We are all dead

I can’t take credit for this beautiful analogy, but Major W. Ian Thomas writes in his book The Indwelling Life of Christ about Adam’s death in the Garden of Eden.

God spoke to Adam and said,

In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.Genesis 2:17

Adam then went on to live to be 900 years old. What death did Adam die?

This is the paragraph that hit me:

Death is the absence of life. What life did Adam lose that day? The life of God! God withdrew His Holy Spirit from Adam’s spirit. This was spiritual death.

We are all dead

Do we realize that, apart from Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, that we are all dead?

Some of us who believe in Jesus will surely meet Him when we breath our last breath, but having lived lives devoid of His presence and completely dependent upon ourselves; never having enjoyed the fullness of what God intended for us as His Sons and Daughters.

Major W. Ian Thomas goes on to write:

God intended that a threefold moral interlock should govern our relationship to God and God’s relationship to us:

1. Our love for God, reciprocating His love for us. This love is evidenced exclusively by…
2. Our dependence on God, because He created us in such a way that His presence is indispensable to our humanity and true function. This dependence can be expressed only by…
3. Our obedience to God.

What a beautiful picture of life!

True life is unequivocally bound to God, evidenced by our love, dependence and obedience to Him. His perfect Son, Jesus, died on our behalf so that this spiritual union between God and us could be reestablished. He died so that we could live!

• Are you living your life in your own strength?
• Could leaning into His Spirit be the game-changer?