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Deutsche Version | Wiki Start | Topics Collection ii

Spiritually dead? ...

Tuesday, Nov 9, 2010. If someone tells you, that you are spiritually dead, how do you react? What do you think? It would be a quite natural reaction be be upset! This person does not seem to know what he is saying. Or just wants to provoke a strong response? Or he is just mad. You might say: “I do not want to hear this any more!”, and walk away.

The biblical texts contain statements which can be understood as provocations. We can be upset, and put them away. But we can also try to understand the meaning. We can try to understand why the apostle Paul calls a particular lifestyle as “spiritually dead”.

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Paul analyzes a way of living …

Let us go back to the original text in Ephesians and try to dig a little.

1 At one time, because of the laws you had broken and your evil ways, you were spiritually dead. 2 You lived in the way the rest of the world lives, following the ways of the devil. His power is all around us, and he is the spirit who controls the people who disobey God. 3 We were like them, following the evil desires of our inner being and obeying the evil thoughts that came into our minds. God was angry with our evil ways, and the evil ways of all other people. (Ephesians 2: 1-3)

As modern people, we are not that much concerned about the Jewish law. But we know the ten commandments, and we know that we should not steal, that we are called to be honest, reliable, truthful, helpful, put God into the first place and be full of attention towards each other. We are called not to desire the possessions of anyone else around us. The ten commandments have been common knowledge and are common knowledge today … do you know them?

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Understand …

If we know the ten commandments, and if we understand them just a little bit, we probably know that we do not match them, that we do not live and think and feel like they tell us to do. If we do not know them, we probably just ignore them anyway … and the fact that we do just shows that we do not care and do exactly what Paul says.

I have always asked myself, for many years: why should I follow any set of rules. What has it to do with me. I did not understand that for quite a while. I started to understand when I got to know God, when I realized that all the rules just mirror his character. That all these commands just direct us towards what is called “the truth and love of God”.

Being spiritually dead means that we live without a connection to this truth and love of the living God. It means that we are separated from his presence. It means that we live as the rest of the world lives. Being separated from the original source of love is what is called “dead” here. We can take it as an image, but as one which tries to describe the reality in all of us. ... more texts

jn_en_2010_11_09.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1