick at it long enough even the deadest of sinners can be made new through the hands of undeath (see 2 Corinthians 5:17-20). What do you think?