Monday, January 28, 2008

Laughing at My Own Funeral

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.--Romans 8:13a (ESV)

Not very many people laugh at funerals.  More than that, I've never heard of a person so much as smiling during his own memorial service.  It's a physical impossibility.

Sin causes funerals.  Living according to the flesh is the cancer that slowly kills your soul.  Romans 6:23 says, "The wages of sin is death."  James 1:15 says, "Sin when it is fully grown brings forth death."  The righteous and just punishment of God is death.  The Bible is very plain in this: "If you sin, you will die."  The lightest profanity, the whitest lie, the littlest lustful glance, the smallest robbery--they kill.

Now, we know that grace is all-sufficient, but we also know that sin is a killer.  So, while we affirm that "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1)," we also remember "the works of the flesh are evident... those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:19, 21).

But all too often, I have, figuratively speaking, laughed at my own funeral.  For example, I have literally laughed my way through movies which glorify sexual sin.  I have smiled while a friend and I gossiped about another friend.  I have enjoyed that which should I have been killed for.  I have never heard of someone smiling while knowingly injecting himself with HIV, indeed, we would commit such a person to the insane asylum.  But that is who we all are: people who enjoy killing ourselves.

If this post sounded a bit hopeless, I think you'll have to wait one more day for hope.  In my next post, D.V., I'll take a look at the second part of Romans 8:13, where we find the secret to life.

1 comment:

Ben said...

what? I thought it sounded great!
dude, I love that "Laugh at my own funeral" that's just how I need to think of it.
"We laugh our selves to death..."
:P