Dead or Alive: Who Can Tell?

READ: Romans 8:5-8

My grandfather is dead. Physically dead. Embalmed, buried, resting under a tombstone. If I dug him up, heaved him over my shoulder, and the two of us came to visit you, would you have a hard time telling who’s alive and who’s dead?

If you can see, smell, touch, or hear, then no. There’s a big difference between alive and dead!

Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in our sins, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, when God made us alive with Christ. Spiritually dead. Spiritually alive. Shouldn’t there be a big difference?

Yet how often we hear, “You’re a Christian? I’ve known you for years. I didn’t know you were a Christian!” “Yep, go to church every Sunday. Don’t feel the need to broadcast it, though. It’s more of a personal thing for me.”

We are physically alive. We don’t need to broadcast it. It’s not a personal thing. We’re alive. You see us and you know.

We who have been saved by God’s grace are spiritually alive in Christ. When people see us, they should know.

Yet often they don’t. Why is that? Because we still live much of our lives gratifying the cravings of our flesh, following our selfish desires and caring nothing for the desires of God. Sure, we believe in Christ and want salvation and blessings, but our minds are set on ourselves, not on what the Spirit desires. We don’t look different because we aren’t different. If the mind governed by the flesh is death, we’re just dead people being propped up by our church friends and made to look alive.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

Follow that will—the will of God, the desires of the Spirit—and you will appear very alive indeed!