Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
In the 1968 horror movie, Night of the Living Dead, zombies invaded the world. They were animated corpses without soul or spirit, half dead and half alive, ghoulish characters, driven to eat human flesh. Yuk.
In Ephesians Paul says, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live . . . gratifying the cravings of the flesh, following its desires and thoughts” (Eph 2:2-5).
Does that nail zombies, or what? People dead in sin, animated by the spirit of disobedience, driven to gratify fleshly cravings (Eph 2:3). A strange description of zombie-people half dead and half alive.
Do you think that’s what Paul means, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins?”
The Message Bible doesn’t use Paul’s metaphor of people dead and alive at the same time. It says, “you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience” (Eph 2:1-2).
One evangelical explanation of Paul’s metaphor says we are composed of body, soul, and spirit, but the spirit part is dead if you’re not saved. Sounds zombie-like to me: the body is active, but the spirit is dead. This explanation says when you are born again, God raises your spirit from the dead.
But not so fast.
Paul doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t say a Christian’s spirit is raised from the dead to a perfect life. He tells Christians to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit (2 Cor 7:1). Being born again is great, but it doesn’t immediately cure the problems in my spirit. I still struggle with greed, anger, envy, and lust. Paul urges me to cleanse my spirit, to get it into a cold shower with soap and shampoo.
However, Paul’s words do nicely point out some zombie features of my pre-Christian state. I lived in the universe of me, where I was boss, where I was driven by the cravings of my sinful nature. I was dead to God and God was dead to me.
I thought I was doing what I wanted, but I was mostly a zombie slave to the flesh-eating, relationship-destroying intuitions of my sinful self.
But now, through Christ, I reject the God-is-dead philosophy. I’ve discovered it was me who was dead in trespasses and sins. Since God has inhabited my life, he has been renovating. He’s unstopping the plumbing so I can flush out the excrement. He’s rewiring the electricity so I can turn on the lights. He’s transforming my spirit to make me holy.
Let’s pray.
Our father, I neither imagined or wanted your renovations in my life. I thought freedom was being free from you. I thought my cravings were the key to satisfaction. I mistook my confused intuitions for sound conclusions.
But in your mercy, you took the zombie me, and clothed me with a healthy mind and a new spirit and a longing for a life of wholeness and love.
Continue your work in me. Save me from a zombie apocalypse. Bring me into your kingdom and your glory forever.
Amen.
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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