Finality

I'm sure you all know the hymn, "Jesus Paid It All".  But have you heard it lately?  I hadn't...until recently.  I bought the most recent Passion: Everything CD just for this song and I listened to it I think 50 times yesterday during my Day Alone With God.  Read the words.  And don't just read them quickly to read them, but listen to what they're saying. They're powerful.  There's also an extra chorus at the end that the new musicians put to it.

 

I hear the Savior say

"Thy strength indeed is small

Child of weakness, watch and pray

Find in Me Thine all in all"

 

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow

 

Lord, now indeed I find

Thy power and Thine alone

Can change the lepers spots

And melt the heart of stone

 

And when before the throne I stand in Him complete

Jesus died my soul to save my lips shall still repeat

 

Oh praise the One who paid my debt

And raised this life up from the dead

 

 

There's so much finality in what this says; so much simplicity.  It's supposed to final.  Jesus did pay the final debt, it's over.  Never again to we have to worry about the right sacrifice being given, He did it once for all and "It is finished".

 

The other part that really stuck out to me was the extra chorus, "Oh praise the One who paid my debt, And raised this life up from the dead".  That really pierces my heart.  But it stuck out to my because I was studying a verse in John 4:14: "Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  The notes on this verse say that the words "welling up" are meant to be extremely powerful.  It's a vigorous term meaning a vigorous, abundant life!  "In him was life, and that life was the light of men."  John 1:4

 

Jesus came that we may have life and have it to the fullest!  It wasn't meant to be a life lived in ho-hum existence just drifting along a lazy river.  He raised this life up from the dead!  We are a new creation.  We were once dead and now we are alive!  The water He gives is to become a spring of water WELLING up to eternal life!  In Him we find life!  It is meant to be abundant life. 

 

So often the world talks about Carpe Diem and living life to the fullest, but apart from God you can never experience abundant life.  I have a well of living water in me that will never run dry.  I will never thirt or hunger ever again.  I have it all.  But the questions remains...am I using all that is inside of me.  Am I tapping into the well that is laid out before me?  Am I living in the abundant life that God meant for me to live in?  Am I giving an injustice the terms "abundant life"?  And what does that truly mean?  What does "life" entail fully? 

 

The gospel of John uses the term "life" more than any other book.  He uses it in reference to life given by God and through God.  It's a four-letter word that has a huge meaning that I don't think I quite understand.