Dead or alive

by Matthew

Referring to Ephesians 2:1, a Calvinist friend at the church prayer meeting yesterday told me:

You dont believe unbelievers are dead in trespasses and sins, do you?

I replied that I certainly did, though he had a point. I have seldom given much thought to what that term 'dead' actually means.

It occurred to me that people focus too much on what it means to be dead and not enough on the fact that the death is the absence of life.

An unbeliever does not have life. And that life is the life of God. The divine energy by which God acts towards us in grace, cloaking us in His holiness, granting us His mind, His wisdom and transforming us into the pattern of the divine humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The life that is imparted in regeneration is a dynamic life, not a static quality but a force that changes the whole being.

In regeneration, we come to share in the vital union of God and man that Jesus posesses. We become God-men, not as Christ is, for there can only be one true God-Man, but in our position in Him. Our sharing in His divine life and in Him, the eternal love of the Triune God. We experience His love and in turn, He produces love in us.

That is the life that the unbeliever lacks. In her lack of this, she is dead.