Pre-Die Yourself

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. ~Romans 6:5 (NIV)

What you are obedient to most is what you are a slave to. We should be slaves to neither sin nor grace, but rather to Jesus Christ, meaning we must obey him as he once did what we must do--He died to self and saved us from our own sins; now we must shed our sin, die to self, and live for Him! Thus we shall be united with him in a death like his.

Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation...indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." ~Luke 17:20-21 (NKJV)

What does it mean to be a people of the future? In 1 Thessalonians, Paul said of the church in Thessolanica that they had become a model to other believers. We too should model ourselves for others....but how? When we look at the Bible, the Gospel in particular, we see that it is a message about the past, but also a vision of the future. Because of this, we should be learning about God's Kingdom past and modeling our lives on the Kingdom future. The Kingdom of God is within us, and whenever we share the gospel with others, we are opening their eyes to an entirely new world--the Kingdom of God. So the question is: Where in your life are you living in line with the present and not with the future?

Just as we are to die (now) to self, we should live in a way that represents the lives we will have when our physical bodies fail. Thus we shall pre-die, because when someday we pass from this life to the next, sin will no longer be a problem, and it will be impossible to be slave to it.

Let us pre-die ourselves with the blood of Christ.