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Dead Means Dead
“And you, having been dead in your the trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the fashion of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience.”
(Ephesians 2:1-2)
Shall we simply begin with the notion of being dead in our trespasses? One might think that this is but a simple phrase or idea, yet the consequences of this idea are far ranging in the life of the church today. So Paul speaks to these Christians and tells them that they were once “dead in their trespasses and sins.” Clearly they were alive on a physical level, and so, it is of spiritual life and death that Paul speaks.
Jesus says that lest you be “born again” you cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). John speaks of the believer as one who has passed from death to life and that the love of the brethren is the outward sign of this inward change (1 John 3:14). Similarly, Paul writes that those who indulge themselves in their pet sins are dead even though they are spiritually alive (1 Timothy 5:6) and that those who have been raised with Christ (a reference to the resurrection) will seek things where Christ is (Colossians 3:1-4). It should be said that even earlier in Colossians, Paul wrote of those who were dead in their sins (Colossians 2:13) and that those who are born again are rising from the dead in a spiritual sense (Ephesians 5:14…note that the language of being dead in our trespasses also shows up again in verse 5 of this same chapter). In many ways, it is a reminder of Psalm 80:18 which prays to God that he should give life to his people so that his people will praise his name — a reminder that another litmus test of genuine faith is genuine and sincere worship. There is no spiritual life apart from God and thus, prior to the regeneration worked upon us by the Holy Spirit, we are dead before Him.
The notion is a fairly simple one and one that can be traced through the Scriptures. So, why would people contest it? Sometimes they contest it even without knowing it. Think of it this way: can a dead man do anything on his own? One of the responsibilities that goes along with being a pastor has to do with caring for those who have lost loved ones to death. I do not wish to sound disrespectful or discourteous, but the dead can do nothing on their own. So, if we are going to extend the analogy, it should be vigorously asserted that those who are dead in their sins can do nothing to serve themselves or benefit their spiritual life; there must be a supernatural work of God that is wholly done by God and God alone.
Even so, many in the church follow more of a Wesleyan or Arminian line of thinking about those who are spiritually dead. Instead of dead, they view the person who is not yet regenerated as being spiritually very sick. They still insist that God must do a supernatural work, but they also insist that God only works on those who first choose him. But if a person is able to make a choice — if a person is able to do anything — they cannot be spoken of as being dead, can they? And thus, many Christians, hoping to preserve the illusion that they have a free will to choose or reject the mercies of God, will deny this very clear language that the Apostle uses, suggesting that “dead” doesn’t really mean “dead.”
No, beloved, dead means dead and a dead man can do nothing to either aide or harm himself. And those who are spiritually dead are just that; they are spiritually dead, unable to either aide or harm themselves spiritually. A supernatural work of God must take place. And that means that God does not work because man asked him to work; God works because in his eternal decree, he chose to work in the life of said person, whomever that person may be. It is about God’s doing, not ours. He chose to save us, we did not choose him. If you feel as it you did choose Him at one point, it is only ever because you were responding to the work he was already doing in you. God is sovereign over your salvation if you are saved; you are not. To argue otherwise is to do a disservice to the text.
Faithful Obedience, Not Miracles
“When Herod beheld Jesus, he was very pleased for he had wanted, for a long time, to see him because he had heard about him and he hoped that he might do some sign for him. So, he questioned him with many words, but he would not answer him.”
(Luke 23:8-9)
We all want a magic show, don’t we. We want the skies to part and God’s blessed voice to pronounce to us what by faith we ought to embrace. We want rumbles of thunder to accompany our preaching and miracles abounding to attest to our ministry. I had a friend who once told me, “It would be easier for me to believe that God is real if he would just come down from heaven and show me.” The sad thing is that God has done just that and it did not change the unbelief of wicked men. God spoke from heaven at Jesus’ baptism and people wrote it off. Jesus worked numerous miracles during his ministry and people were attracted to the performance. Everyone wanted to see the spectacle…even the jaded Herod…but unbelief is unbelief no matter how many miracles are worked in one’s presence. Judas witnessed many of Jesus’ miracles firsthand, yet still sold his master into the hands of the wicked.
Miracles do not generate faith. Faith is generated by the Holy Spirit as he gives new life to our sin-dead souls. Miracles are meant to confirm faith — to attest to the truth of who Jesus really is — not to set up a circus act. Thus Jesus did no miracles when he was in the midst of his unbelieving home-town and he will do no miracles here in the presence of Herod. Such is the judgment of God — the wicked left in their rejection and wickedness, the blind remaining so.
Pastors and churches, too, often fall into this trap in a different way. They call a new pastor and expect that in a year or so all of the problems of the church will be resolved, it will be growing and thriving, and they will be enjoying the good fruit that is characteristic of a long and enduring ministry. But that is the point, to see the fruit of a long and enduring ministry, the congregation must learn the patience to allow their pastor, barring any major sin, to have a long and enduring ministry while also submitting to his teaching and leadership. The miraculous is not the mark of the true church; faithful obedience to God’s word is.
The Law of the Jungle
Recently, I read of the following account:
Elephants and rhinos normally get along quite peacefully, though the elephant defends her calf against any hint of aggression. Once a baby elephant at a water hole near Tree Tops Lodge, in Kenya’s Abedare National Park, playfully approached a rhino. The rhino charged, sending the calf squealing back to its mother, and then the rhino sauntered off. The mother elephant was so enraged that she turned and attacked another rhino drinking nearby, sending a tusk into its chest. While tourists watched from the lodge’s terrace, the elephant then held the innocent rhino underwater with her forefeet until it drowned.[1]
The Law of the Jungle is brutal. It is a law that essentially says, you can do whatever you can get away with. It is a law that says that you, the individual, and perhaps (but not always) your family is the only thing that is important. It is a law that permits one not only to hate his enemy, but also to turn on his friend if such is expedient. Power and survival are the sole virtues of the Law of the Jungle and one’s purpose in life is simply the gaining and preservation of power and the propagation of one’s own line. Sacrifice is meaningless unless it brings about that end. The strong survive; all others are merely in the way.
What struck me about this little account of the elephant and the rhinoceros was not only the brutality of the event where the mother enacts her revenge on an uninvolved bystander, but sadly, how often Christians act in much the same way when dealing with one another. True, we typically don’t drown people in watering holes, but how often we drown others with criticism, exclusion, or outright hostility. How often we follow the example of the Jungle and not the example of Christ in our personal dealings.
In the jungle, when one is offended, revenge is the response. There is no such thing as humility or grace, these things belong only to those who bear God’s image. And in the jungle, when revenge is handed out, there is always an escalation of aggression—even a minor offense yielding capital punishment as in this case. There, of course, are many who would point to the brutality of many of the Old Testament Biblical laws, but the concept of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is a principle that states that the punishment must suit the crime. One could not demand execution in response to a personal injury—in the jungle, as the account of the elephant and the rhino illustrates, death is common even for small crimes. It is not a matter of justice, but of severe vengeance served cold and bloody.
It should not be too surprising when non-Christians choose to follow the Law of the Jungle for philosophically they simply see humanity as a highly developed animal living under the same rule as our “cousins” in the animal kingdom. In addition, to really give grace to others, it requires that one have experienced it in a transforming way. And free grace is one of those things that really is unique to Christianity and to the way our God deals with us.
What grieves me is when I see professing Christians choosing to follow the Law of the Jungle instead of another law—the law modeled to us by Christ—is that they demonstrate that they don’t really understand what it is that Christ did on the cross. When Jesus hung upon the cross of Calvary, the man without sin, being judged as a sinner, his words were not that of vengeance, but he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The word we translate as “forgive” is the Greek word ajfi/hmi (aphiami), which means to pardon, forgive, or to release from legal obligation.
We owe a debt to God because we have broken his law. In addition, we owe a debt to God because we have inherited the unpaid debt of our fathers that have gone before us (Exodus 20:5, 34:7). This debt goes back to Adam (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). God is righteous and righteous justice is demanded for sin—we have inherited death and earned wrath. Yet, God chose to do something unheard of; he took the punishment for a group of people upon himself by sending his Son, Jesus Christ to die and bear his wrath in their place—a substitutionary work of atonement. To Christ’s work, we contribute nothing. Jesus has fulfilled the righteous demands of the law on our behalf and we vicariously benefit.
Who is the “we” that benefit? It is those who have been given new life by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3) and are thus drawn to Christ in faith. This is a work totally dependent on God and on his Grace, not upon who we are or what we might be capable of doing. Were it earned in any way or reliant on our works in any way, Grace would no longer be Grace (Romans 11:6). In theological terms, we refer to this as God’s act of election, an act which God chose before the foundation of the earth (Ephesians 1:4,11). We are spiritually dead in our trespasses against God (Ephesians 2:5) before this new life and thus, can do nothing to help ourselves, but are totally and absolutely reliant upon God’s Grace for this salvation. Grace is not favoritism, for favoritism demands that there is a reason one places his affections more so on one person than another; Grace is given where it is not deserved so that the giver of Grace is upheld. Who then is this body of grace-receivers? It is those who are born again believers in Jesus Christ—those who believe in their heart and profess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9).
The sad thing is that so many who profess this betray their hearts when they refuse to show grace to others around them. If you are a professing Christian, you must understand that the bar has been set very high. Christ has shown infinite grace to you; you have an obligation to show grace to others around you. No, it is true that you and I are not capable of the intense level of grace modeled by Christ Jesus; we have been shown a grace that transcends all worldly experience. At the same time, as ones who have received grace that is transcendent we can yet strive for a grace that gives others a taste of the grace that can be found in Christ.
God is not asking you to show others something that he has not first shown to you in super-abundance; he is asking you to show grace to those around you that do not deserve it, who have offended you, and who have rejected the things that you stand for. He has also promised that he will not leave you on your own as you seek to do this, but that he will be with you in the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The next time you are tempted to gossip, complain, slander, undermine, or get angry at another around you, make the decision to show them grace and shed love upon them instead of wrath (even where that wrath is deserved). If you want to see a change in the culture around us, take the lead not from elephants in the wild, but from Jesus Christ. Then step back and watch what God does through your witness.
[1] Cited from: Shreeve, James. Nature: The Other Earthlings. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987. Pg 166.
The Living and the Dead (Psalm 115:17-18)
“The dead do not praise Yahweh,
nor do any who go down in silence.
But we will bless Yahweh from now unto eternity—
Praise Yahweh!”
(Psalm 115:17-18 )
I think that as Christians, we must be careful to redefine the words “living” and “dead” in a way that more clearly demonstrates reality. You may say, excuse me, but isn’t it pretty obvious? You know, if there is a pulse that normally indicates living and if there is no pulse you generally conclude that a person is dead. And I would have to say, that is generally true—but only from a worldly perspective. When our Lord went to heal Jairus’ daughter, for example, what did Jesus tell the mourners when he entered into the house? Indeed, he told them that the girl was not dead but was sleeping (Mark 5:39 ). Do understand that the people of Jesus’ day did understand death—that is why they laughed at him for making such a statement. They understood that by all physical measures, this girl had died.
At the same time, I am not suggesting some kind of theology about a “soul-sleep” that when you die, your soul goes to sleep only to arouse when Gabriel blows his trumpet and our Lord returns. The language of “sleeping” was a common idiom to speak of one who has died. Thus, when Paul talks about those believers who have fallen asleep in faith (1 Corinthians 15:20, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15), he is talking about actual death—the body goes into the ground and the soul goes to be with God—nothing more and nothing less. Yet, in the passage about Jairus’ daughter, he clearly is not using the language of “sleeping” in this way, if he did, it would make his statement nonsensical. Why would our Lord say, “why are you weeping? She is not dead—she is dead.” It makes no sense to think of things this way. Hence, our Lord must be trying to get us to understand that life and death rely on more than a heartbeat and air in the lungs.
With this in mind, we often speak of people in terms of being spiritually dead. Until we are born again through faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we do not have any genuine life within us (Ephesians 2:1-10 ). Though we may walk and talk within this world, we are walking dead—zombies if you will, living and acting upon our instincts and lusts—chasing after sin. It is Christ that gives us life and no other, and apart from Christ there is only death. Note the language that Jesus uses in Matthew 22:32, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God is a living God, who dwells in and with his people—He gives life—so how can one who is dead be indwelt by the Living God? It cannot happen!
So how do we put all of these pieces together? First of all, we must remember that we are not just flesh and blood and that we are not just spirit, but we are both—they cannot be understood apart from each other. Both are essential to defining who we are. In birth, our bodies are given life; in regeneration, our spirits are given life. In addition, the soul of the believer will never see death (Revelation 2:11). The souls of unbelievers will find themselves dying a second time, not just physically, but spiritually in eternal judgment. While the bodies of believers do die and are placed in the ground to rot, because of the covenantal promise of resurrection given by Christ, the body of the believer is still united with Christ, held by him until the time of the resurrection. The bodies of unbelievers will be resurrected as well, but only to judgment in the eternal pit of fire. Thus, when our Lord talks about those like Jairus’ daughter, he is reminding us that this child genuinely is alive even though the heart has ceased to beat—alive in Christ and kept by God the Father.
So how does this effect the interpretation of these verses? If you read this psalm only in terms of physical life or death, it makes little sense. Don’t the saints who have passed ahead of us praise God still? Indeed they do and are! Thus, how can the psalmist say that the dead do not praise God unless the psalmist is speaking of those without faith—those who are spiritually dead, though they still walk and talk within this world? And indeed, it is those who are spiritually dead who go down in silence to the grave—they go into judgment without praise on their lips, only humiliation over their sin. But we who are believers—born again through the blood of Jesus Christ—will praise God with our lips and with our lives, and our praise will not stop at the grave, but will go on from now until the ends of eternity.
Glory to God, and praise and love
Be ever, ever given,
By saints below and saints above,
The church in earth and heaven.
-Charles Wesley
Create a Clean Heart in Me: Psalm 51 (part 11)
“A heart that is clean, you must create in me, O God;
and a spirit that is steadfast, you must continually renew in my being.”
(Psalm 51:12 {Psalm 51:10 in English Bibles})
Oh, how little man can do on his own! It is God who providentially equips him to do anything of lasting value. Artists, composers, architects, writers, musicians, etc… all get their talent from the hand of God—whether they will admit to it or not! Yet, there is one thing within which man can make no strides of his own—we are not providentially equipped or gifted in this area in any way. This area God reserves for himself. And that is the process of saving a man or woman and preparing that person for glory. Paul poses the question of whether man seeks after God in Romans 3:10-18, and his answer is drawn from scripture, beginning with the words of the psalmist in Psalm 14:1-4. Does any seek after God? And scripture gives us a resounding, “NO!”
Oh, beloved, how highly we tend to think of our own actions! Yet, salvation does not come from our works or from our will, but it comes from the will of God (Romans 9:16) and the exercise of his divine compassion on those he has chosen for his own. In addition, as we reflect on both parts of salvation—the justifying work of God and the sanctifying work of God—we are reminded that both are again in God’s hands. One is justified—made right with God in Christ—but only once in life—what God has done and promised to do, he will not relent upon. Yet, there is an ongoing process of sanctification that is designed to grow us in our holiness, making us more like Christ, to prepare us for glory. This work is ongoing, and it is a process that will not be complete until you cross over into eternity. Yes, by seeking to be obedient to scripture and to apply the Ten Commandments to our lives, we participate in the process of our sanctification. But a tilled field without seeds and rain will still produce nothing but weeds. It is the Holy Spirit that convicts us of the sins we need to put to death, empowers us to put them to death, and who works in our heart to illumine us toward right living.
There is a clear recognition of this principle in this verse. David has two requests of God (they are in the imperative, so do not miss the force of David’s plea to God): a clean heart and a steadfast spirit. Yet, the theology of these two requests lies within the verbs. The first verb is the word, ar:b” (bara), which means, “to create.” In scripture, this word is only ever used of God and it is only ever used of God’s creative work from nothing. There are different words that describe when mankind makes something, but creation is limited to the hand of God. David recognizes that the heart of man is not one that is basically good and just needs some cleaning up. No! The heart of man is dark and wretched, putrid and warped. There is no cleaning up the heart of man, for sin has forever bent it toward evil. Thus, when God calls a sinner to himself through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God does not simply go into the heart of man and scrub him out with steel wool, but he tears out that old wicked heart and creates a new heart and implants it into the new believer. This is a once only act and it is an act that no one but God can do.
The contrast, though, is found in the second petition. David asks that God would renew within him a steadfast spirit. Rather than being the standard form of the verb (as we found in the first request), the verb is in the “Piel” construct, which implies not only intensification, but ongoing and repeated action. In other words, in this verse, David is saying, “give me a new heart and never stop sanctifying my soul.” Oh, were these things that we sought in our own lives!
The question that may be asked is whether or not David was “saved” prior to the writing of these words, for he is asking for a clean heart (something he would already have were he a believer). Given the remarkable relationship that David had with God from the earliest days of his recorded life, it is hard to argue that he was not a believer. Yet, even believers can loose their sense of assurance in the wake of grievous sins, which is what I would suggest we are looking at here. This psalm is David’s desperate cry to God after one of the most wretched sins that a man can commit (adultery and murder of a friend). How much we can learn from the saints that have gone before us, even in their darkest times.
Loved ones, may these words of David be your continual cry before the Lord. In Christ you have been given a new and clean heart, but the old man still wages war against you on this side of glory. That is why you need a daily, even moment by moment, work of the Holy Spirit in your life, to renew your spirit to the glory of God. Oh, how dependent we are on the work of God in our lives! And praise the Lord that it is no other way!
What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
Leaning, leaning, save and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
-Anthony Showalter & Elisha Hoffman
The Preacher's Study 