Christ, the Life of All the Living

Christ, the Life of All the Living

LSB #420

v.1: Christ, the life of all the living,
Christ, the death of death, our foe,
Who, Thyself for me once giving
To the darkest depths of woe:
Through Thy sufferings, death, and merit
I eternal life inherit.
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be,
Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. All life comes from Him and is sustained by Him. And to say that “God” created is to say that all of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were active in that creating. Or as this hymn begins, Christ, the life of all the living. But He is even more than that! For when we sacrificed the life that He gave by sin and plunged ourselves into death, He did not just accept that. Jesus came and gave Himself to restore life to His creation. How? By becoming the death of death! What a great line that is. By His own death on the cross and then resurrection from the grave, Jesus dealt death itself a death blow. And if death is dead, then it has no power over us anymore. Which means life for us again! And not just life, but eternal life. So this verse concludes Thousand, thousand thanks shall be, Dearest Jesus, unto Thee. Indeed! Yet even far too little is our thanks for all that God has done for us.