Fruit-bearing Death

Death is not something we associate with fruitfulness, gain and life. Whenever we talk about death, we often think of it as a loss or a tragedy. In John 12:24 the LORD Jesus Christ says something that is different from our common perception concerning death, asserting that life comes from death and fruitfulness comes from dying! How can something so terrible as death bear much fruit? In the passage before us, Jesus responds to this question using an illustration of a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies to bears much fruit. Unlike the grain of wheat whose death is the germination of life for a great crop and harvest, Christ’s death generates a plentiful harvest of souls in whom He will reproduce His Life; that is, those that He will bring from the dead to spiritual life.

God re-shapes death as a gateway to life. Spiritual death to self is now the only way back to God, so we can embrace the way of the LORD Jesus Christ, the way of the Cross ... so that Jesus Christ's experience of the resurrection will be the experience of all who die in the LORD Jesus Christ – they will spend eternity with Him in His Presence – that’s the way we come to the LORD Jesus Christ when we die to self. Therefore, we must embrace this transition that the Grace of God has effected, the transition that teaches us that it is through death that we can live and see the love of God.

Have you died to self in order to live with Christ? Are you living for the LORD Jesus Christ?