Is God dead?
Few questions cut deeper than this one, and the answer the Bible gives is not a debate about God's existence but a claim about where death actually lies. The writers below trace the question back to its root in the human heart, then point to a God who walked into death's territory and came out alive.
Where the Denial Begins
Commentators locate the source of the denial not in evidence but in desire. One writer traces how a wish hardens into a settled conviction:
J Wilson SmithThe wish that there should be no God — none to exercise full authority over us, or restrain our wills, or condemn our sins, or call us into judgment; none, in short, to whom we should be responsible — lies hidden in every human heart. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy it is to move from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, "No God"! Yet after all, the one who speaks that way is called a "fool"; for can there be any folly more obvious than the rejection of God? Could you imagine an unfallen creature making such a denial? Impossible! It is left to fallen man to do it. How blinding, then, sin must be!
Why Investigation Alone Comes Up Empty
The same writer points out that education makes no difference to the outcome, and explains why searching by itself cannot settle the matter:
J Wilson Smith"No God" may be said by the scientist as readily as by the secularist, by the deep scholar and thinker as by the coarse and profane. Wisdom cannot make God known, for "the world did not know God through wisdom." Learning, research, and the most tireless mental effort are of no use here… God is beyond the sun, beyond all creation; and if He is to be known by man, He must be willing to reveal Himself.
The Living God in a World of Death
One title of God answers the question directly. He is called the living God, and He did not stay at a distance from a dying world:
J. G. BellettGod is "the living God." As such He is acting in this scene of death. He has come into the middle of it as the living God. How could He have come any other way? Surely we may say, to the glory of His name, He has not been here at all if He has not been here in that character. And His victory as the living God in this scene of death is resurrection. If resurrection is denied, God is not known, and it is denied that the living God has been here and has stepped into the conditions of this ruined, death-stricken world.
Death Entered, and Death Broken
Christ did die. That is the one point where the question touches fact — and the writers insist the story does not stop there:
The Bible TreasuryBut His was a victorious death; and, as it has been said, by dying He killed death. He saw no corruption. His soul was not left in hades. He rose from the dead, for it was not possible for death to hold Him. He went through death, and annulled death and the one who had the power of death. So He triumphed over death, and Satan, and the grave. The Son of Man is therefore a risen, victorious Saviour.
Alive Today, Not Merely in History
A resurrection long ago can still feel like a closed chapter. One writer tells of a preacher for whom that changed in a moment:
A J PollockOne day in his study the realisation that Jesus was actually alive came over him with a force and conviction he had never known before. The fact that the Lord Jesus was actually alive, just as much as when He convinced the apostles that He was not a ghost or a spirit; as much alive as when He told Thomas to put his fingers into the nail prints and his hand into His side, and not to disbelieve but believe; just as much alive today as when Stephen was killed and Paul converted; an unseen Presence, but alive, who says to us as He once said to John, "I died, and behold I am alive forevermore" (Rev. 1:18). It transformed him.
Who the Dead One Actually Is
Scripture turns the accusation around. The corpse in the story is the one asking the question:
F. B. HoleSuch were we, whether Jew or Gentile. At one and the same moment we were dead in trespasses and sins, and yet busy in every kind of evil. Very much alive to everything wrong, yet completely dead to God. Being dead towards God, we had no point of recovery in ourselves: our only hope lay in Him. That is why chapter 2 verse 4 opens with those great words, "But God —"
When God Seems Silent
Often the question is not philosophy but pain — evil wins, and heaven says nothing. One writer admits how much comfort sits in the simplest truth about God:
Numerical Bible NotesThe cry of the heart is after the "living God" — a simple, even a poor thing to say, one would think; for the smallest truth to affirm about God is that He is "living." But this only shows how poor we are, that we need to remind ourselves He is this… And how good it is, in a world where evil often seems to be winning the day, and He is silent and still, and we cry, "How long?" but He does not stir — how good it is then to steady our souls with the assurance, "Yet God lives!"
Summary
- Wish — The denial starts as a desire to answer to no one, and moves from wish to word.
- Limit — Study and intellect cannot reach Him; He is beyond creation, so He must reveal Himself.
- Entry — The living God stepped into a death-stricken world, and His victory there is resurrection.
- Reversal — Death did not hold Christ; the dead one is man, and the answer to that is "But God."
- Now — He is alive today, not only in history — and while evil seems to win, the soul steadies itself: "Yet God lives!"