Living Truths

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.”  Mark 12:24-27

Sin and death are grim realities in the world, but these are only temporary intruders, as it were. The God of creation is the living God; and “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16) is our living Savior, alive forevermore. It is appropriate, therefore, that the term “living” is applied over and over again to great truths of the Christian faith.

For example, the Holy Scriptures are called “the lively oracles” (Acts 7:38). “Lively” and “living” represent the same Greek word zao; thus the Bible is God’s “living word.” Jesus Christ called Himself the “the living bread that came down out of heaven” sent down by “the living Father” (John 6:51, 57). He also promised that all who believe on Him would find “living water” (John 7:38).

He has opened for us through His substitutionary death and justifying resurrection “a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh” (Heb. 10:20). Furthermore, He has thereby “caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3).
   
The Lord Jesus is the foundation of the great house of the Lord into which we come through Him. “To Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:4-5). In this holy temple we are therefore urged to “present [our] bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual service” (Rom. 12:1).  

Our God is, indeed, the God of the living!