S200P1 – Who we were: dead

Eph. 2:1‭-‬2

And you were dead and separated from Him because of your transgressions and sins, in which you once walked.  You were following the ways of this world, in accordance with the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the disobedient.

There are many people walking this world thinking that they are alive.  Yes, they are physically alive; they are breathing and moving.  They are living a life of some kind, albeit a mere shadow of what is available to them.  Although they are physically alive, they are spiritually dead.  The here-and-now is all they have to look forward to.  They may not be aware of this, but those are the facts.  For those who are spiritually dead, they serve the world and its master.  Some might say that they do no such thing and would never entertain following Satan, but the scriptures are clear.  If we do not follow Jesus Christ, there is only one other we follow.  And regardless of how good or moral they think they are, they live a dead life of disobedience to God.  Prior to salvation, we lived in the same state of death.

Going from death to life in Jesus Christ means several things.  One thing it means is that we are now spiritually alive, and that life lasts for eternity.  The shadow in which we used to live has been transformed into life in its true and genuine form.  While we breathed in the breath of physical life at birth, we now have breathed in the breath of spiritual life at rebirth.  A second thing this means is that our allegiance has now changed from one master to another.  This should make us reflect on how we live the new lives we have been given.  If we are now servants of Jesus Christ instead of Satan, we should expect to see a plethora of changes.  Our motivations for doing, saying, and thinking should change.  Our desires should change, and our goals should change.  Our service to self should now become service to others.  The spiritual life we receive from Jesus Christ is exchanged for the physical lives that we relinquish to him for his purposes, and that requires a radical change in lifestyle that should be evident.

Some of us might have had seemingly charmed lives before dedicating ourselves to the Lord.  If we look back on those lives now, we should be able to see how wrong we were.  If we lose everything the world has to offer in exchange for gaining everything that Jesus has to offer, we have lost nothing.  If we spend our physical lives possessing all there is to possess and yet have not the knowledge of Jesus Christ, we have nothing.  After knowing Jesus, being alive takes on a whole new meaning.  This new life should create in us a brand new person with new motives, desires, and goals.  Where once there resided hate, there now resides love.  Where once there resided fear, there now resides peace.  Father, thank You for providing us the opportunity to walk from death into life, and remind us daily of what these new lives should look like.