God of Life and Death

There is a place where, if you're not paying close attention, it seems like the Bible contradicts itself. 

In the Old Testament, God tells us that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then uses this to say that He is the God of the living, not the dead. He, too, is alive and active and this is a reason to worship Him. 

Then, we get to Romans, and we are told that Jesus died and came back to life so that He could be the Lord of living and the dead (14:9). 

So which one is it? 

The answer is that it's both and that these statements are not contradictory. 

When God names our ancestors and says that He is the God of the living, not the dead, He is referring to the relationship He had with those who have formed the foundations of faith in us. Their legacy lives on in the way that they passed faith into us, and in that sense, it is a living faith and they are living witnesses - through our lives. 

When Paul says that Jesus died and came back to life so that He could be the Lord of the living and the dead, Paul is saying that Jesus's death reached back across time to gather together those who died before the promise was fulfilled, even before there was a promise at all. At least, before there was a promise they could understand. So God has become the God of the dead who died in faith when faith meant something different than it does on this side of the Cross. 

These two truths about God work together to create a beautiful story, one that continues even today. 

You see, God is still the God of the living and not the dead. His story is still passed on through those of us who have the legacy passed down into us, whether that was from our blood relatives or from the intentional ministry of someone who helped to establish it in us. We carry the living and active God in our witness, in our lives and our love, and we demonstrate how it is that this God of the living changes the lives of the living. 

At the same time, our Lord still crosses the lines of life and death to gather to Himself those who died without the promise. Those who didn't know what they were looking for. Those who hadn't heard or whose hearts hadn't grasped or whose lives hadn't held onto the living testimony of faith. 

Because Jesus is for everybody and God delights in all of His creation and He seeks to restore everyone to Himself. 

So God is the God of the living. And the God of the dead. And the God of life. And the defeater of death. 

And we, who are doing our best to live while we're dying, can only be tremendously thankful for this.