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Revived from the Dead
by A.J. Wilson

“For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” Romans 11:15

The nation of Israel, the seed of Abraham, is the chosen vessel to take God’s message throughout the world.  We read in Exodus 19:6 that “And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Yet sadly for them, they rejected their mission and chose to follow after other gods, and their own sinful pursuits.  Their failure enables us to see that it is impossible for man to gain righteousness in his own merits.  Paul shows us throughout much of the book of Romans how it is impossible for man to achieve salvation alone (Romans 2:12, 3:10, 23, 6:23), and that it is only through faith in Jesus that salvation can be achieved (3:25, 4:5, 5:1, 9:30, 10:8-10).  The Jews could not get over the stumbling block of the “law” (9:32). 

Often when I read about the Jews in the Bible, my mind wanders into our current churches.  From what I have seen in many churches, Christians in general turn into ‘Jews’ the longer it has been since they have been saved.    Let me say that differently, we often forget that we are sinners saved by grace and begin thinking of ourselves as higher status than we should.  One particular group of Jews really draws me to these comparisons, the Pharisees.

Jesus teaches to this group in Matthew 15.  The Pharisees were trying to say that Jesus’ disciples were not good Jews because they weren’t following Jewish tradition.  Jesus’ response (vs 8-9) quotes Isaiah 29:13, Jesus says (in NLT paraphrase) “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God's commands with their own man-made teachings”.  It would be like us trying to be great Baptists, but God wants us to be Christians.  We can be Baptist Christians, but not the opposite. 

We still have the opportunity though.  Draw close to God through Bible reading and prayer.  God will shake us up sometimes by allowing us to minister to a saved sinner.  We can have our own fire stirred by seeing the “newly saved” and their enthusiasm.  Let our church be described as in the verse above, as a church accepted by “life from the dead.”

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