Each of us, as we come into this world and continue along our path, unless OUR SPIRIT has been quickened and renewed by HIS SPIRIT, are in some such condition as one of these three. There are some who are young and tender; they are still in their mother’s home; their faces are fair and their cheeks are flushed; they are the adorable objects of their parent’s love; the world is before them and yet they are dead. They are dead in trespasses and in sins; dead to God, dead to truth; dead to reality; for this is how they have been born into this world. Though physically, intellectually, and emotionally alive, they are dead spiritually. They are unconscious of, and unresponsive to, the spiritual life and the spiritual world of reality. They have not had time for sin to run its course and to effect its devastating changes. Like Jarius’ daughter, they still look alive — why she looks as though she sleepeth! Her eyes are simply closed in sleep. And yet she is dead!
And there are those like the son of the widow of Nain who have left their father’s home and are now out in public. Some years have passed and already the flush has left the cheek and the results of sin are beginning to make themselves seen. Our land is filled with these today! Unlike Jarius’ daughter, their sins are no more secret, a matter kept at home, but now they are out in public and known to many. Without shame they expose their sins willfully, flaunting them before all the world to see; they call it “coming out of their closets;” they have no sense of guilt or shame because their sin and death has proceeded thus far. And yet they are still accepted by society. They are glorified by the media. Some are even active in the churches. They are not like Lazarus, who has been put away, where death has come to such a state that the corruption has progressed to such a degree that now he stinketh and none can bear to be in his presence. And so there comes a time in some men’s lives when even their loved ones can say, “Put away my beloved from out of my sight. Bury him in some jail or in some hospital or in some gutter of depravity.”
The corruption of sin and death can reach to such a marked degree that it is seen in the person, in his acts, in his words, his dress, his face, and he becomes an outcast, the dregs of society. There are more, I am sure, like the widow’s son. The revelation of the death in them is only beginning to show. There are still many like Jarius’ daughter where it is not seen at all, except by those with spiritual eyes and discernment. They are so lovely. “Isn’t she sweet?” “Isn’t he handsome?” “Oh, he is such a nice person.” “They are such good neighbors, they would do anything for you.” And yet, each and every one of them — the girl on the bed, the young man on the bier, and Lazarus in his tomb — were equally dead! Dead one, dead all!
This is the description of the land of the dead in which the whole world lives by nature. The land of trespasses and sins in which there walk the dead. “Wherein,” Paul says to the quickened ones, “in time past ye walked” (Eph. 2:2). Is that not amazing? We were dead and yet we walked; we were the walking dead, a land filled with spiritual zombies, walking, as though they live, yet dead! Did you ever stop to think that when Jesus Christ, the firstborn Son of God, came into this world HE WAS THE ONLY LIVING MAN IN A WORLD OF DEAD PEOPLE? The whole world lies in the hands of the wicked one and death reigns over all the earth realm, the world of carnal-minded men! “To be carnally minded is death” (Rom. 8:6). No wonder the scripture says that men are a stench in the nostrils of God because spiritual death sends forth its reek and stench. How the pure soul of Jesus must have recoiled at the state of death that was rampant over the earth. We, the walking dead, walked according to the course of THIS WORLD, we are told (Eph. 2:2).
When Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, came into this world to reveal the LIFE OF GOD, which is true spiritual life, He came outside the existing religious system. He spoke the words of God and did the works of God and manifested the nature of God. What an appalling shock to the established religious order to have this strange man speaking as one with authority suddenly appear in their midst not as a Pharisee, Sadducee, or a priest of the order of Aaron, but in the power of the Spirit of God. What a bolt out of heaven it must have been to the hypocritical priests of Levi, so accustomed to strutting about in long robes and broad phylacteries, wearing their miters, loving to be called Rabbi and teacher as they received the homage of the people about them, binding burdens that they would not touch with the tips of their fingers on others, robbing widow’s houses and for a pretense making long prayers as they increased condemnation upon their own unforgiven sins. What a stunning dismay it must have been for these lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God to hear this mighty Son of God proclaiming to publicans and sinners, soldiers and priests alike, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
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