Love of Life

If you were immortal, what would it be like?

Begin your life in ancient Babylon, live a life that passes until you find yourself in Greece, talking to Socrates. Every day would be a new experience. Another part of you, so that there would be so much more in others that you could see in yourself. You would meet so many people. Each one different, and they would get more different as you learned what people are like. They would be more people-like. Yet, because you will come to experience all those things that people experience, they would all be like you. You would come to love people like none of us can imagine. Every time someone died, then, so would you. And it would be beautiful. You would share in all their hopes, joys, pains, sorrows, frustration, laughter, weeping...

Or you would become numb. You would no longer see people, but idiot dogs. You would become proud. Except you wouldn't. Everyone looks like you, acts like you, loves and hates like you. Yes, there might be some numbness, but only because there would be none.

If you were immortal, you would die over and over and over. Every time someone you knew died, so would you. The world would end. People would keep dieing.

You are immortal, people do keep dieing. Dead people keep dieing, and they are still dead. You have the life without which everyone will die dead. If they hear the Word, and receive it, then they too will inherit eternal life. What is it to be immortal? Why do we want it? Immortal life is life in Christ, who feels, felt, all of our suffering, yet considers us people, even taking the form of a man. How great his love must be--what I said about you, if you were immortal, exists a thousandfold in Christ. If you were immortal, you would never reach perfection. Christ, unrestricted by time, started at perfection. We are united in the life of Christ, that love which we would have for others if we had lived from ancient Babylon through to the present, that is a love much smaller than the love with which he loved us, and it is smaller than the love with which we ought to love others, since we are united in the same love with which Christ loves us. No matter how long a fallen human being lives, they will never love perfectly until they have lived forever, but in Christ we have the forever of life, since in him there is a love unbounded by time, he has lived forever and still loves us who he made in his own image.

Only Christ truly loves life, and we know this because he died for the sake of life. We have life because we, in Christ, died. The only life worth loving is the life of Christ which we are joined into by the grace of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory and praise of his name.