The Book of Life

A devotional from Music for the Soul by Alexander Maclaren...

"A book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name." Mal. 3:16

"The "Book of Life," it is called in the New Testament. Its designation in the Old might as well be translated "the book of living" as the "book of life." It is a register of the men who are truly alive.

Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the common place of the New Testament, that anything which is worth calling life comes to us, not by creation or physical generation, but by being born again through faith in Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else dead spirits the life which He bestows upon all them that trust Him. In the New Testament "life" is far more than "being"; far more than physical existence; removed by a whole world from these lower conceptions, and finding its complete explanation only in the fact that the soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, love, aspiration, and obedience, is the only soul that really lives. All else is death - death! He "that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth" [1 Tim. 5:6]...In spite of all the feverish activities, the manifold vitalities, of practical and intellectual life in the world, the deepest, truest life of every man who is parted from God by alienation of will, by indifference, and neglect of love, lies sheeted and sepulchered in the depths of his own heart. Brother, there is no life worth calling life, none to which that august name can without degradation be applied except the complete life of body, soul, and spirit in lowly obedience to God in Christ. The deepest meaning of the work of the Savior is that He comes into a dead world, and breathes into the bones - very many and very dry - the breath of His own life. Christ has died for us; Christ will live in us if we will; and, unless He does, we are twice dead.

Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest, best, and noblest life that is possible for him who is united to Jesus Christ, and drawing from Christ his own life. "He that hath the Son hath life: he that hath not the Son hath not life" [1John 5:12]. Either my name and yours are written in the Book of Life, or they are written in the register of a cemetery. We have to make our choice which."

Is your name written in the Book of Life?