Unless a Grain of Wheat Dies

When I began preaching on the people of the Bible under the title Unless a Grain of Wheat Dies, I wanted to know how much of their own righteousness they had given up in order to live by God’s word. But as I followed them through the Scriptures, I found that in Jesus Christ they had already laid aside human righteousness, along with greed, anxiety, and doubt, and were living as people dead to the world. They had given themselves up for the righteousness of God. Jesus did not pretend to die on the cross; he truly died. In the same way, they too became people who had died on the cross, and they gave themselves wholly to the gospel.

As I look at the fathers of faith, who longed for a Kingdom of God that can be entered only by dying in faith, I ask myself whether we too, falling short as we do, should take our own first steps of faith. Seeing how holy their lives were, laid down for the sake of God’s name, I wondered whether we, weak as we are, are still holding back. In every age the children of faith who grasped the perfect will of God have spoken and acted alike, and their lives have become an example to many. No one can bear that same witness in word and deed without believing in Jesus Christ with the heart and confessing him with the mouth. So we too must walk boldly along the road the people of faith have traveled.

Why do so few saints tell those who look only at this fast-changing world that heaven can be reached only by believing in Christ? Because they have not first taken the place of dying, beating their bodies and bringing them into submission. The world is littered with temptations, and a moment’s carelessness is all it takes to fall. It is in such a world, a Sodom and Gomorrah, that God’s people now live.

Jesus and many who went before us could be a light to the world because they first lived as people who had died. In the same way, God’s people, charged as they are with preaching the gospel, will keep from swerving to the right or to the left only if they live in God with humility and a born-again faith. Only then can they hold the lamp high in a dark world and call people to come out into the light. To those who have shut their ears and follow nothing but the world’s way, we must proclaim that only by hearing the gospel can they live. If those who believe in a holy God behave just as the world does, the gospel can never be preached. For if the people holding the lamp grow ashamed of it and hide it under their coats, its light helps no one.

Because Jesus said that he is the way, the truth, and the life, we can walk the road to heaven in peace, and with the word of truth as our measure we can hold a faith that does not waver. He gave life to us while we were wandering on the road of death, and so by God’s mercy we have been saved.

Look at the people of faith in Unless a Grain of Wheat Dies. Like the apostle Paul, who confessed that he died daily, in suffering they gave thanks instead and lived to lift up the name of God. They walked the road Jesus Christ had walked and sang his praise along the way, and I hope that you too will hold fast to your faith with joy at all times. If we live with our eyes and our hope fixed on the eternal Kingdom, God in his grace will give us eternal life.

The kingdom we enter only by dying is the kingdom where we live forever. May the love of Christ and a firm resolve of faith toward God remain in your heart when you close this small book. If the whole church becomes one and proclaims Christ, like people raising a lamp to light the world, God will bless you by his grace.

I am grateful to the members of Watercourse Church, who give themselves steadfastly to spreading the gospel. Though it is a book made by many small lamps gathered together, it carries the faith of people who long to push back the darkness, even a little. With that faith I offer it to you.

April 2008
Cho Chun-sook, Pastor of Watercourse Church