May 11

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. — Luke 9:24 BSB

First and foremost, Christ teaches resurrection and life. The power of Christianity is life. It doesn’t just give us laws, duties, examples, or high and holy teachings and admonitions. It brings us the power to live out the higher ideal and to naturally do what is commanded. But this is not just any life—it is resurrection life.

It begins with a real crisis, a specific moment in time as clear as the morning dawn. It’s not an ongoing death and eternal struggle to live; rather, it is a finished event, a fixed point. We truly died at one moment, and just as truly, we began to live the resurrection life.

Let us reckon ourselves dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ.

And death is only the pathway and portal,
To the life that shall die nevermore;
And the cross leads to the crown everlasting,
The Jordan to Canaan's bright shore.