As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins … - Ephesians 2:1

Today's Scripture Reading (April 7, 2021): Ephesians 2

Woody Allen quipped that "I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens." Maybe that applies to a lot of us. Death is a mystery to be solved and one that most of us are willing to put off until the distant future. But it also brings up a question; what exactly is death?

The Bible's first mention of death is found in Genesis 2.

And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die" (Genesis 2:16-17).

It is fair to ask what exactly is meant by the phrase "you will certainly die." For some, it is self-evident; until the moment of the first sin, death was unknown. That means that nothing died. Nothing. Animals, plants, and, of course, Adam and Eve. The problem is that death is part of nature. Maybe Adam and Eve were destined to live forever, but even if they were vegans, the vegetables were on the death parade to supply the newly formed humans' needs. And unless creation was unfinished, carnivores were roaming, maybe just outside the Garden, who could not survive on a plant-based diet. And yet, for some, this is the definition of death resulting from sin.

But if we keep with his definition, then at best, the sin in the garden was death delayed. We don't know how old Adam might have been at the time of his sin; the best guess is that he was less than 100 years old when he ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But, according to Genesis, he lived 930 years, which means that physical cessation of life occurred, at a minimum, 830 years after Adam's sin.

Considering the whole of the biblical record and its mentions of death and life, it would seem illogical to define death only as the cessation of life or life as the avoidance of physical death. There is something else going on. So, when Paul says that we were "dead in your transgressions and sins," he is not indicating the physical cessation of life. We were dead in some other way, the same way that Adam and Eve died that day of sin in the Garden of Eden. Jesus phrased it this way; "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10).

The death that Paul speaks of, and the death that entered the world with the original sin in the Garden, is not just the end of life; it is different and much more dangerous. Paul was preaching that the resurrection of Christ has already defeated physical death. Physical death is, at worst, temporary, but spiritual death, if it is not dealt with, is permanent. And that is the problem.

We were all dead; we all have existed in a state where we didn't know what Jesus called life "to the full." But that state has changed because of our faith in God and trust in Jesus. As Christians, we should be in the experience of life that has a different quality than it did before. Jesus is the only cure to spiritual death.

Physically, we will all die. But as Christians, we know that that death is temporary. We will rise with Christ. But spiritual death is permanent, and that deserves our immediate attention.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ephesians 3