Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
What a powerful verse. You may be wondering, okay, this is about Christ and new life in Him, so how are we going all the way back to the beginning? Well, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent told Eve, "Did God really say? If you eat that fruit, you're not going to die." But what God was talking about was eternal life. As soon as Adam and Eve took a bite of the fruit and disobeyed Him, it immediately impacted their eternal life. Their spirits, their souls—in that moment—were affected.
The Enemy's Strategy: Keep Your Eyes on the Temporary
The devil was talking about physical death—if you eat the fruit, you're not going to physically die. And why is this important? Because when the devil talks to us, our enemy is constantly trying to focus our attention—just like he did way back then—on things that are very temporary, things that are physical, things that are immediate. It's the now. Just like he did then. God, on the other hand, is always about the eternal. He created us from the beginning to give us eternal life. That was the plan. That was the goal. That was what was desired. Because sin entered the world, they didn't physically die immediately—but God's focus has always been on an eternal relationship with us.
Raised to New Life
That's why when the verse says, "Since you have been raised to new life with Christ," the focus is that He breathed into your spirit. What was dead from the moment sin entered into the world—He breathed life into that. Now, this life that we had not had before, we can live in. As it says in Romans, we were dead in our trespasses and sin. But now, as this verse says, "Since we have been raised to new life with Christ," this life has been breathed into the eternal side of us and we have been given the opportunity to live within it. What this verse is really saying is, you now have new life where there was death. Oftentimes we continue to live in the part that the enemy keeps trying to encourage us toward: the now, the temporary, the physical, the tangible. Instead of living into what this verse calls us to—setting your sights on the realities of heaven—because now the spirit and the soul have been revived and breathed with new life. The eternal life that was birthed in us at that moment is alive in you.
Where Are You Focusing?
How much time do we spend focusing on growing in that life, fostering that life, and not listening to the enemy who tells us that the temporary things, the earthly things, the physical things, the things that will not last forever, are actually the most important things we should be living into today? Instead of living into this verse and saying—this new life that was breathed into the eternal side of you actually allows us to focus on the things that are eternal. To set our sights on the realities of heaven that we had no ability to experience or even know about before—until we received that new life in Christ.
Take an Assessment Today
I would encourage you today, take some time, even after you listen to this, to sit with the Lord and assess your life. Am I spending my waking moments, just like the enemy tries to encourage, focused only on things that will not last? Or am I actually setting my sights on the things that are eternal—experiencing and living into the power of this new life that was breathed into you at the moment of receiving Christ as your Savior? Take an assessment today. Where are you with that? Reassess, refocus, and pour yourself into building into your life the things that feed that new life. Set your focus on the realities of heaven, the realities of things that will last forever. May you experience that today as you reflect and seek God to reveal those things to you, and begin building into eternity.