Noah, my middle son, used to bring me bittersweet from our woods when he was very little. He would say, “I love you, Mommy! Here are sweetberries for you!” To this day, whenever I see bittersweet I think of how my beloved son, out of his love for me, turned the bittersweet into sweetness.
I am also reminded of how God used His Beloved Son to turn the bitterness of death into the sweetness of Life Eternal with Him—out of his love for us.
Inside the bright red berries is the seed of the plant which brings life—in the case of the bittersweet plant, more bittersweet. The seeds, though, have to die and be buried before they can sprout into a harvest of new life.
Jesus Christ is The Seed promised in Genesis 3:15 to bring the harvest of Life. In His case, to bring His Life—a life lived unto God. Death, burial and resurrection to the harvest of new Life all came from Him, The Seed. Christ’s perfect deep red blood was given so that new Life could begin. The Seed did not fail…
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;for he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:1-14 NASB