Someone recently said to me that “personal and intimate relationship with God” is not a matter of life and death…”. At first I found this jarring, but, are they right or are they mistaken?
If we desire to live beyond our current, physical, fleshly life we need to be born again of the Spirit into God’s Kingdom (John 3.5). To be born again is to receive God’s Spirit to awaken us to newness of life, to have sin’s record against us cancelled and concurrently to have the earned righteousness of Jesus imputed to us, and therefore to be justified in God’s sight. To be justified before God is to be restored to right relationship with Him. It is, therefore, accurate to say that being in right relationship with God is a matter of life and death and inaccurate to say the opposite. According to one theologian,
“the root idea in justification is the declaration of God, the righteous judge, that the man who believes in Christ, sinful though he may be, is righteous—is viewed as being righteous, because in Christ he has come into a righteous relationship with God”
(Ladd, G. E., A Theology of the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1974, p. 437, emphasis added).
Conversely, those who are still dead in their sin – sin, theologically, being anything that misses the mark of the way, Word, and will of God 1 – are not in right relationship with God as He cannot tolerate, and therefore be in relationship with, sin that is not dealt with (cf. Habakkuk 1 and God’s plan).
Scripture is clear that should people die without having their sin atoned for, and consequently not being in right relationship with God, then their destination is either eternal conscious torment or annihilation 2.
In the garden before the fall life was lived as-designed and death was not a part of the original plan for humanity (Genesis 2.9, 16). Post-fall, when sin had been introduced into the world by a perversion of the gift of free will, physical and literal death was a consequence of this (Genesis 2.17, Romans 3.23, 6.23). It is only by a substitutionary, vicarious death that Adam and Eve’s lives did not end immediately (Genesis 3.21). Their hope of being restored to eternal life – as they had actually experienced pre-fall – rests only in maintaining a personal relationship with God during the remaining days of their lives, albeit in an abbreviated manner due to the presence of sin in their lives (Genesis 4.3-4). Their desire to return to the pleasures and privileges of Eden rests not on a decision they make, but in a relationship they maintain. As a book of the Bible, Leviticus is a complex framework detailing how fallen and fallible sinners can be, temporarily, in the presence of a holy and righteous God .
Life emanates from, revolves around, and is maintained by God (Hebrews 1.3, Colossians 1.15-17). Away from being in right relationship with Him, the sin in our lives inescapably leads to death (Romans 3.23, 6.23a). Away from faith in Jesus – and the return to personal relationship with God that this brings in a total and ultimate way, the like of which we cannot achieve on our own – not only a physical death awaits but, as the Bible phrases it, the second death (Revelation 20).
Very simply, personal relationship with God – that we are brought into only by faith in Jesus – is fundamentally a matter of life and death.
1 – Ἁμαρτία – https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g266/kjv/tr/0-1/
2 – Depending how you interpret certain passages of Scripture: Matthew 3.12 or Matthew 10.28, for example
Photo by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash
James Travis 