Early in the film Edge of Tomorrow, a superior officer sneers at Major William Cage, “Tomorrow you will be baptized… born again.” It might seem like a throwaway line, just another part of a long string of dark military dressing down. But like so many significant lines in stories, it turns out to be truer than the speaker knows. Cage does go into the water. He does die. And he does come back. Again. And again. And again.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) is Groundhog Day as an alien invasion movie. William Cage, played by Tom Cruise, gets caught in a time warp and what follows is a strange catechism, a liturgy. Cage wakes up every morning on the same day, in the same place, marches toward the same battle, and gets himself killed—sometimes heroically, often pathetically. But slowly, each death begins to teach him something. He learns when to duck. He learns where the enemy will strike. He learns what to say (what not to say). He learns how to fight. More importantly, he learns how to save others. And in the process, he is remade.
I’m not saying this is a Christian movie or that the writers or directors necessarily intended a Christian moral, but I just think it’s a helpful picture for the Christian life.
At the beginning, Cage is a cocky coward. A media officer. All polish and no grit. He knows how to talk about war but not how to fight it. He survives by avoiding danger, by spinning narratives, by self-preservation. But the loop will not allow that life to stand. To live, he must die. To move forward, he must give himself up. Every day, he is stripped of another layer of fear, another excuse, another selfish instinct. And slowly—through countless deaths—he becomes a soldier. A real one. He learns obedience. Courage. Sacrifice. Love.
This is not accidental. It is actually how God teaches His people to live.
The Christian life is not a single dramatic moment followed by effortless glory. It is daily death. “I die daily,” Paul says. Jesus says the same thing in other words: take up your cross—daily. You don’t learn to live well without dying to yourself. You don’t learn to love without losing your life. You don’t learn holiness without killing sin. God does not train His saints through comfort but through death-and-resurrection practice.
Cage’s repeated deaths are not pointless resets. They are formation, discipleship. He becomes the kind of man who can see what’s coming, who can anticipate, who can step into danger for the sake of others, who can give himself away without flinching. That’s sanctification. That’s discipleship. That’s wisdom. That’s the long obedience in the same direction—punctuated by failure, repentance, and grace.
While we are not literally caught in a time warp, if you stop and think about it for a moment, your days do have a ton of repetition: you wake up, you get ready for your day, you head to school or work, you ride the same bus, take the same route, maybe have the same lunch, the same coffee break, some of the same chit-chat with co-workers, you do the same chores (again), the same laundry (didn’t you just wash that thing yesterday?), then dinnertime, then homework with the kids, then bedtime, then your alarm is blaring once again.
For pagans, time is meaningless. For secularism, time marches blindly forward. But Ecclesiastes says that while there is repetition (there is nothing really new under the sun), there is a beginning and an end that God is working out (Eccl. 3). There is repetition and progress. There is repetition and change. Why is there is so much repetition? Because God wants His people to learn, to grow, to repent, to improve. You have that same conversation with your wife, your husband, one of the kids, your neighbor — multiple times — because God is giving you multiple chances to get it right. Say it better. Do it over. Do it again. Become a pro. Learn wisdom.
At the end of the movie, something changes. Cage finally loses his life for real. No reset button. No waking up on the tarmac. The alien blood that kept him in the time loop is gone. But He gives himself completely to destroy the enemy at the center of it all. And it is the blood of that enemy, spilled in the moment of his death, that grants him a final beginning. One more morning. A new world. Victory secured for him and for all his friends.
Here, if you’re trying to woodenly trace some kind of gospel arc to the story it could seem like Cage has become good enough or worked hard enough to earn his “resurrection.” That would be terrible theology. We do not die daily in order to earn resurrection. We die daily because resurrection is already guaranteed. But if it’s just an entertaining movie with some fun themes, you can just flip the script at the end and see it as a cool picture of Christ: Christ has gone before us. He truly and finally gave His life, and His blood has destroyed the enemy that enslaved us. Because He died, we will live. Because He rose, all our practice deaths—our repentance, our self-denial, our love poured out—are not wasted. They are training.
This life really is a great rehearsal. We are practicing for forever. Every act of obedience, every sacrifice, every small death to self is preparation for really living. One day, we will wake up, and the loop will be over. And then, at last, we will live. And we will finally be ready for life.
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