The Walking Dead

My husband’s favorite genre of movies are zombie movies. Now, I cannot watch these things. I think they are gross and I just cannot handle it. They scare me! I am very susceptible to nightmares. It doesn’t take much for something to be impressed upon my brain. He always asks me to watch them with him, but I just can’t! He loves them! Don’t misunderstand me. He does not want to ever come across a zombie in a dark alley, but he loves the movies. I know it sounds weird, but whenever I read the scripture passage for today, I always think of zombies.

Now, before you stone me for blasphemy, let’s read the scripture together and I’ll explain what I am talking about…It’s Ephesians 2, verses 1-10. The people in Ephesus were a group of pagans, who worshiped pagan gods. In fact, they had a huge temple there that was dedicated to the Roman god Diana. Paul had set up a Christian church there and the book of Ephesians is a letter to those Christians to remind them where they came from. The people of Ephesus needed to be reminded that it was Christ who saved them from their sins…

(Read scripture together)

“ 1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”

Wow! You know what people? If we have not accepted Christ as our Savior, we are still dead in our transgressions. We are literally like, “The Walking Dead”…What I want for us all, is that we will be able to recognize Christ’s sacrifice for us and be made alive in Him again…

When we are so deep in sin, sometimes it is hard to see a way out. The scripture says that when we are following our own sinful desires, and are following the ways of the world we are dead. Does this mean that they are dead physically? No, of course not. In this scripture, death signifies the inability to communicate with God. To be dead means to be separated from God. Matthew Henry’s Commentary suggests that “Sin is the death of a soul”…when we sin, our soul can no longer survive. And if we follow the ways of the world instead of the ways of Christ, we are dead in our sins. The word dead in Greek is “nekros”, which literally means to be like a corpse.

Can you imagine walking down the street and seeing a bunch of corpses walking around? It would be like “Night of the Living Dead”, but that is just what this scripture is saying…If you are following the ways of the world and not God, you are basically dead in your sin. How horrible! We can get so caught up in our own lives and so used to doing whatever we want, that it can be hard to see any hope of a life without sin. This is what we are dealing with when we try to witness to someone, especially in this day and age…When people are so deep in their own sin and we try to tell them about the hope that is found in Jesus, it can be like trying to raise someone from the dead…

In the book, “The Republic of Plato”, we get a description of what is commonly referred to as “Plato’s Cave”. The description is about a group of prisoners who from infancy are chained together deep inside of a cave facing a wall. They have never been allowed to move or to look around…all they know is this wall. The prisoners have been forced to view a puppet show on that wall since they were children. The images are shadows of different shapes that are projected by fire light onto the cave wall. Voices and sounds are given to the shapes and because the sounds bounce off of the wall as an echo, the prisoners think the sounds come from the shadows…the cave wall was their reality.