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A Time of Accountability

"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:4). What a safe place to be. The only place you're safe is dead! As long as you're alive and roaming around, there's always a lion seeking to devour you. The safest place that you can find is one of personal death--reckoning yourself dead daily. Then your life will be hid with Christ in God. If you're alive, you're becoming prey. If you're dead, you're in the solace of that secret hiding place of Christ in God.

"When Christ, who is our life [for me to live is Christ]..." (Col. 3:4). Not only is He the source of life, but the reason for life. The reason I'm living is Christ. Life is vanity without Him. There's no reason for us to go on. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die; party yourself to death. There's no reason to live. Some might say, "What do you mean there's no reason to live? We could build a better world for other people." You mean so they could go to hell in a better world? In the scope of things, our lives are but vapors--here one day, literally gone the next. Man wasn't created for eighty years; man was created for eternity! You need to start thinking about this transition period called "life" as a time of accountability, the reckoning of which kingdom you're going to identify with and spend eternity in. The Scripture calls it the separating the sheep from goats, wheat from tares, good fruit from bad fruit, fresh water from salty water. It's an accounting process. "And when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory."

"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth..." (Col. 3:5). Here's that death that Paul is talking about. "Mortify" means "put to death." In light of this doctrine, crucify yourself; deny yourself; know yourself. Identify what's in your members. In this whole accounting period of life, sin will be in your members. What makes you different from me? We're all eternal beings who have souls and live in bodies. This is our identity: I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ that liveth in me. We became separated with Adam; we were born into sin, the enemies of God. What makes you different than me are the things that we call "besetting sins." We are all sinners, but some of us sin with more socially acceptable sins. Some sin is not only permitted in churches but is admired. We would call it "industriousness." We might say, "These are real workers in the church!" Yet they're self-righteous, proud of their abilities, and critical of others' weaknesses because they naturally excel and are more disciplined. These sins can remain camouflaged and even admired by others, but it's a reproach; it's self.

Then there are those among us that are slothful, sloppy, lazy, like a door turning on its hinges. We look down on those people and despise them. Then there are the drunks, the fat people, the smokers--people that can't control their fleshly appetites. They're controlled by something outside. You can look around and see everybody else's sin but your own. You're crucifying the wrong person! It's you that needs to be crucified! It's so easy to look out and see everybody else's sin and everybody else that needs to be crucified. You're the man! The reason most of us can't get crucified is because we can't find ourselves! We don't know who we are. We've lied to ourselves so long that we look at the "WANTED" poster and can't recognize ourselves. Are we able to identify ourselves?

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