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Life and the Fourth Death

by Jerry Ousley  
5/06/2016 / Christian Living

Man, does time go by fast! We've heard that one a lot haven't we? I remember as a kid how that the summers seemed endless and so did the winters. A day seemed like two and I wondered why all the adults said that it went by too quickly. What was the big deal anyway?

Then I was a teenager and time didn't go by quickly enough. I couldn't wait until I was sixteen and I could get my driver's license. Then I couldn't wait until I was twenty-one so I would be considered an adult and could get out from in-under my parents thumb.

Before I knew it I was twenty-one and had all the responsibilities of an adult. Now time was going by much more quickly. There were things to do that had to be fitted in between a work schedule; still, being young and full of energy, I wondered why those in their fifties and sixties said things like, "It just seems like yesterday when I was a boy growing up on the farm." It didn't seem like yesterday to me.

Each passing decade made time fly by faster and faster. Before I knew it a new year had sprung and it seemed I was still trying to catch up from the last one. Now that I'm sixty-one it does seem like yesterday when I was a boy growing up at home (we didn't live on a farm). It doesn't seem like Deb and I have been married for going on forty years and our children are now having children. We're looking back, wishing for the good ole' days, I suppose to keep our minds off of the much shorter time before the twilight years.

Life is a very dear thing to us. Often we may take it for granted but it is a precious gift of God. In reading in Job 14 we see Job questioning the shortness of life (and remember that in those days life was several hundred years he'd really be asking the questions if the life span was what it is today). We hold so much stock in this physical life even when we believe in the future life with Christ. I suppose that's because it is all we know right now. The future life is still a mystery and an unknown.

In speaking of the future life Eternal life in Jesus Christ for those who have acknowledged Him as Savior, There is only one way that we can have that. It comes through what I call the fourth death. We've talked about the other three deaths, physical death, spiritual death and eternal death, but there is a fourth death and it is a very good death. I'm speaking of dying to sin. Because of the curse placed on this earth by God in the days of Adam and Eve, there comes a point when we all have sinned against God. As we have said death is a separation and so dying to sin is a separating of ourselves from sin. We can't do it on our own; man has tried throughout history. In fact, in a nut shell the entire Old Testament is a lesson to mankind proving that he cannot live good enough through law, good deeds, morals or any other attempt to rid ourselves of this evil. God gave man all the tools possible to do the job himself and we failed.

The New Testament begins with Jesus Christ. He came to die in our place becoming the ultimate sacrifice for sin. By His sacrifice and resurrection we are now given the opportunity to finally rid ourselves of sin. We do that by confessing we are a sinner, asking forgiveness for our sin and then becoming converted turning our lives around so that we are now serving Christ instead of sin. This becomes the fourth death Death to our sinful nature.

But does this mean that we never sin again? I wish In fact we do continue to sin. Our goal is to strive to be free from it. We should be doing all in our power to keep from committing it. But the simple fact is that we do sin. In a physical body that has spent its existence under sin it becomes hard to stop. Inside our spirit and soul has been made free from the forth death. Outside it's a different story. Yes we do sin. But John tells us that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ who is ever making intercession for us and all we have to do is to confess our wrong doing, ask forgiveness and move on in the Lord. (See 1 John 2:1).

But be cautious; some have taken this as a liberty to do anything we want and remain secure in our salvation. It isn't a license to commit sin but a way of escape when we yield to the temptations of this flesh. It is a never ending task in this physical life I'm afraid. But as we conquer those things one by one our physical is made closer to our spiritual and we find that we really are free from sin.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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