According to the Bible, death and resurrection are vital both to our Christian life and to God's economy. Apart from death and resurrection, it is impossible for God to accomplish His purpose. Throughout God's creation we see the principle of death and resurrection. For example, if a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will produce many grains. In John 12:24 the Lord Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." For a single grain to die and bear much fruit means that it is multiplied into many other grains. Here we see death and resurrection. We also see death and resurrection illustrated in the hatching of a chicken out from an egg. When the shell is broken, the life within it is released, and a baby chicken comes out. Furthermore, the process of death and resurrection is illustrated by the metabolism that takes place in our body. In metabolism something is always dying, and something else is rising up in resurrection. Hence, metabolism is actually a process of death and resurrection. Within us something is always dying so that we may live. Because this matter of death and resurrection is so important to our Christian life, I am burdened to give still another message on the subject of dying to live, a message that will help us see how to be conformed to the death of Christ.
Although we may recognize the need to die, we may not know how to die. Recently, a number of saints have testified that although they have tried to die, they have not been successful in doing so. Not only is it difficult to die; it is even difficult to point out the way to die. I have been in the process of dying for more than fifty years, and I am still learning how to do it. Although it is very difficult to explain what is the way to die, in this message I shall try my best to present the way to you.
Regarding this matter, the first thing we Christians need to realize is that God wants us to die. Some Christians hold the mistaken concept that God wants us to die because we are sinful. They may say, "I don't like my sinful old man. Because he is so evil, he must die." Before we were saved, we loved ourselves a great deal and appreciated ourselves very much. But once our being was exposed to the light, we began to hate ourselves. The more light we receive from the Lord, the more we are exposed; and the more we are exposed, the more we hate our ugly self. Thus, many Christians think that we must die because we are so evil, sinful, and ugly. This concept, however, is not accurate. The Lord Jesus had to die, not only on the cross, but also daily during His life on earth, and He certainly was not sinful. On the contrary, He was altogether right and lovable in the eyes of God. There was nothing evil about Him. Nevertheless, even such a pure, perfect, lovable, and sinless Person had to die. When He came forth to minister, the first thing He did was to present Himself to John the Baptist to be buried. Even the Lord Jesus had to die.
If we would know how to die, we need to see clearly that the reason we must die is not because we are sinful, but simply because we are human. Since you are a human being, God wants you to die. This has nothing to do with being evil. In fact, the better you are, the more you need to die. Therefore, we need to have a change of concept about the necessity of dying. We must die because God's economy requires us to die. Even the Lord Jesus, the holy, perfect, sinless, lovable One, had to die. Then what about us? We must die also, not because we are evil, but because we are human. Do not think that you must die because you hate others. No, you must die because you love others so much. The more loving we are, the more we need to die. God's economy requires this.