A little item in the Readers’ Digest caught my attention. “Lal Bahari founded the Association of Dead People when bureaucrats in India—over his bitter complaints—declared him dead.” The humor of this situation immediately claims our attention, but its ramifications are serious. Depending on his social standing he can be denied credit, his assets can be frozen, and access to government departments who would normally assist him will be denied. At best he’ll have a long battle with bureaucrats over whether he’s alive or dead.
The Bible talks of live dead people. “She is dead while she lives” describes the widow who gives herself to wanton pleasure (1 Timothy 5:6). “Let the dead bury their dead” says Jesus of those who want to follow him, but only after they take care of other things (Matthew 8:22). “This gospel was preached among the dead” Peter says, speaking of the fact that the gospel is preached to those who, though physically alive, are spiritually dead and thus have no hope of eternal life (1 Peter 4:6).
There is, however, an entirely different class of live dead people. This is composed of the people who are spiritually alive after having died to sin. Spiritual life can only follow death to sin because sin makes spiritual life impossible. “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” asks Paul (Romans 6:2). The sinful life-style negates spiritual life because the two cannot co-exist.
Spiritual life follows baptism into the death of Christ Jesus. It is only in Jesus’ act of death on the cross and our act of being baptized into that death that sin is washed away and we are able to live the spiritual life (Acts 22:16; Romans 6:3-4). Paul says: “Blessed are those whose sins are covered” (Romans 4:7) and discusses how they are covered. That they are not covered by circumcision is shown in his discussion of Abraham’s faith. That they are covered by Jesus blood is shown in Paul’s statements that “at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6), and “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” so that “having been justified by his blood we shall be saved” (Romans 5:9) He concludes that we are “baptized into His death” so that we “might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).
Spiritual life is the “newness of life” to which we rise from the waters of baptism (Romans 6:4-5). This new life is one in which we are “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). We are instructed not to “let sin reign in your body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness” (Romans 6:12-13). Spiritual life is thus an active pursuit of righteous acts, that is, acts which are right in the sight of God.
Spiritual life is being “obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, having been freed from sin” and becoming “slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). Paul concludes with this: “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life” (Romans 6:22).
Let’s all become living dead people—dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, because this will bring us the greatest blessing of all: eternal life.