The Magic of the Spell

There is in our time a certain morbid fascination with death icons.  Perhaps it is due to the relative ease with which we can kill ourselves and others.  Satan whispers in our ear and we buckle in the knees, unwilling to take a stand against the lunacy of our age because we are beguiled.  Death and sin walk hand in hand and to love the imagery of one is to be wed to the other.  Sin ushered in death; it was not the other way around.  Sin is the enemy; death it's prostitute.  The sin of man so thoroughly disorients us that we can think there is something magical, mystical about death but every sane person despises death; is nauseated by it.  Rarely does the atheist welcome it; even those who seem oblivious to what lies behind it.  Death is the enemy in every way and we should hate it...but not because it is the object, it is rather the verb.  Sin is where all of the horror resides; where the terror springs forth.  We die because sin is there.  Without sin, death would never touch our lips.  We are wrong when we give death the idol's gaze; take your eyes off death and look at sin squarely.  That is the place where you must give all your attention and make the most of your time now in your hand.  Sin must be faced and hated with all the passion you once gave death.   The Son of Man did not come to raise us from the dead; otherwise He would have just gone about emptying graves.   He came to kill off sin and to do so, He had to die.  He never feared death; it was sin that broke His heart.  When Christ bore your sin to the tomb, He buried death with it.  He is the Resurrection and the Life because He wrecked sin in one final violent blow.  We live a righteous and Godly life not to please God but because we realize just how horribly despicable sin was for Jesus Christ and like the mother who stomps on the head of the viper that has just bitten her child, we in the righteousness of Christ's holy life crush the breath out of each sin we find lying at our feet.  Be done with sin.  Despise its poison.  Hate its smell.  Detest its look.  Make certain of the enemy.

The enemy boasted, 'I will pursue, I will overtake them.  I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them.  I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.'   Exodus 15:9 NIV