Cease to be.

I was reading in my devotional the other day, and he was talking about death - physical death. He says when you die physically, you stop being or cease to be. You are no longer. You're dead. Completely gone from this earth.

Then he went on to say - Jesus calls us to die to our sin natures, to our old self. This means that it has to cease to be. How powerful that is. Because of my Savior's boundless, amazing grace, I can be dead indeed to sin - but alive to Christ my Savior.

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

This music video by Tenth Avenue North is really powerful, and I'm not exactly sure why this post reminded me of the video, but it did. So I'll just let the music do the talking.