Suggested Reading: Ephesians 2
When I was in college, a movie came out that had a very interesting watch to re-watch ratio. It made lots of money getting watched the first time but, once you saw the twist at the end, you could never watch the movie the same way. The movie was The Sixth Sense and featured the much maligned and mocked little boy who said, "I see dead people." Bruce Willis played a psychologist who was trying to help this little boy, only to discover right at the end of the movie that he himself has been dead the whole time. He had been walking through life, trying to accomplish things, unable to connect with anyone, including his wife who was beginning a relationship with another man. Throughout the course of the whole movie, he was trying to live his life and never realized he was dead.
When I was in college, a movie came out that had a very interesting watch to re-watch ratio. It made lots of money getting watched the first time but, once you saw the twist at the end, you could never watch the movie the same way. The movie was The Sixth Sense and featured the much maligned and mocked little boy who said, "I see dead people." Bruce Willis played a psychologist who was trying to help this little boy, only to discover right at the end of the movie that he himself has been dead the whole time. He had been walking through life, trying to accomplish things, unable to connect with anyone, including his wife who was beginning a relationship with another man. Throughout the course of the whole movie, he was trying to live his life and never realized he was dead.
The movie is a great illustration for the way we were when God found us. In Ephesians 2:1-2, Paul is reminding the church at Ephesus what their lives were like before Christ and he says, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to this worldly age, according to the ruler of the atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient" (HCSB). In verse 12 he adds, "At that time, you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, with no hope and without God in the world" (HCSB).
But for most of us, until shortly before we encountered Jesus, when the Holy Spirit began moving in us, we didn't realize we were dead. We may have begun to suspect. We may have started noticing that life wasn't what it should be. But we probably weren't completely aware of how dead we were until Jesus gave us life. In many ways, it's similar to falling in love, really falling in love, for the first time. Up until that moment, we may think we know what love is. We may think we know what love feels like and what love drives us to do. But when it really happens for the first time, all of those previous encounters we thought were love suddenly fall by the wayside in comparison. Suddenly, we realize that we didn't know a thing about love. In the same way, we thought we knew what life was, but when Jesus gave us real life and we discovered what it means to really live, suddenly all the things we once thought were life fall by the wayside and seem empty and meaningless.
When God found us, we were dead. We were without hope. We were cut off from God. But God went out of the way to find us. God saw us in our living death and brought us life. Today, take a little time and remember what is was like to be dead. Then thank God for bringing you to life.
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