Paul makes a startling claim. "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ..." (Eph 2:1)." Hang on, a minute, Paul. What do you mean, 'dead'? I mean, we're all alive, aren't we?" Well, of course, it's an easy answer -- spiritually dead. But ... is that an easy answer?
Most Christians nod at that, but they don't consider the claim. The claim is not "mostly dead." The claim is not "really sick." The word there is "dead." We're saying, "spiritually dead," but we're all still pretty sure that the natural human being has the capacity to come to Christ on his own. I hate to break it to you, but that's not "dead." That's not even "mostly dead." Paul claims, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor 2:14). There's a "does not" and a "cannot," but we're all pretty sure it happens all the time. Paul says, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot" (Rom 8:7). Another "does not" and "cannot." We're hostile to God. "Yes, sure, but we can still accept the gospel." Then ... we're not spiritually dead. And Paul is clear we are.
That's what makes Paul's "But God" so big in the following verses. "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 ..."
(Eph 2:4-5). If we were actually spiritually dead, then God had to "make us alive" as a product of His love. Without it, we couldn't have anything to do with Him. While we were yet sinners. Dead. We like to think we contribute something to this. We don't. We contribute the same thing Lazarus did when Christ called him out of the grave. He came out of the grave and believed. I think, if we actually take God at His word, we'll find salvation an increasingly marvelous thing.
2 comments:
I simply cannot see how people look at this doctrine and conclude that it somehow diminishes God or salvation. We are told that it is God that takes out our heart of stone and inserts a heart of flesh. Stone doesn't praise God, respond to God, adore God. Stone is not living. Yet they want to claim that that stone heart can respond to God's call, which effectively makes us the ones that changes our heart from stone to flesh. The Bible is too full of God's active working for me to conclude that I was the effectual part of my salvation. I certainly responded, but I would have had no desire to do so had my heart not been made alive in the first place. Praise God!
It is hard to miss the clear contrast that Paul depicts between the “natural,” spiritually dead man and those “made alive together with Christ”--i.e. going from hostile and unsubmissive to God’s law to being able to accept the things of the Spirit of God. This conversion is an astounding transformation in the human heart that only Almighty God could accomplish. As pointed out many times, dead people don’t/can’t resurrect themselves. (Neither do I believe that our conversion is “against our will” or forced upon us in any way.)
Having said this--and believing it fully--I do find it compelling to consider exactly how God converts the human heart and works in our minds to bring us to faith in Christ. It seems to me that most conversions are not like Apostle Paul’s (i.e. literally a divine encounter “out of the blue”) but might be perhaps more like Martin Luther’s (which AI Overview describes well as “a gradual process of grappling with Scripture and theological concepts, culminating in a specific moment of revelation”). (My own conversion was somewhere in-between those examples, as might be most people’s.) To my mind, there is some degree of human responsibility and participation in the process, as we respond to and receive the truths revealed to us. Indeed, I find the truth that “God…when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” much too stupendous and “marvelous” not to wish to know more!
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