You destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:10)
In the climactic scene of the new Sherlock Holmes movie (A Game of Shadows), Sherlock faces off with his arch enemy, Professor James Moriarty, in a battle of wits. After considering every possible point of attack, and anticipating Moriarty’s response, he concluded that the only way he could possibly defeat him was by grabbing him with both arms and jumping off of a cliff . . . in order to defeat his foe, he had to be willing to share his fate.
No one watching A Game of Shadows thought Moriarty had killed Sherlock. It was clear that Sherlock had given his life to defeat his mortal enemy. But the cross of Jesus is much more difficult to decipher. The cross seemed to be the defeat of Jesus of Nazareth, and to the religious leaders of his day, it was just so. But we who cherish the cross as the emblem of our faith know that what it represents is the defeat of death, not the defeat of Christ. The day Christ died the death of the cross, death flatlined. Christ arose, but death remained in the ground.
Now if in the next installment of the Sherlock saga, Sherlock continues to wrestle against Dr. Moriarty, even though he killed him in the last episode, it would not make for a very good threequel. Ain’t nobody got time to watch Sherlock waste his time fighting with a defeated foe!
How foolish do you think we look from heaven’s perspective when we continue to struggle against the powers of death that have already been vanquished on our behalf through the cross of Christ? We spend so much of our time struggling and wrestling and asking God to help us in our struggle that we fail to see how victorious we are. Death doesn’t even have a pulse anymore! Life and immortality are the order of the day!
The word of the Lord to you today is simple: stop struggling, stop wrestling. The fight has already been fought. The battle has already been waged. The victory has already been obtained. You win. The end!
