"Live together or die alone.” This became the motto for the stranded plane crash survivors on the television show Lost during its first season. Faced with a decision to wait on the beach for rescue or to relocate inland near fresh water, the group became divided. To make matters worse, they discovered they were not the only people on the island. The “Others” were a threat to their survival, even kidnapping one of them. The group faced the dilemma: “Live together or die alone.”

This was the dilemma facing the early Christians as well.

According to Acts 2:46: “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” The early Christians wouldn’t live in isolation from one another. They couldn’t. They shared something far too intimate to ignore.

Dying alone

They shared the experience of how lost a person is when isolated from God. Before Jesus came, they didn’t know about God’s love for them. Before Jesus introduced himself as the Christ, they lived in complete isolation from their Creator. That is the loneliest life of all. 

We like to think that we can make it on our own. We pursue love and happiness with our best efforts, but we don’t attain what we seek. Our sins keep getting in the way, isolating us from our perfect Creator’s approval. The more we try to make it on our own, the lonelier we become and the emptier we feel. We were made for God, but we isolate ourselves from him. Without a Savior we would die alone, isolated from heaven.

But Christians have been saved from dying alone. We share the intimate knowledge that Christ ended our isolation. In fact, the Son of God left heaven and joined us on earth. He then “took up our infirmities” (Isaiah 53:4) and trudged alone to a cross. There his Father left him all alone in anguish to bear the penalty for the sins of the world. Jesus was alone in death . . . alone in a tomb.

Living together

But death and a tomb could not keep Jesus isolated from the liv-ing. He rose again, rejoined the living, and gave us hope. Reunited with his disciples, Jesus promised: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Jesus ended our isolation. We now live together with our Lord and together with all believers. Sharing the happiness and love God grants us through his Son, we gladly devote ourselves to “the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). As we read and listen to God’s Word, our Savior draws us close to himself, equipping us with his compassion to reach out to those still trapped in isolation.