Court Not Death

So, there I am reading through Wisdom and these words grabbed my attention:

Court not death by your erring way of life, nor draw to yourselves destruction by the works of your hands. Because God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living . . . . But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are in his possession experience it. (Wisdom 1:12-13; 2:23-24).

God called everything He made during the six days of Creation, “good.”

Death was not part of that creation. Death came with our fall.

Then my mind drifted to Ezekiel 18: Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed . . . For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies," declares the Lord God. "Therefore, repent and live."

I can almost hear the emotion catch in His throat as he pleads with us to turn from our sins, to “not court death by our erring way of life.”

God, who gave His Son to pay for our sins, did not make death. It was because of sin that death entered His good creation.

And so I contemplated a sober truth. God, "who has no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies," gives us a choice: Repent and live, or ignore His pleas . . . and die.