The Day Of The Living Dead Series

Have you ever seen a zombie movie? I haven’t; I’m not into horror movies, I’ve never thought that fear was fun. But zombies are the monster du jour. Space invaders, werewolves and vampires are all old hat. What’s the fascination with graves opening and corpses in various stages of decomposition rising up and going out to terrorize the townspeople?

And what on earth do all those suddenly revived corpses really want? And why are people so scared anyway? What can the dead do to harm us? What could the dead possibly want with the living?

Do we imagine somehow that they will steal our life away, that if they touch us we too, will somehow become “dead”? Is that what they want, to trade places with us, and put us underground instead?

But if they are walking around, moving around, shouldn’t they be less scary, rather than more? I mean, if the dead get up and walk, doesn’t that mean they’re not dead anymore and we can throw our hats in the air and set off firecrackers and sing Hallelujah and start making plans to live forever?

Or is there something in us that makes us know that, once we have died, whatever lies on the other side is a radical departure from what’s on this, and that those few who come back, for however short or long a time, are changed. I wonder how Lazarus felt when he emerged from the tomb that day... Was he more afraid of death after that, or less? Did the people around him see a change, did they sense a strangeness, an “otherness” about him? I think no matter what happened he must always have been a little different, a little other-worldly. It’s not the sort of experience you just shrug off. But did Lazarus actually catch a glimpse of what Christ promises us, did he get a taste of paradise? If he did, it must have been hard to return to the world.

That’s why Paul asks why on earth any of us would want to go on sinning, once we have experienced God’s goodness. Apparently a lot of people were accusing Paul of encouraging people to go off immediately and break all the commandments just to give God an opportunity to replay his starring role. “Should we continue in sin,” Paul asks, “in order that grace may abound?”

Well of course the answer is a horrified “no.” Paul puts it as strongly as possible: the Thursday morning Bible study has already learned the Greek phrase, “me genoito”, which your translation renders “By no means!” but really is much stronger - “Heaven forbid!” Or “Not on your life!” Or “Don’t even think it!” Absolutely not we shouldn’t continue to sin.

But why not? Is our free pass into the Presence going to wear out, after all, like a ticket that gets punched every time you go through the turnstile and gets canceled after the 10th time through? Will God get tired of forgiving us?

Interestingly enough, Paul doesn’t even suggest that. Instead, he challenges his hearers: “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” That’s a pretty strange idea, isn’t it, “died to sin”. And there’s been a lot of controversy over the centuries about exactly what Paul meant.

In the early years after my conversion it was explained to me in the following way. When we die, our five senses will cease to operate. We will no longer be able to touch, taste, see, smell, or hear. We will lose all ability to feel or to respond to the world around us. In just the same way, so the idea goes, to die to sin means that we become insensitive to it. For example, if you see a cat stretched out limp in the sun, you can’t tell from a distance whether it’s alive or dead. But if you touch it with your foot, you’ll know immediately. If it’s alive, it will react. It will jump up and most likely run away. On the other hand, if it’s dead, it won’t move. Well, according to this popular view, having died to sin, we are supposedly just as unresponsive to temptation as a corpse is to a physical stimulus. And the reason for this, we are assured from v. 6, is that our old nature was in some way crucified with Christ. For he bore not only our guilt but our fallen nature. It was nailed to the cross and killed, and our task (however much evidence we may have to the contrary, is to reckon it dead. And there an awful lot of scholars who hold this view. This is what one of them says: “A dead man cannot sin. And you are dead... Be in relation to all sin as impassive, as insensible, as immovable, as is he who has already died. Another fellow wrote, “This ‘death’ has presumably made the Christian as insensible to sin as a dead man is to the objects of the world of sense.” And J. B. Phillips says that “a dead man can safely be said to be ‘immune to the power of sin,’” and that we are to look upon ourselves as “dead to the appeal and power of sin.”