I Corinthians 15:50-58

"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" - What does that mean? We are all flesh and blood...does that mean we cannot be a part of God's kingdom? No, that's not what that means. Scripture tells is that as followers of Christ, we are the sons and daughters of God...through the sacrifice of Jesus we qualify to inherit the kingdom of our Father. Paul is giving us some deep insight into the reality of existence which we often ignore. We are living in the flesh...we are living in the finite...we are living in the perishable world. Yet there is a deeper, richer reality that exists...there is true reality that exists in the presence of God. A reality that is spiritual...a reality that is infinite...a reality that is imperishable. Because we cannot fully see and experience this reality now, we usually choose not to think about it (It isn't much fun to ponder our extreme frailty!). But the fact is - we should be living for the eternal now. We should be practicing for forever...we should spend our time, creativity, strength, intelligence working side by side with God to cultivate the eternal in life...not the perishing. If you and I want to truly be a part of the Kingdom of God, we cannot serve the flesh. We cannot live for things that are passing away. We cannot waste the God given time we have on earth chasing the lies of this world and material things that we cannot take with us into true reality.

"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed" - What does that mean? Paul is looking forward to a future when the end has come...the final trumpets blare (This could be metaphorical, but if there really are trumpets I imagine them sounding like the horn at Helm's Deep in Two Towers the movie - imagine that sound blaring throughout the earth...that would be really cool!)...Jesus returns and there will be some people who are still living on the earth that have no experienced death - they have never gone to "sleep." Regardless of whether you are dead or living when the end comes, the children of God who have chosen to serve the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of this world will put on immortality. We will finally understand what life is really supposed to be life...we will be fully connected to our Creator God and we will out on the imperishable perfected flesh we were designed to wear before we brought corruption into ourselves. Needless to say - it will be very very good!!!

"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law" - Again, what does that mean? It sounds really cool, but it also sounds strange. Isn't the sting of death, the fact that you are DEAD!? Why is the sting of death...sin? Isn't the law something beneficial that God gave us? Why is the law the power of sin? Think of this verse in the terms of an actual scorpion sting. When a scorpion stings a person, what are they doing to it? They are injecting it with poison. If enough poison is injected into a person, the result is death. Like a scorpion sting, spiritual death is caused by rebelling against the Law if God. See the power of sin is the law...when we break the law we have sinned. When we sin, we bring poison and corruption into our beings, which leads to spiritual death. So while death and separation from God is the end result...the sting is actually the sin that poisons our lives and brings about that death. But that is not the end of the story...PRAISE GOD!!! Jesus came to earth and found every human being writhing in spiritual agony...full of poison and corruption...in the throes of death that sin had put them in...and then on the cross he drew the poison from their bodies (from our bodies) into himself...he suffered the agony of separation from God...suffered the anguish of our sin and the shame that came with it...he died so that we could experience real life. Thank you Jesus! Don't make a mockery of his sacrifice by living for the meaningless...live for eternity now!