“If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” – Romans 14:8
Most of the time, when we are so bombarded with suffering and persecutions, we don’t know why we are still living or we lose the sense of living anymore. We often don’t want to live anymore, but we also don’t want to die because we are afraid of what is after if we die. We are so afraid of uncertainties and we don’t want to deal with anything. To us, it is already enough that we are already suffering here, so we don’t want to feel pain or anything. Thus, we are really almost like living without the desire of living, or we are living to have the desire to die but don’t really want to die.
Now, if we have this kind of mindset, maybe we are living for a different reason or mindset. We must check and reassess ourselves because clearly, our reason to live is wrong. That is why we have this kind of mindset. So, our verse today gives us a different mindset of living and dying. Paul clearly wrote that if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Paul is not really pushing us to do this or is telling us that if we will not follow this, we will die.
However, the point of Paul is that as we desire to be saved, we should have Jesus in our hearts. We must have a personal relationship with Christ. Our salvation clearly belongs to the Lord and that the only for our salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. If we receive and believe in the name of Jesus, then we are saved. In connection with this truth, having Christ in our lives, and letting Him transform us into a new person, we now belong to the Lord. It is not us who are living but it is the Lord living in us. Those selfish desires should not be our priority now, but our priority should be living for the Lord.
Thus, if we are in Christ, the manifestation of being in Him is living for Him and dying for Him. If we live for Him, then we will be able to seek His Will always and to follow Him. We will live a life as people who are Christ’s disciples and we will pursue righteousness and holiness with the power He has given to us. That also goes to the fact that we are also going to die and we should also die for the Lord. As we are saved by grace through faith, we are then dying for the Lord now, we belong to the Lord.
Therefore, having this mindset in our minds, we now have a new reason to live. That is to not live for ourselves but to live for the Lord. We are now living for God and we are dying for Him. Thus, this will give us the desire to live without being burdened by our sufferings, but instead, we will be rejoicing with our sufferings. Also, it will give us the peace of mind that we won’t fear death anymore, but we delight in it because it is just a doorway to be with God in heaven through faith in Jesus Christ.
