“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

                 They could hardly believe their ears.  Already their eyes were covered, or at least not looking up or around.  No, these women were on the ground, faces down, in a position of surrender and helplessness.  What would you do if you saw in a cemetery “two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning” (Luke 24:4)?  What went through their minds on that first Resurrection Sunday when they heard the words, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (v. 5).  Well, where else would they look for him?  What kind of question was that?  But wait, what did they say?  Living… among… the dead?  Yep.  “He is not here; he has risen!”

And why not?  Isn’t that what a living God does?  Or do we sometimes just play with words, not appreciating or even understanding their real meanings?  Does God tell us the truth?  Of course.  But do we really get what he’s saying?  Well, that’s another matter altogether, isn’t it?

Let’s see if the dictionary can help us out.  Living means to have life or being alive.  To be alive means to not be dead.  Death is the state or condition where no life exists.  Dead means to be deprived of life, or lifeless.  Not getting anywhere fast, are we?  But this is the literal, biological sense.  If we compare an unconscious child on a respirator in a hospital with another one that is jumping and playing and swinging in the back yard, we would say that the latter is alive — she is really living compared to the former.  Does this description fit God?  Absolutely.  God is not just existing; he is living it up, in the indescribable glory and sinless splendor of heaven ruling the universe and the affairs of all humanity, drawing people to himself and thoroughly delighting in his children!

Let’s confirm this picture from Scripture.  First, let’s remember Peter’s confession in Matthew 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  What kind of God would send his Son into a sin-sick fallen world?  A living God would, one that has life to spare and share with his unworthy and ungrateful creatures made in his image.  In the next verse Jesus told him it was his Father who gave him a clue, straight from heaven itself.  A bit later his Son confirmed this when answering a question from the Sadducees about the resurrection.  In 22:32 we find his conclusion: “He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”  He was speaking about God being the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who were long dead, but not in Jesus’ mind.  He said they were living because that is what God is — living, full of life with life to pass along to others.

Being fully God in human form, Jesus himself didn’t hesitate using this terminology about himself either.  When speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, he contrasted water from the well with “living water” (v. 10).  Water, the H2O kind, is necessary to sustain earthly life, but living water is necessary to sustain spiritual life because it’s very essence is life, not hydrogen or oxygen.  (See 7:38-39.) Likewise with bread, when he said, “I am the bread of life…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:48, 51).  Eating this bread makes one “live forever,” because life begets life.  The living brings life to the dead.  Our universe only sees the opposite—living things dying.  That is why we struggle with understanding the nature and power of God and simple words that have so much depth and meaning.

Redemptively speaking, then, God then uses this terminology about us, his redeemed creatures: “For we are the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16).  The living God’s presence in our hearts brings life to our hearts!  Picking up the same idea Peter called Jesus “the living Stone” and us “living stones” (1 Peter 2:4).  A stone is lifeless, inanimate material.  That is what we are without the living Stone.  Thus Paul called us “to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…” (Rom. 12:1).  This ought to be a no-brainer.  Why else is he indwelling us, except to develop, mature and perfect that life in us by showing us what it means to be really living in him and for his glory?

If there were a barometer measuring God’s life in you, what would it read: vibrant, growing, stable or comatose?  God is living, and he wants us to demonstrate how we “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thes. 1:9).  When others look at you, do they see real life from the living God?