To Encourage You

Colossians 2:13-14 “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.”

Have you ever been brought back from the dead?  What a strange question, you might ask.  Who could ever claim such a thing?  Some people believe in reincarnation. That is the idea that when a person dies they come back later in some other form.  But if that really happens, how would anyone know it?  No one can seriously say that they were once a cow, a snake, or another person, for all they can really know is who they are right now. They can’t possibly be aware of a consciousness that is other than their own right here and right now.  However, in the passage above, the Bible tells us that some people were indeed dead in a sense, but they are now alive.  With these words, the apostle Paul was writing to the people of the Colossian church. He was speaking of a spiritual rather than a physical issue, but it is just as real.  Someone who is dead spiritually doesn’t realize that they are dead any more than a corpse can realize that it can’t see, hear, or smell. Void of consciousness, a dead body is nothing more than a shell that is aware of nothing.  But when a person becomes alive spiritually, they realize for the first time what they once were.  That’s because they can see for the first time, spiritually. For the first time they see, i.e., understand, things that they never could before, and they realize those things very keenly. For the first time they have “ears to hear” the words of God. Prior to this they had neither the motivation to listen or the ability to understand what was being said.  And a person that has been made alive spiritually has the ability, for the first time, to walk by the Spirit rather than to satisfy the desires of the flesh, which are the only desires that are present in those who are spiritually dead, for we are told that “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other (Galatians 5:17).” 

So do you know of that conflict? Have you ever been made aware of it?  If not, there is only one reason, and that is that no such conflict exists.  It means that  there is no Holy Spirit in your life to make you aware of it.  It is only those who have been made alive with Christ and who have the very life of Christ within them that have the ability to see the wickedness of the sin that once characterized their lives.  They may have been very good at seeing sin in others, but their eyes were darkened to seeing it in themselves.  Because the Holy Spirit is now in their lives, those with the new birth can tell us about a time before that birth and compare it to the time after. It’s a contrast like that between day and night, light and darkness, and life and death. 

Believers all have a story to tell about what they once were compared to what they now are.  They know what it means to be spiritually dead and they know that “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).  It’s a life that has been made new – with new desires to glorify God, a new hunger for the Word of God, and a new awareness of all that is opposed to God.  That’s what spiritual life is. That’s what eternal life is. And while that life begins with what the Bible calls the new birth, it grows in an ever-increasing awareness of what it means to live unto God.  This new life will culminate in eternity in life with God, spiritually and physically alive forever.

So, do you know this hope?  Are you aware of a change from spiritual death to spiritual life that has happened to you personally?  If not, you can be if you will just turn to the Author of Life and ask for it.  And this Author of Life is none other than Jesus, who came for the very purpose that the dead might have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).