For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

The resurrection life of Jesus Christ is at work in us. Because we’re linked together with Christ, we’re transformed by the power of his death and resurrection. Paul firmly believed that we needed to know this.

In today’s passage, Paul makes the argument that in Christ we all died. We’ve been buried with him. Together with him, we’ve left our old lives behind. Those lives – with all their worries and failures and regrets – have ended.

We’ve moved on with Christ. In Christ, we’re stepping into new life, a life unbreakable. We’re secure forever in him. Nothing can shake us. To paraphrase the Psalm, even though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we’ll fear no evil for Christ is with us.

There is in each of us who are in Christ a deep and rarely tapped well of courage: the courage of those who have stared down death. We died in him and yet today we live. We died; what can hurt us? We died; what can stop us? We died; what can kill us?

Death in all it’s forms – the physical, the social, the relational, the vocational, the financial – death can no longer intimidate us. Jesus lost everything he owned, lost his “job” as a rabbi, lost his closest friends, lost the approval of society, and – ultimately – lost his life. And yet here he is, full of new life.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid of death in any of its forms? What distractions would fall away? What risks might you take for Christ and his kingdom?