The Christian Life
God is the Giver of life. The opening pages of Scripture testify to His life-giving power, especially where we see Him breathe into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). God created Adam and Eve to experience perfect life through their fellowship with Him and their submission to His benevolent rule. But Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, which culminated in the fall of humankind, brought sin and death into God’s good creation (Rom. 5:12).
God’s provision of animal skins to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness after their sin reveals a truth that unfolds throughout Scripture: a sacrifice is required to restore what was lost in the fall. The Old Testament saints trusted in God’s promises to send an ultimate Redeemer as they offered the sacrifices commanded by God, sacrifices that prefigured this ultimate sacrifice of God’s own Son.
Despite Israel’s failure to remain faithful to God’s covenant, God remained faithful. At God’s appointed time, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, took on human flesh, being born of a virgin, and walked upon the earth that He had created. Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus made His identity clear: He Himself is life, and He came to lay down His life for God’s people (John 14:6; 10:11). Jesus is not simply one path to life among other paths. He is the only path that leads to life; all other paths lead to death. Only by believing that He is the only perfect and final sacrifice to satisfy God’s righteous demands can we have life (John 20:31).
When we place our trust in Christ alone as Savior, we pass from spiritual death to life (John 5:24). We are now united to Christ. We are in Christ. And so begins the Christian life.
The Christian life is not, therefore, seeking to live a moral life by our own efforts and in our own strength. The Christian life is not produced by church attendance, being a “good” person, or acquiring biblical knowledge. Rather, the Christian life is nothing less than the very life of the risen Christ at work in us through the Holy Spirit, enabling us to see and worship the glory and beauty of Christ, and empowering us to walk in His footsteps as we grow in love for the triune God and in love for others.
This is the Christian life—one in which God sovereignly brings His people from death to life by giving them new hearts, causing them to embrace the crucified and risen Jesus as the only hope for sinners and, in union with Him, to grow in closeness and conformity to Him, all to the praise of His glorious grace (Eph. 1:6).