Dead and Alive: The Spiritual Paradox
"Therefore be imitators of God as dear children."
Ephesians 5:1 (NKJV)
There is a story I love for the way it captures a spiritual truth without trying to. A man glanced at the obituary column in his local newspaper and found his own name listed. He was very much alive, but the paper had him dead.
He rang the editor in a fury, who was mortified. Then, in a flash of inspiration, the editor said: 'Don't worry, sir. I'll make it right tomorrow. I'll put your name in the births column.'
It sounds like a joke. But it is a parable.
The Christian life is precisely this: we have been listed in the deaths column, and then re-listed in the births column. Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Not sick. Not weakened. Dead. Without spiritual life, without capacity to respond to God, without hope in ourselves.
But then grace intervened. Christ came. And the old self, the self that was dead in sin, was nailed to the cross with Him. Not repaired, not reformed, not improved. Put to death. And in its place, by the power of the resurrection, a new self was raised. Born again. Genuinely alive in a way that was never true before.
This is why Paul can say with full seriousness: therefore be imitators of God as dear children. Children imitate their parents naturally. They do not strain for it. It flows from the relationship. And because we have been born into God's family, because His Spirit lives within us, imitating His character is not an impossible ideal. It is an expression of what we already are.
You may not feel like you have fully grasped this. Most of us do not. The new self is real, but it is growing. The old patterns still try to assert themselves. But the direction of the life has changed. The nature at the core has been renewed.
Live today from the new self. Not the old obituary. The new birth record.
Prayer: Lord, thank You that I am not who I used to be. The old has gone and the new has come. Help me to live today from the identity You have given me, as Your dear child, as an imitator of Your character and love. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Pastor Ras
All Nations Community Church
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