“You were once dead because of your failures and sins.” Ephesians 2:1 God’s Word Translation. When some people hear that passage their first response is that they weren't that dead.
Really? Let's say I took you to a mortuary and we went downstairs where they embalmed the bodies, and there were two tables with two dead people on them, one on each table. They were just being undressed and prepared for the draining of their blood and their embalming for the funeral and burial. One had just died three hours before. The other had been there three months. Rigor mortis had set in. In fact, the body had begun to decay and stink.
I have one simple question. Which is the "deader" of the two bodies? One can look good and be dead, and the other can look like a freak show and be dead, yet one is not deader than the other. The definition of death is the absence of life. The definition of death is not how ugly you look in the absence of life.
People without God are dead. Existence may be theirs for a time but spiritually they are dead. Some don’t look good on the outside, some look good but they are just as dead.
Regardless of our state of decomposition, we are all dead without Jesus Christ in us. Now notice verses 4 and 5 of Ephesians 2: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
It is the Spirit that brought this life and sustains this life. (“...the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Rom. 8:10 KJV).
The life we receive is to be shared. To “make Jesus known” as our mission statement declares we must not simply share information. We must impart life! Here is a simple summary of how that can take place: “Through continual communion He [Jesus] received life from God, that He might impart life to the world. His experience is to be ours.” -- The Desire of Ages p. 363 [Emphasis supplied].
