That Ye Might Have Life #3
/by Joseph L. Watkins
In Acts 17:28 we find these words “For in him we “live” and move, and have our being…” … Yes, by or because of God we have our life. That is our human life, and in Psalms 90:10 it says “The days of our lives are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength (extra good health) there are fourscore years, yet…it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” That is in death we are just … gone.
Why, we ask, does our Creator give us a life principle for such a little while, and then in what seems but a very brief moment, it is just gone and we die? One day we are vibrantly alive, enjoying those things we hold dear…and then the next we’re gone, we just cease to exist. That spirit of life reverts to our Creator who had loaned it to us…and we are just gone…dead…yes, dead…without “life”. Some years ago someone wrote a song lyric that asked the question, “is that all there is?” Well, sad to say, that is all there is for the vast majority of Adam’s seed, 60, 70, maybe 80 years, some a bit more but then gone…just to fly away in death, never to be again.
In speaking of the end of the unbelieving evildoers, God in Psalms 37:2 declares that “… they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.” In verses 9, 22, 28, 34 & 38 He says “…the wicked and they that be cursed shall be ‘cut off’…cut down as the grass.” Think of it, cut down as a mere blade of grass, just to wither away, gone ‘as the grass’… to be no more.
Again in Psalm 49 His words come through loud and clear. Verse 1 says “Hear this all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world.” That which is so important for us to hear is in vs. 12 “…man…is like the beasts that perish.” In vs. 14 God says “Like sheep they are laid in the grave (Heb. Sheol=hell), and again in vs. 20 He repeats this truth “Man…is like the beasts that perish.”
Again in Psalm 103:15 our Creator has said of the unbelieving “As for man his days are as grass; as a flower…” vs 16 “…the wind passeth over it, and it is gone…” Yes this is truth we need to not only hear, but to seriously heed. A man has his days, maybe even 80 or 100 years of days, yet in the end he is to be no more. Just gone. As a flower, as the grass, as the worthless dead sheep.
Let us return to our question, why then did our creator give us this ‘life’? Simply stated in order that we might have another “life”, an altogether new life principle, even the life of Christ, a life that becomes ours as a gift simply because we believe what He has told us about ourselves, and about Himself.
