August 18

And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. — 1 John 5:11 BSB

How often we look for life within ourselves and find nothing. It’s true that if God has given us new life, we partake in His divine, spiritual, and eternal life, the life that is in Christ and comes from Him. Yet how often we look for that life to be warm and glowing in our hearts, only to find it cold and hidden. If God has given it, it never dies, but it is often buried beneath the ashes of our trials, so that while it glimmers dimly, we can barely sense it. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3), meaning not only that it is stored up in God but that it’s hidden from the world and even from ourselves at times.

Christ is our life—there is no other. Looking for life within ourselves, apart from Him, is to seek in the creature what is found only in the Creator. We cannot find in ourselves what dwells in Christ, the God-man. Life does not come from within us; it comes from Him. And not only does He give life, but He is the life itself. Just as the sun is not only the source of light and heat but light and heat itself, so Christ is not merely the giver of life—He is life itself. As a fountain does not only provide water but is water, so Christ is the fullness of all He gives. He is both the resurrection and the life, holding within Himself everything that resurrection implies for both time and eternity.