What Does It Mean To Be Dead? - Part 1

Part 1 - Rotten to the Core

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins," (Ephesians 2:1)

What does it mean to be dead in sin? What causes such death? By what means can a person be made alive? These aren't easy questions, and the concept of spiritual death is strange to us. I'll try and tackle each question separately, beginning with what it means to be dead.

Under Sin & No Good
Reformed doctrine speaks of "Total Depravity" - a potentially misleading term necessitated by the acronym "TULIP." Sproul prefers "radical (or core) corruption." That is to say, "That sin penetrates to the root or core of our being. Sin is not tangential or peripheral, but arises from the center of our being." (Sproul, What is Reformed Theology?)

• "...we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; “Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths, And the path of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”" (Romans 3:9-18)

To be "under sin" is to be under the control of sin. All are slaves to sin, corruption and death (Jn 8:34, 2 Pet 2:19, Rom 6:16-18, Tit 3:3) - sin is our master, and we wish for no other. In the first 3 chapters of Romans, Paul methodically - even ruthlessly - demonstrates that we are all guilty of sinning against God. His conclusions are clear and terrible, like the judge's gavel punctuating final sentence. "That every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable (under judgment, under sentence, condemned) to God." Even in introducing the remedy - "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ," he once again pronounces the dreadful reality that, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Man's corruption extends even to his good deeds, for these are not done unto God, but unto self-preservation, or self-esteem, or self-righteousness - all odious to a God who is primarily concerned with the motive behind every deed. Truly can Paul state that no man does good.

Am I Really Vile?

Death, however, is laden with additional connotations. This corruption is not merely academic, a clever thought to be analyzed or pondered in order that we might align our doctrinal ducks; rather, it speaks directly to the foulness of our condition. In Rock of Ages, Augustus Toplady wrote, "Vile I to the fountain fly, wash me Savior or I die." How many of us think ourselves truly vile, or foul? Most of us were raised with some level of decency - oh sure, we slipped up here and there, but we were hardly "vile." We reserve such terminology for serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles. Our books and movies even convince us that criminals can be good people (Ocean's 12, Spartacus, Gross Pointe Blank, etc.) - how much more so law-abiding citizens such as ourselves? Some of us put faith in Christ at a young age and are conflicted when we sing such verses as, "Amazing grace... that saved a wretch like me," or read that "we were enemies" of God who "formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind." Reading in Titus that, "We also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another," we struggle to relate and perhaps even question the authenticity of our salvation.

The Living Dead

Let death be understood then. It does not merely describe the inability of man to respond to God - although it does that most effectively. It does not simply define the impossible chasm that separates unsaved man from His creator - although this infinite divide most certainly exists. It does not only delineate the saved from the unsaved, but serves to convey the most appalling realizations. A dead body isn't a pretty thing. It quickly becomes a wretched thing. Many horror movies make use of the "living dead" in order to present us with a character utterly contemptible, devoid of any appeal, and to remove from us any compassion or sympathetic feeling for them whatsoever. As we are presented with their decomposing flesh, their wooden motions, their insensitivity to any pain, their lack of remorse for the most ghastly crimes upon which they are fixated, we can only hate them and wish for their absolute and final annihilation. Sadly, this zombie-like state is a fitting descriptive for the mass of walking dead that is humanity. Physically alive for a while, death works from the inside out until the body soon follows - as it always has, beginning with Adam.

Deadly Looks

It is, however, important to recognize that, while all are most truly and equally dead, the appearance is not always consistent. Spurgeon draws on the events in which Jesus resurrected 3 different people (sermon #127). Jairus' daughter (Mk 5, Lk 8), the widow's son (Lk 7), and Lazarus (Jn 11.) He states that, "that the death is the same in all cases; but the manifestation of it is different." In the case of the young girl, the effects of death were hardly visible. Her family members were still with her in the room and funeral plans had not even begun. So it is with many young people - they are innocent of many evils, and it can be difficult to distinguish the living from the dead. Indeed, when such people receive resurrecting life from Jesus they do not have the before-after contrast that would have occurred were they to remain longer in grip of sin and death. We - and I include myself in this category - often make the mistake of lamenting the absence of such a contrast. We think that it would be better to have had a more dramatic testimony of conversion; that such would surely furnish a greater certainty of salvation. However, this is to wish that we had sinned against God more in order to prove the grace of God - something that scripture decries strongly. It is to wish that we might have continued to atrophy, to become more desperate in our sin, and to inflict our sickness on those around us. Should we desire the devil's company and mastery in order that we might better know what Christ has rescued us from? May it never be! Pointing to Jesus' command that the resurrected little girl be given something to eat, Spurgeon concludes:

• When young people are converted who have not yet acquired evil habits; when they are saved before they become obnoxious in the eyes of the world, the command is, “Give them meat.” Young people want instruction, they want building up in the faith; they generally lack knowledge; they have not the deep experience of the older man; they do not know so much about sin, nor even so much about salvation as the older man that has been a guilty sinner; they need to be fed. So that our business as ministers when the young lambs are brought in, is to remember the injunction, “Feed my lambs;” take care of them; give them plenty of meat. Young people, search after an instructive minister; seek after instructive books; search the Scriptures, and seek to be instructed: that is your principal business. “Give her meat.”

Rather than wish that we had experienced - even practiced - more evil, we should rejoice that Christ reached into our graves and granted our salvation before we had putrefied any further. We should seek understanding from scripture, allowing God's words to inform us of what we truly were and how necessary was our salvation.

Without the supernatural intervention of God, the manifestations of death would have quickly made their mark on Jairus' little girl. Soon she would have been like the widow's son. Unlike the girl, he was hidden in a coffin. Those present would have recoiled in disgust and grief from the appearance of his body. More so the body of Lazarus. Dead for 4 days, his rotting corpse emitted such a stench that even his sister - she who had just said, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God" - even this sister wavered when faced with the thought of opening her brother's tomb.

An Affront to God

As with these 3 who died, so with us spiritual death works its process slowly, inexorably. Some of us Christians might have difficulty at first identifying with scripture's proclamations of our radical corruption, but we must not allow ourselves to be fooled as to our former condition - and the wretched state of those around us who have not yet been saved by Christ. The contrast between saved and unsaved is as extreme as that between a dead corpse and a living person. With out new life from God, each of us is an affront to God - an abomination before Him, and will ultimately be consumed in His fierce wrath.

Part 2...