Christ Died for the Spiritually Dead

Grace and Peace…

No matter when I die, or under what circumstances, I’m sure that I will be quite surprised - surprised, first, that it happened, and secondly, that it happened in just such a way. We human beings tend to be awfully naive even about as sure and certain a thing as our own death.

This naivete shows itself also in our actions towards others. A woman visits a sick friend, who is obviously critically, terminally ill. Yet the visitor leaves with a light and airy, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be up and around in no time!” An almost total avoidance of reality. Isn’t that the way it usually goes?
Our Lord Jesus Christ had no illusions about His own approaching death. St. Matthew records the following incident in his Gospel: “From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to You!’ But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’” (Matt. 16:21-23, NRSV)
The response of Peter was not unnatural or out-of-the-ordinary. Whenever anyone starts talking about his or her imminent death, who among us isn’t tempted to claw the air for some kind of optimistic rebuttal, some platitude that will either deny or shield us from the reality? St. Peter actually had for more than ordinary cause for optimism. After all, he had personally witnessed some of Jesus’ extraordinary displays of supernatural power, and those things seemed to exclude the necessity of Jesus’ going the way of all flesh. But there was no such exclusion clause in the redemptive policy God had given to His Son.
And old professor of mine at the seminary, who has since retired and passed away, said “It is a blessing of God to die in your own bed.” Dr. Rosenthals had seen the horrors of World War II in his East European homeland of Latvia, and then had witnessed the bloody purges of the new Communist overlords as the Iron Curtain fell solidly into place after the War. He saw a variety of ways and places in which it would be undesirable to die, and so came to the conclusion that it would be a singular evidence of divine favor to be granted the experience of dying in one’s own bed, at home, in peace.
Yet Jesus, God’s own Son, did not receive this favor. During the last three years of His earthly life, He rarely, if ever, slept in His own bed. And this luxury certainly wasn’t afforded to Him at His death. He died dirty, He died painfully. He died publicly, as a condemned criminal. He died hanging from nails on a crude crossbeam of wood.
The six hours of excruciating agony on the Cross were preceded by twice as long a time of physical hardship. From the time of His arrest until He was nailed to the Cross, Jesus was constantly walking or standing before His accusers and judges. There was no rest during the long night, no last meal before the execution. He was slapped around, brutally beaten and ridiculed by the soldiers, flogged with lead-tipped whips at Pilate’s command, and had sharp thorns driven into His brow. The physical torture He underwent even before the trial is difficult for us to imagine. The torment of the Crucifixion itself is simply beyond our comprehension. And we are completely at a loss to grasp the spiritual anguish of Christ as He bore the sins of the whole world and “carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4).
The circumstances of the death of the “Lord of life” were incredible. So was the reason for His dying: JESUS DIED FOR DEAD PEOPLE!
Along with the intense tragedy, there is always a lot of drama connected with the cave-in of a mine. Miners trapped beneath the earth’s surface have remained alive two weeks or more while rescuers frantically try to save them. The rescue teams are kept operating at such a frenetic pace because they know, or strongly suspect, that the trapped miners are still alive. Much of the incentive for persistent rescue operations vanishes if it is known that there are no survivors in the mine. One doesn’t risk the same kind and amount of materials, time, and lives to rescue the dead as to rescue the living. There is nothing to save a person from or for when the person is dead.
Yet this is precisely what makes the death of Jesus so strange. He died for dead people! He gave His life for a world of people who had already been pronounced dead, in St. Paul’s phrase, “dead in trespasses and sins.” “While we were yet helpless,” the Apostle writes, “at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom. 5:6, RSV)
But, some may object, to be “ungodly” or to be “dead in trespasses and sins,” is only picture language. Therefore, they maintain, one cannot say that Christ actually died for dead people. But is that objection valid? When is a person “dead”? Is it when he doesn’t breathe any longer? When his heart stops beating? When a doctor or coroner pronounces him “officially” dead?
Or is a person dead when GOD pronounces him or her dead? Since God alone is able to give the pronouncement of life, so it is within God’s divine prerogative to pronounce when death has come. And GOD says that a person can be truly “dead” long before his breath departs from his body. A person may be willing to breathe the physical air which God provides for the body, but if that person insists upon drawing his or her spiritual breath from the contaminated air of selfishness and sin, he or she dies spiritually. GOD pronounces such a person dead, dead in sin, genuinely and truly dead. Moreover, this kind of spiritual deadness either is true, or has been true, of every single human being since Adam and Eve! St. Paul writes to the Ephesians:
“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air (Satan), the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” (Eph. 2:1-3, NRSV)
When Jesus came to earth to live and minister and die, He came to a world-wide valley of dry bones like the one described by the prophet Ezekiel. In the vision God showed Ezekiel, the valley of dry bones stood for Israel, lifeless after forsaking their God. The valley of dry bones that God showed to Jesus was the whole world, in the same condition!
Wasn’t it a little late to enter that valley? Wouldn’t it be something like the soldier arriving too late for the battle, and then fighting furiously to save his dead, defeated comrades from the enemy? Awards and medals of merit have been given to those who risked or gave their lives to save the living. There aren’t any awards for anyone who recklessly attempts to save those who have already died.
Yet the Bible insists that Jesus did not come too late. He wasn’t tardy to battle. “At the right time,” Paul says, “Christ died for the ungodly. And although He died for dead people, it was by no means a lost cause, simply because of who He was and the infinite value of His sacrifice. In His death were the seeds of resurrection and new life for Himself and for the whole world.
If we were to make a banner with two sides, one side telling the cause of Jesus’ death, and the other proclaiming the consequences of that death, oddly enough, both sides would read exactly the same: JESUS DIED FOR DEAD PEOPLE. We’ve seen so far that dead people were the reason for Jesus’ dying on the Cross - for all people fit in that Scriptural category: “ungodly, dead through trespasses and sins.” But here’s the twist: Dead people were also to be the result of Jesus’ dying! The reason why He died involves people dead in sin; the result involves people dead to sin! As St. Paul writes in today’s 2nd Lesson, “The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:10-11, NIV).
Have you ever said that you just “can’t picture yourself” being or doing one thing or another? There are some spiritual pictures that may seem to include us more naturally than others. “Dead in sin” is one such picture. All of us, even with minimal honesty, can imagine ourselves in this picture, which shows us guilty in the sight of a holy God. I hope the same is true of the picture, “Saved from sin.” Once God’s Word and Spirit have really gotten through to us, we don’t have too much difficulty in seeing ourselves in need of forgiveness from Christ, our Lord and Savior.
But there are some other spiritual pictures that are harder for us to handle. One is entitled “Dead to sin.” Can you see yourself in this one? - in control over temptation, not responding to the call of evil, not falling into sin, but actually being victorious over it? Another one is entitled “Saved from sinning.” Can you picture yourself not only saved and forgiven from the sins you have already committed, but also having the power to no longer commit them? Not coming to Jesus only after sinning so that we can get cleaned up again, but coming to Him constantly in order to be kept clean and prevented from falling or p[lunging by our own will or weakness into sin in the first place? Jesus died for people dead in sin; He rose again to raise up men and women who are dead to sin.
That is the purpose and goal of true, costly grace. Forgiveness without renewal, without change and commitment, without the consuming desire to please and glorify and obey God -that’s what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” It’s a kind of “half-redemption,” a lie that doesn’t work, a travesty of Christianity. But St. Paul tells us in our text today that the very purpose of our Baptism into Christ, into His death and resurrection, is that, by His costly grace, “we too may live a new life,” “that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (vv. 4, 6).
Too often people try to “use” Jesus the same way they use the police or fire departments. One purpose of the police is to help prevent crime, but they’re usually not called upon until after a crime has already been committed. One purpose of a good fire department is to keep fires from starting, but firefighters are seldom summoned until a blaze is out of control. The Lord Jesus stands ready to empower His people against sin, but most often Christ is neglected until sin has already made its ugly mark. Admittedly, a police officer may seem far more impressive when chasing a criminal than when preventing a crime, and a firefighter may be more exciting to watch when battling a fire then when teaching people how to prevent one. Jesus, too, may seem more impressive as a Shepherd bringing back the lost than as a Shepherd keeping the sheep from straying in the first place. There seems to be more glamor in the “cure,” but in reality the most glory is in the prevention.
Suppose a coach is working with a basketball team. During the first game of the season, he can’t help but notice one major fault of his team: they keep scoring in the opposing team’s basket! The first time it happens, the team members come over and apologize to the coach. “That’s all right, guys! Go in there and try to do better!” They go in, but they make another basket for the other side. “Sorry, coach!” “That’s all right, fellas!” They keep on doing that the entire game! What a wonderful team, and what a grand coach! They just don’t come any more apologetic than that team, and you won’t find a more forgiving coach. But what incredibly lousy basketball! When the equivalent of that happens in the church, what you’re dealing with is “cheap grace.”
Christianity becomes a pretty sorry affair, too, if the major accomplishment is apology. The Lord of the Church has far greater goals for its members. Jesus died in order to free people who were dead in sin, to become people who are dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Do we dare ask the question: “Am I only dead in sin, or am I dead to sin?” Our first reaction is not to answer the question, but to find a suitable evasion tactic, plead a spiritual 5th Amendment on the grounds that the answer may tend to incriminate us. And it very likely does! We don’t like to have the issue so keenly drawn. It’s much easier to try to strike some middle ground, to opt for “cheap grace.”
Isn’t it strange that we’re able to have faith that Jesus has saved us from sin and guilt by forgiveness through His blood, and yet not have faith that He can save us from sinning by giving us, through the Holy Spirit, the power and purpose to live for His glory? We don’t think it’s presumptuous to ask God to save us from sin, that is, to forgive us. However, Satan seeks to somehow convince us that it would be presumptuous in the extreme to expect God to save us from sinning! The truth is that Jesus died and rose again just as much for the one as for the other. Jesus died for dead people; He died because people were dead in sin. But Jesus also died to make dead people; He died in order that people might become dead to sin, and alive to God.
To catch a lawbreaker, signs used to be posted, “WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE.” God posts a different sign, aimed at the capture of every sinner, and He does it in love. It reads: “WANTED, DEAD AND ALIVE” - dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Jesus’ death and the costly grace His blood has bought have opened this exciting possibility to each one of us. Let’s taste of the challenge, and experience what it really means to be free in Christ. AMEN.
LET US PRAY:
Gracious God, we know we can’t be perfect in this life, but we have to confess that we consistently use that as a cop-out. We hide behind idiotic platitudes such as “I’m only human,” when Your holy Word says that, as Christians, we are “partakers of the Divine Nature”! We don’t want to have our sins judged. We enjoy thinking our sins are harmless, even though they cost Your Son such horrible agony on the Cross. We either don’t want our lives changed, or we just don’t have enough faith in You to believe You can rally do it. Yet in Baptism You have claimed us as Your own children, to live before You in righteousness and purity forever; and You have given us Your own Spirit. Give us the will to be all that we can be, by Your grace and power, and let Your Spirit accomplish in us all that You desire of faith and love, obedience and praise. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN.