Victory in Jesus
Devotions:
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:56-57 NASB
The sting of death is sin,,, We die because of sin. If Jesus had not taken our sin upon Himself, He never would have died. Death is the separation from, our bodies, and God. We are separated from God because of our sin and so our bodies are subject to physical death where our spirits, the real us, are separated from our bodies. This is because in Adam we became inconsistent with God, with love. We became self-centered, always seeking my own self-comfort rather than God's will. So then we sought to fulfill ourselves apart from God. Humans were willing to kill each other in order to find fulfillment and acceptance by their own hand. See the story of Cain and Able. Our fulfillment is only in God. Our sustinance is only in God. When we turn for God for any other source of our fulfillment and life we walk in death.
The power of sin is the law. The law is a measuring stick to show us how far we are from God's required perfection. When we look to the law and our own efforts to fulfill the law then we see sin for what it really is, death and we are caught in its clutches. He who sins is a slave to sin. Any system of legarism that requires our effort to acquire or maintain our salvation is doomed to failure. And anytime that we fail we should look around at where we are trying to please God with our own efforts to save ourselves instead of looking to Jesus.
Paul ends this passage with giving thanks to God for the continuing victory that we have in Jesus. We are to keep our eyes on Jesus and on His perfect finish work of salvation for us. We are to enter into His rest of His finished work and quit trying to save ourselves though dead works (our own efforts). Out of this rest comes many marvelous works because we are saved and have beheld and belived His great love for us. Our works are a product of His love manifested in our hearts. We acknowledge that we are in Jesus through the new birth and in Jesus our Father is well pleased, so He is well pleased with us.
No longer is there a sting of death becasue the law has been fulfilled in Jesus and its demands of justice were met in His death for us. As we believe what He has done for us we receive the benefits of His salvation. We then are counted as dead in Him and also alive in Him by the power of His resurrection life in us. The law no longer has any jurisdiction over us because in Christ Jesus we have died under the penalty of that law, justice was satisfied.
Even we still die physically, spiritually we will never be separated from our Father and we are looking forward to the day that we will receive a new body like Jesus' body.