Christ Killed Death For You

Jesus loves you.  Jesus is for you every day.  Only because Jesus hung on the cross and rose from the dead for you are you able to see in faith what he has done for you.  Only with your closest relatives and fellow members of the body of Christ do you ever come close to knowing what it means to have someone be “for you” and love you as much as Christ loves you.  It is hard to grasp the magnitude of what God has done for you in Christ, and the depth of his love for you.  This week you can glory in Christ’s glory on the cross because his love literally ran red for you on Calvary.  There, on the cross, Christ killed death and made you his own forever.  Your sins were washed away by his blood as he put death to death once and for all on the cross for you.  This is why John Donne is able to sing:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,

For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee;

From rest and sleepe, which but thy picture bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And does with poison, warre, and sickness dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better then thy stroake; why swell’s thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

DIVINE POEMS—6, The Poems of John Donne, (Norwalk, Conneticut: The Easton Press , 1979), 179.