What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

We see the rich man in his luxury and the beggar in his misery on earth, and then we see both in another sphere. The grave had not ended the history of either of them. Death is not cessation of being. There are three kinds of death connected with man as a sinner — spiritual death, physical death, and the second death. The first represents man's moral condition of alienation from God, as we read in Ephesians 2:1, "dead in trespasses and sins"; the second is the dissolution of the body; and the third is the lake of fire. But none of these means ceasing to exist. The man spiritually dead is full enough of energy in evil, "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind." The man physically dead still lives to God, as was shown at the burning bush when Jehovah spoke of the long departed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the present tense (Luke 20:37-38). Even the lake of fire does not mean ceasing to exist, for when the Devil is cast in there a thousand years after the Beast and the False Prophet he finds these transgressors in that place still (Rev. 19:20; Rev. 20:10). Death is separation. The man spiritually dead is morally separated from God, not a motion of his being going out towards him; the man physically dead is separated from his body, and from all the associations connected therewith; and he who experiences the second death finds himself separated from God and all that is blessed for evermore.

Our state is set forth in Ephesians 2:1, as "dead in trespasses and sins." The next verse remarkably enough goes on to speak of walking in those trespasses and sins; but that is because the death there spoken of is death towards God. Those who are dead Godward are very much alive to "the course of this world," and "the prince of the power of the air," who operates in the "children of disobedience." To be dead towards God is entirely consistent with being alive towards the world and the devil: indeed the one springs out of the other.

We find, then, that a study of the human spirit presents a consistent picture throughout the Scriptures. Perhaps it should be added that when we speak of man being spiritually dead because of the Fall, we do not mean that the human spirit has ceased to exist or to operate, but that the communion between it and God the Divine Spirit has been severed. Death here means separation from the source of life, as always throughout the Scriptures.

As dead in sins, we are totally away from God. Do not we know it, beloved friends? Take the most respectable, decent man in the world — the things of Christ have no interest for him — he is dead towards God; he may be intelligent, honest, etc., but you never get Christ in his heart. It was just the same with ourselves. It is not a question of reprobate criminals, but we were dead.

Such were we, whether Jew or Gentile. At one and the same moment we were dead in trespasses and sins and yet active in all kinds of evil. Very much alive to everything wrong, yet wholly dead to God. Being dead towards God we were without any point of recovery in ourselves: our only hope lay in Him. Hence the great words with which verse 4 opens, "But God —"

The path of life is the path that leads to this: for life in its full reality can only be enjoyed where God, its Source, is. Death is separation from the source of life. When the soul departs, the body left behind is dead; for soul and life are in Scripture one. So, man departed from God — for here the departure is on the reverse side — spiritual death becomes his condition. And the world takes its character from this: it is out of correspondence with God. The breach is witnessed of through its whole frame; on account of it the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together; and we too who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we also groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption — to wit, the redemption of our body. Thus, though we have life in us, it is a life whose proper display cannot yet be. a "life hid with Christ in God," until "Christ our life shall appear." Meanwhile our path leads up to this: opened for us through death itself by Him who going into it has abolished it, and brought life and incorruption to light by the gospel.

LIFE! This is put first in order in these verses, one can understand the reason of this. Man is fallen, has a fallen, sinful nature, incapable of any response to God. Ephesians 2:1 speaks of the believer’s conclusion before conversion as DEAD in trespasses and sins. What can a spiritually dead man do? He may be very active in his sin, as is presented in Romans, but Godward he is DEAD. What he wants is life.

Mere animal life does not take God into account, nor was it ever intended that it should. But man is not a mere animal; he was made a living soul by the inbreathing of God. He was thus not only a living organism, but set in direct relationship with God as an intelligent being. In innocence he not only was a living soul, which was also true of everything that breathed the breath of life, but he lived to God, in communion with Him and sharing His thoughts as far as those thoughts concerned the position of dignity and trust in which he was placed; and as far as his knowledge of God went his joy was in Him, and his worship acceptable. When he fell he did not cease to be a living being, but his joy in God was at an end, and as far as his relationship to his Creator was concerned all was moral death. Never again was the blessed God to have His rightful place in the soul of either that man or of any of his descendants in their mere natural condition. The vital principle which constituted them living beings could not be destroyed; they must exist for ever as living beings; but without the communication of a new divine life it must be alienation from the life of God as long as they are in this world, and an eternity of separation from Him in the lake of fire when this world’s history is closed.

Nor can spiritual death, or "death in trespasses and sins," be possibly what God speaks of in His threatening to Adam. This is indeed the spiritual state which is the result of the fall but the moral state of a criminal is a very different thing from the judgment upon the criminal. Man's depravity is what he is condemned for, not what he is sentenced to; and these things cannot be synonymous. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" is thus the only possible, as it is the divinely given, interpretation of the announcement, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Some of you, perhaps, have known what bereavement is, and the sorrows of bereavement — what it is to have your dear ones dead in your homes — what would you have said, if some one had come to you at such a time, and had spoken a word of power, and there had been a resurrection in your household? Would you not say divine power was put forth? This is what Jesus claims and what He has; because, as we have seen, He spake the word, and the dead came to life; and so He proved, as I have said, that He was divine, and able to bestow life upon those who listened to Him. To whom, then, is it He speaks these words? It is to every one who is dead in trespasses and sins. But you will say to me, "Am I dead?" It is God's word: "You who were once dead in trespasses and sins." You will say again "Am I dead?" Not as to the body, else you could not be here. What is death? It is separation from God; you have no life towards God. I will prove it. If I speak to persons in the street, and they do not, and cannot, hear what I say, am I not justified in saying that they are deaf, if they do not hear what I say to them? And supposing one were to turn round, and say, "I am not deaf," would it show that he was not? No. When God speaks to your souls, then, and you do not hear His voice, what does it prove? Does it not prove, at least, that you cannot hear the voice of God? And if you cannot hear the voice of God when He speaks to you, it can only be because you are dead in trespasses and sins. You have no power to hear, because death has come in. For what does the word of God say? "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Shall we clear this point, before we proceed further? I want all unsaved souls to understand that they are dead as before God — yes, dead in trespasses and in sins. And, alas! there is something else. Not simply are you dead in trespasses and sins, but sentence is passed upon you as in that condition; not executed, we admit, but still the sentence is passed, and will be executed in God's time, when the day of His grace shall have closed. Shall we, then, simply understand this, beloved friends? Will you accept the statement — not my thoughts, be it observed, but God's own thoughts, God's word — that every unsaved soul is in a state of death? and it is to dead people that Jesus speaks in the passage before us.