The Green Sustainable Life

The vice president of a company died. Early the next morning an ambitious junior officer came to speak with the president, “It certainly is sad about our company’s loss.  I’m sure you feel that everything should keep going. I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but I would like to talk to you about me taking his place.” Without hesitation he replied, “That’s fine with me if you can work it out with the funeral director.”


Go Green! Help the environment! This is the only world we have – Take care of it! People are so conscious of clean air, clean water and clean homes, but what about clean lives? The earth is not our permanent home. We are just visiting as strangers and pilgrims (Hebrews 11:13). Even so, these days it seems that more people are concerned with chlorofluorocarbons than the church of our Lord. Earth Day takes precedence over Sunday, pine trees over praying knees, critters over Christ, and dead water over living water. Yes, this is our Father’s world (Psalm 24:1) and we ought to take care of it. However, we have something else which belongs to our Father that is far more important than any dog or frog – an eternal soul (Ezekiel 18:4). It is from the earth in which we have been made. It is where we live, eat, and where our bodies will return at death (Ecclesiastes 12:7). We are earthly people with earthly minds. We do not pretend to comprehend the nature of the heavenly, but we are all “...longing for a better country – a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).Yet, that heavenly country sometimes seems so far away. Some speak of heaven as a deluded dream or a fanciful fairy tale. We might even catch ourselves wondering what it would be like “if we were there”. Jesus said heaven is real and prepared for those who trust in Him (John 14:1-3). Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1, 14) and the word is truth (John 17:17). Do you believe Jesus? Peter told us of “...an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4).


[2 Timothy 2:22-26] Heaven is green. It has always been green and will be green long after the earth is gone because nothing defiled or polluted will ever be there. Pollution comes from sin. The green life is one that abstains from the pollutions of an earthly world (Acts 15:20; 2 Peter 2:20), in order to enter the heavenly world. That is the difference between the earthly man and the heavenly man. Earthly-minded individuals focus on what they have done for themselves, but heavenly-minded individuals focus on what God has done for them (Matthew 7:7-11; James 1:17). While in the body we live amidst the crooked, perverse and profane – Satan’s sinful agents who detect and destroy. It is a tragic reminder of the first earthly man and woman enticed to sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2, 3). Christians are mere earthly “Adams” dressed in the blood of Christ (Galatians 3:27; Revelation 1:5) with the living hope of bearing Christ’s heavenly image. The apostle Paul explained it by saying, “The first man (Adam) was of the dust of the earth, the second man (Jesus) from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47-49). Thus, our earthly nature will not continue. We all have a dying earthly side and a living spiritual side. The earthly physical body will not be everlasting (2 Peter 3:10). However, the spirit is eternal (Matthew 25:46). Knowing this, what is really more important – a green earth with its days numbered and will not continue or a “green” spirit that will live forever. Are you focused on the earthly or the heavenly? Go Green! Clean up your life! You can’t work it out with the funeral director.