As Good as dead

I'm reminded today of the depth of grace, and feel somewhat like Isaac or even Lazarus - alive when things looked hopeless.

My Bible read-through has me in Leviticus these days, and as I seek to get personal applications out of each passage, I have had some surprising lessons. Today's was more of a reminder of something I so easily forget.

Grace is amazing.

I was reading through some of the lists of sins in the law ... sins that carried the penalty of death by stoning. I was realizing afresh that I had committed some of those very sins. I was guilty and deserving of death - not in the James 2, "guilty of one = guilty of all" way, but in the very literal sense. My specific sins carried the specific penalty of death.

And yet here I sit, in His presence, soaking in His word, communing with Him daily in the very Holy of Holies. His presence indwells me and His life infuses me. "He shall not die, but live" Jesus told the disciples about Lazarus. And so it was with me.

While I was dead spiritually in my sins and trespasses, Jesus took upon Him the penalty of physical death that was mine. That's one of the reasons I believe very strongly that it wasn't "one drop of blood" that saved me - it was His death. He had to die ... to be my sacrifice, to enter the grave, to be resurrected. And in His death, He gave life. His grace not only bore my sin, it brought me back from the dead.

How did Isaac feel when Abraham untied the bonds that held him to the altar? How did Lazarus feel as the wraps were undone? How can I put into words the feeling that comes when I put those passages next to each other - the one calling for death by stoning for me and the one telling me that I have been saved by grace?

I can't. All I can do is what He wants me to do - live to Him. In a very real sense I've already died to myself - to that me that deserved to be stoned. Living for Him is the life that I have left. And it's the only life that matters.