And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2:1
Emergency responders spent several minutes working to restore a heartbeat to a man who had collapsed on the sidewalk. But they could detect no pulse or produce any response from the man. He was dead, and a doctor who was among the responders made the formal declaration, noting the time in his notes. Hardly had he returned the pen to his pocket when the man’s heart began to beat, he became alert, and he was rushed to the hospital where he made a full recovery. The doctor who had made the declaration gave the man a copy of his own death certificate as a memento of the event. Looking at it, we can understand that the man had actually not died, but the doctor had thought that he had died. There is a huge difference. But when we consider our spiritual condition before we were saved, we understand that we were truly dead in trespasses and sins. It was not a missed diagnosis or a mistake on anybody’s part; God Himself had declared us dead. But we are now alive; God Himself declares it. That is a miracle.
Our death was on account of our trespasses and sins. Our inability to measure up to God’s holy standards stood as an impenetrable wall that separated us from God. We had no more ability to lift ourselves from our dead state than does as corpse to rise from the casket during a funeral. Then the Holy Spirit began His work, bringing us to repentance and faith in Christ. Eternal life became our possession, and the spiritual death in which we had long lingered became past tense. We can say that we were dead, but are dead no longer.
There are many things that we used to be, but are no longer. Before we learned to read, we were illiterate, but we are now literate. Before we grew up, we were children, or adolescents, but we are now adults. When I was young, I was a Nova Scotian, but after I moved, I became a New Brunswicker. You get the idea; we reach a point when we cease to be what we once were. We were dead, but are now alive forever. This reminds us of how the Lord Jesus identifies Himself in Revelation 1:18: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. Unlike us, the Lord Jesus did not start out as dead. Because He is God and cannot sin, death had no claim to Him. And yet, to atone for our sins, He became dead, a death that He entered into on our account. Our acceptance of His death as our payment clears us of the debt of our trespasses and sins, and we receive the life that our Saviour has achieved for us.
That we are no longer dead in trespasses and sins is cause for great thanksgiving today, thanksgiving to One Who was dead for us. -Jim MacIntosh