Vaccinations revisited

Back in July, I wrote a piece called "Have you had your shots?"

The gist of the essay was that when people spend too much time hearing false versions of the Gospel... the "prosperity gospel" preachers whose personal net worths exceed that of small countries, or the over-the-top televangelists who simply want you to be HEALED, and you CAN be (if you send them lots of money)!... then you could very well become immune to listening to the true Gospel of Christ, turning it off in your head immediately after having been burned by the snake oil salesmen in the past.

Today, I want to encourage you to receive a different kind of inoculation.

A vaccination against death. 

In approximately 30 AD, Jesus of Nazareth, fully God and fully man, lived an immaculate, sin-free life so that He could be burdened with the entirety of mankind's sins and suffer the righteous punishment for those sins. The Lord God, being both a God of justice and of love, required the punishment that our sins demanded BUT determined that He Himself would bear that punishment, in the human form of Jesus.

The end of that punishment was the horrifying torturous death that was called crucifixion. Jesus was taken to Calvary, nailed to a cross-beam and placed on a cross to die of dehydration, exhaustion, and eventually asphyxiation when unable to hold the head up any longer.

Christ did not stay on that cross any longer than necessary for the punishment. Instead, He gave His life up with seven magical words:

"Father! Into Your Hands, I commit My Spirit!"

(Don't count the "Father", okay? It's seven, it's seven! Every holy thing is seven, unless it's twelve.)

Then Jesus did something that very few have done: He tasted death. He didn't remain there in Hades. He simply brought our sins there and returned to earth, of all places, for the next forty days in his glorified body to prove to His followers that He was indeed Who He had said He was.

(Except the holes in His Hands and Feet were still there, for some reason. Probably so He could prove to Thomas He was Who He said He was.)

And in that death and resurrection, Jesus gave us a gift that we relive through baptism into our faith as Christians:

A vaccination against the woes of Death.

If you die as a non-Believer, you die. You don't go to Heaven; you've chosen a life away from God, so He gives you your choice. Unfortunately, that choice manifests as Hell. The Scripture talks about the "fire that never dies" and all that, but the worst punishment is that you no longer have any of the gifts that God provides here on earth: sunlight, water, food... All of His blessings are gone. If you've chosen a life without Him, you are given an afterlife without Him. Hell is simply what is left when all of His blessings are removed. (shuddering.)

But if you've been baptized into the Holy Spirit, you "taste death" when you go under the water, and then you are "resurrected" when you rise back up out of the water. Your resurrection is not just symbolic, either: you are now dead to the ways of the flesh, and alive to the ways of the Holy Spirit. You are no longer subject to the woes of death. When death comes to your flesh, YOU yourself will not die, but rather be transformed and transported to Christ's waiting Arms in Heaven.

(That sounds like a better deal, doesn't it? Hard to understand why all people don't take it...)

Of course, having free will and still in your fleshly body, it IS still possible for you to be tempted and to choose the path of the devil. The Spirit is there to help remind you and guide you "through paths of righteousness", as Psalm 23 reminds us, but you still have to listen to Him.

You have the vaccination against the woes of death - but not necessarily the woes of life.

That part, my friend, requires effort and compliance from you.