Followers of Christ have been given new life. What once was rotting and decaying inside of us has been renewed. Without God, we are dead inside, with no hope of resuscitation. The Bible teaches that we are all born dead because of sin. We may not have sinned yet, but because of the sins of our parents, that nature is passed on genetically. We are predisposed to sin, and therefore predisposed to die. There is only one cure, and that is the blood of Jesus. Without it, we are destined to begin dying from the day we are born. By putting our faith in Jesus and dedicating our lives to following Him, we are covered in the blood of His sacrifice which removes the dead things inside of us and replaces them with the life, love, and light of God.
The band, “We As Human”, articulates this well in their song, “Dead Man”. They sing:
Sitting here at my grave side, I’ve never felt so alive
You pulled the dead man out of me
I am not what I was, never again what I was
You pulled the dead man out of me
I love the word picture they create. When we accept Christ, He pulls, even wrestles, the dead man out of our bodies. Light cannot exist in darkness, so Jesus reaches in and personally removes that darkness from us. When we decide to follow Jesus, our lives are forever changed. Before Christ, we were simply a walking corpse. With Him, we are jubilant and alive.
Without Jesus we remain dead. When our physical bodies die, there is no internal life that will spend eternity with God. Nothing remains except the darkness that is our soul, destined to spend eternity apart from Jesus. The dead man knows only despair. It longs to find meaning, but the there’s no such thing in death. Only the life of Jesus can fill the longings of our soul. As long as death remains inside, we cannot know the love God has for us. When we open our hearts to Him and allow Jesus to pull the dead man out, that’s when we truly begin living for the first time.
Once the darkness is removed from within us, Satan will stop at nothing trying to push it back in. He searches for any nook and cranny he can find, attempting to convince us that his ways are better than those of God. Satan can’t stand the light so he creeps at the edges looking for an opening he can infiltrate without being exposed. We seal up the cracks in our life by continually obeying God and bathing ourselves in the light of Jesus.
The Apostle Paul asked how those who had been rescued from death could still live like they were dead (Romans 6:1-2). Don’t let Satan deceive you. If you are a follower of Jesus, the dead man has been ripped out of you. You belong to God, and Satan no longer has any control over you. You are clean, new, beautiful, and alive. Don’t live as if you are still dead inside. Instead, walk in the light and joy of Jesus. He is the lover of your soul.