60. The Dead will Rise
Mark 12:26, 27 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto 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 the God of the living.
We don’t necessarily need another promise that we will rise from the dead, but here we have another promise that the dead will rise. Jesus adds the interesting proof that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. For God to be God He must be in a living relationship with living people; God is life, God gives life, and God relates to and connected to life. When He initiated and created a relationship with us through His Son that relationship of one life to another new life could never end; by definition, that life is eternal.
“Though he die, yet shall he live.” We live daily with that paradoxical oxymoron: we are alive and dead all the time at the same time; but one day the dead will rise and we will experience only life; death is destroyed forever. Though we are in the midst of death and we will surely die, our focus, our thoughts, our hopes, our decisions, our hopes and our faith is on life. Even when surrounded with death, weakness, disease, pain and suffering we emphasize the life we have and the life we are promised.
God is my God, and He is the God of the living; therefore, I am living; and no matter what kind of diminishment of life I am experiencing in the present moment abundant and eternal life is always greater and is always present. The promise of life prevents us from being overwhelmed by all the problems and pains caused by Sin and Death, because the dead will rise and my God is the God of the living.