"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

    "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5).

    We really shouldn't expect people who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ to believe, think, speak, act and relate in the same manner as those who do.

    Passing by cemeteries, we don't look to see the activities of the living.  Neither should we seek life in those whom the Bible declares to be spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1).  Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ who declared, "I am the life," human beings possess no capacity for the goodness and godliness that reveals true vitality (John 14:6).  The influence of the Holy Spirit in the world may lead to some facsimile of righteous behavior, along with upbringing and cultural norms influenced by Judeo-Christian teaching.  We all know unbelievers who live outwardly moral lives that may even seem to surpass the quality of life lived by some believers.  Such expression of goodness does not change the fact of inward spiritual emptiness, however, and we shouldn't be surprised when the dead act as they are in fact dead.

    The Gospel of the Lord Jesus involves the giving of life to the dead.  We share Christ not first and foremost to pluck bad fruit and attach good to a corrupted plant.  We rather seek to be the means by which God plants a tree of life, His life, in those who respond to the saving grace of the Lord Jesus.  Thereby, good and expected fruits of godliness should appear as the living Christ bears His sublime harvest of righteousness in thought, attitude, word, relationship and deed.  Indeed, life conceives and births life.  Nothing else can accomplish this spiritually organic miracle, and thus we save ourselves much frustration and perplexity by not seeking the living among the dead.

"To live is Christ."
(Philippians 1:21)
"The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God."
(Galatians 2:20)