Death to Life

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:1-8

I've been thinking the past few days about these verses. Not in super specific detail, more so in the general ideas within them, especially verses 1, 4, and 5. We were all dead in our trespasses and sin, spiritually dead, not just barely breathing, but wholly dead, and God, because of His love for us made us alive together with Christ. He gave us spiritual life.

I just began working for a man who has cancer. He is an older gentleman who can't really do a lot of things for himself as his body is weak and wracked with pain; so he needs me to do a lot of things for him. Now, I began thinking about these verses the other day and then they were talked about at a confirmation retreat we just had out here, and so they are just kind of on the forefront of my mind. Forefront, not forehead, mind you, though that might be a good place to put them in order to keep them on my mind, literally and figuratively. :) At first I kind of thought that these verses were really well compared to my situation with this older gentleman, but such is not really the case. To some degree they can be compared to other aspects of the Christian faith but not with this one. We can't do anything for ourselves when it comes to being made spiritually alive.

Like Jesus told Nicodemus, we need to be born again. We have no spiritual life outside of Christ and we cannot be brought into Christ without God making us alive together with Him. We are not just sick and needing help to do certain things. No, we are dead and lying in the grave. Nails in the coffin and dirt piled on is how we are in relation to God before He breathes His new life into us. Why does he do this? Not because we are super good, but because He loves us. He loves us. We who are dead and filled with sin and things that anger and upset God are loved by God enough to be forgiven of our sin and brought into a right relationship with Him in which He is then able to shower us in His immeasurable riches of grace and kindness. Does this make sense to me? Nah, it really doesn't, but to some degree I have come to experience it and I am truly grateful for it.