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"Are You Alive?"
by Matt Campbell
from a Selah Moment at Colonial Baptist Church
Are you alive?
Sure you have a pulse; blood may be coursing through your veins.
You are breathing, in fact you run three miles every day.
You get up every morning and go to school or work.
You make money and buy things; you eat and drink.
But do these things mean that you are alive?
In one very real sense yes. You are alive. This is life in the flesh. It is life in fragile bodies that we must maintain and take great care so as to keep them alive for as long as possible. So James asks us the question, "What is your life?" [James 4:14]
See we daily battle to keep these bodies alive. We wear seat belts and helmets. We eat vegetables even peas on occasion. We take vitamins and heart medications. We inject ourselves with insulin, and we have surgeries to remove tumors from our bodies.
Why? Why do we do these things?
We have built into us a natural desire to live, and death that arrogant and boisterous enemy follows us and mocks our every attempt to avoid the inevitable. Death doesn't discern rich or poor, doctors or waitresses, children or adults, male or female, athletes or the obese.
Death comes to all who have life in these fragile bodies of flesh. And sometimes it comes at the most unexpected times.
That is why James answers his own question by saying, "You do not know what tomorrow will bring . . . You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." [James 4:14]
So I ask you, are you alive?
Not in the kind of fragile fleshy sense, but do you have the supernatural spiritual life that only Jesus Christ can give you? Death will crush your flesh and my flesh someday. But only if you possess this New Life in Christ will you be able to call out to Death and say, "O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?
The New Testament overflows with talk about this New Spiritual Life.
Jesus tells us that this New Life is God's idea and it comes through believing in Him. Jesus says,
"Whoever believes in the [Son] may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." [John 3:15-16]
This New Life is available to you because Jesus gave his Life so many could have New Life.
"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." [Mark 10:45]
Jesus reminds us that this New Life is not about eating the food that feeds our flesh, but it's about eating the food that will feed our Souls:
"Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." [John 6:27]
"I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." [John 6:35]
Tragically, Jesus tells us that not everyone will receive this New Life even though He freely offers it:
"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." [John 6:63-64]
And later Jesus said, . . . "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" [John 11:25-26]
Do you have this New Life? Are you alive?
If not, then Jesus asks you to look to Him and believe today.
"This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." [John 6:40]
Are you alive?
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