(2 Corinthians 4:7-10, English Standard Version)
I've been having a rocky few months in many ways. When very little moved forward as it should have at the beginning of this week, it wasn't a huge surprise to me, but it was a huge annoyance to me. I stopped at one point and asked the Lord to speak to this frustration. The above verse is what He gave me. Bam, right to the point.
But I just about fell off my chair when I read this:
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus
I know I've read this before, and heard it before, but all of a sudden it's jumping off the page. We, as believers, carry His death and His life in our own bodies. What does this mean for us?
Bouncing rubber ball. I'm not being irreverent, I'm getting a picture of something. Before He died for us, when we fell, we fell -- period. But His death defeated death. We now carry both His saving death and His saving life within us. In His hands, anything intended to destroy us becomes an instrument of renewed life as we abide in Him. It bounces.
Or another image:
Immunity! I've been inoculated by His death. An inoculation gives us immunity to a disease by giving us the disease, but in a dosage that doesn't make us ill. Death and life in the same package. Saving death.
Or this:
Resurrection power. We carry His victorious resurrection life within us.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
...And not to us.
The surpassing power to defeat death is His and His alone. Don't look to a jar of clay to conquer anything. Look to the One whose power is so great, so profoundly transformative that it can raise the dead from the grave and lift the defeated to victory.