Does Dead Mean Dead?

Does Dead Mean Dead?

Contra Total Depravity, part 1

Ephesians 2:1-2

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

“Dead is dead.” This is the Calvinist argument for Total Depravity. They say, “It doesn’t just mean mostly dead, it means all dead: completely spiritually dead and incapable of responding to God’s grace. We weren’t just drowning in the ocean and then grabbed hold of a life-saving device. No, we were completely dead at the bottom of the ocean and the only way for us to be saved was for God to have come all the way down there to get us, drag us up, and resuscitate us. Dead people can’t respond. They are completely lifeless. Blind people can’t see and deaf people can’t hear. The only way is through a miracle which God does in regeneration, giving us a new heart to believe in Him, trust Him, and follow His commands.”

In this way, the Calvinists maintain that the spiritual condition of a lost person is so “dead” in their sins, so lost, and so incapable of choosing God since all they want and could ever want is their sin and rebellion against God. They may use the term “free-will” but what they really mean by that is the person is only free to do evil and since that is all they want, they are not restricted in their desires and in this way, are free. For clarification though, they would still believe that a spiritually dead person can be civilly moral, they just can’t be “good” in any true sense pleasing to God or choose that kind of good because they don’t want God and thus can never initiate action upon fulfilling the first and greatest commandment. In their idea of spiritual death, human beings are incapable of responding to God in faith because they are so depraved in their sin; and so the only way to be saved is if God does a miracle by saving us first and then after this, we will desire Him and choose Him since we have become spiritually alive. In their doctrine of the order of salvation, regeneration precedes faith. They also will outright reject any view of partial regeneration where a person is enabled enough to exercise faith and then fully regenerated. Which, I would reject partial regeneration as well.

That’s the general Calvinistic understanding. It sounds good though, right? It preaches well. It preaches real well. But is it true? I think not. But before you might get upset at me for disagreeing, first admit the logic of your worldview that me disagreeing with you was determined by God in eternity past, so I am essentially just fulfilling the will of God in rejecting “your truth.” Therefore, to get upset with me is really just to get upset at God since God is the one who apparently determined me to write this and for you to listen to it. Now, I know that not all Calvinists are that deterministic in their thinking, but they at least believe that individuals were somewhat randomly selected by God to be saved with no known reason to us, and He just decided to save a limited number of people and use the rest as cannon fodder. So some were saved and the rest were condemned, having been born incapable of ever responding to God but somehow still response-able for their actions. God didn’t love them enough to give them sufficient grace to believe. The logical conclusion of that system which most Calvinists refuse to face is that since God withheld His grace from some people, and they were never able to respond to Him, then God created them for the sole purpose of destruction and to glorify Himself in the exercise of His wrath to which they will burn in hell for eternity for the good pleasure of His glory. Yikes! How do you reconcile that?

For most Calvinists, they suppress these logical contradictions between God’s sovereignty and man’s free-will. They just push it further down into their sub-conscious mind so they don’t have to deal with it and they appeal to mystery saying, “Even though I don’t understand this, I know somehow it is resolved and understood in the infinite mind of God.” That was me for fifteen years. The only way for me to maintain my sanity was to suppress it. Otherwise, it drove my mind crazy and I felt as if I was just outside my body, watching everything play out like a movie. That’s why these things have to be suppressed. The cognitive dissonance is just far too great to handle while at the same time to remain sane. For a deep thinker like me, I had to literally resolve not to bring up the issue to my mind, knowing that it would cause problems for me. But for others who are not deep thinkers, their ignorance is bliss and they can go on the rest of their lives being content and not knowing because their mind just never goes there. But let me challenge you with this: God created this world, He created our minds, He created our psychology, and He knows how these things might influence our minds, and so He provided sufficient understanding in His Word for us to figure this out to the degree that we can maintain our sanity. He is a God of order and He is the God over all logic. Therefore, He also operates in a rational way. But that rational way is not the Calvinistic worldview.

What does it mean to be dead in sin?

“Dead means dead” the Calvinist says. But isn’t that circular reasoning? It’s like saying “love is love.” Okay, well, what does that mean? Does it mean that homosexuality is okay? If so, then why not pedophilia and bestiality? After all, if love defines itself or if my own presuppositions define love, then love is whatever I want it to be. You see? It doesn’t quite work that way. We cannot define biblical terms with our own presuppositions and our own definitions and our own convincing sermon story metaphors. We must use the Bible’s definition of “dead” to get an accurate understanding.

But what if dead means all the way dead? What does that even look like practically and is it even rationally feasible to maintain such a position if we look at our natural world? Don’t people have faith in other religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or some polytheistic religion? If so, why can’t they have faith in God? Other people would die for the sake of their god, would sacrifice their children for the sake of their god, and would be very devoted to their god in faith. Yet, are you saying that God has created a world and set it up as impossible for anyone to believe in the One true God? Why is He playing so hard to get? Why does He not want us to find Him? You might say, “nobody wants the One true God” but then why is it they can have a devoted faith in false gods? But perhaps you might think this is primarily a sin issue. Very well, how dead are they in their sin? Are they incapable of pure motives? Can a soldier not give his life for his country and fellow soldiers with pure devotion? Can a mother not sacrifice her life for her children? Can an unsaved person not deny himself pleasure in order that someone else may have pleasure? And if they can do these things amongst themselves, why can’t they transfer that selflessness in choosing to serve a deity or the One true God? And if a beggar can beg for bread, can he not also beg for God’s mercy? If a needy person can ask for help, are they incapable of asking God for help? If people can experience spirituality in the mystical religions and practices, are they incapable of experiencing the One true God spiritually? Obviously, they are not that spiritually dead. To say otherwise is to deny all sound reason.

The Calvinistic doctrine is force to face this issue: God has made the world in such a way that it is completely impossible to believe in the One true God but He has made this world abundantly possible for anyone to freely choose false gods, demons, and Baals. But somehow, He is still a Jealous God and wants the whole world to worship Him... So, why can people not believe in God?

Dead obviously cannot mean all the way dead to be incapable of morality, faith, and spirituality, unless we have a darker view of the One true God than all the other gods which demons are behind and we reject all sound reason. Has a Jealous God desiring all devotion to Him created such a world where seeking Him is impossible so devotion to Him will be impossible unless He forces people to believe? Does He take more delight in people worshipping demons than He does in people worshipping Him? How could that be? It is nonsense. Why would Jesus even come to the world to prove the Father’s love to us if that is the case? We would be so dead we would not be able to respond to that love. We wouldn’t be able to feel that love, see it, sense it, hear it, and understand it. It must have been one giant charade or play by which we were determined to do what we were going to do and we were just watching ourselves do it like watching a movie play out, passively observing as God moves every chess piece into place on both sides of the board. Somehow, we can freely respond to other people loving us but we just can’t respond to the God of the universe loving us because you know, we’re just that dead.

What we have to understand here is that the word “dead” in Ephesians 2 is just an idiom and should be interpreted in light of that. It obviously cannot mean more dead than the ways previously mentioned. Being an idiom, by definition, it can only be stretched so far to mean something. Idioms cannot mean more than what the context allows. For example, if I say, “I am buried in debt,” you will need to know the context to understand what that means. Taking it too literally, one might think I dug a literal hole for myself. But of course, that’s a preposterous understanding. But even interpreting this non-literally may be a problem as well. One could think that I have so much debt accumulated that it would be similar to burying myself and resigning myself. Being buried six-foot under, there’s nothing I can do. I’m basically dead at that point. There is no hope and no possible chance at escaping. The dirt is on top of me and I can’t move. Therefore, according to this interpretation, I will never get out of debt. But is that what I mean by using this idiom? No, that is very unlikely. What someone would most likely mean by saying, “I’m buried in debt” is that their financial debt is a heavy burden to them and their prospects are not good. You could even say that they are in great financial trouble. But this does not mean that it is impossible for them to get out of debt. They can and likely will but it may take some time before that happens.

If we interpret “dead” according to the context of Ephesians 2, then it simply means to be separated from the life of God, and to be made alive means to be united to the life of God. To be dead in sin means to live in sin, the way in “which you formerly walked” after the world and after the work of the devil. To be dead is about a way of living in sin as verse three says, “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” Children of wrath means living after the nature of wrath (anger) like other people in the unsaved world and/or being subject to death and the judgement, which is separation from God forever. The Orthodox Church interprets this as being under subjugation to the devil’s wrath and world rule (Heb 2:14-15; 1 Jn 3:8).

Now, it certainly does say that God “made us alive” and this is speaking about the new birth. But if we look at the context just a few verses later, it shows us how we enter into this new birth and we do that “through faith” (v. 8). Even within the context of John 3, if you look down in the context just a little further, you will see that belief is how you enter into this new birth (v. 15-16). Jesus is literally explaining to Nicodemus that this is how it is possible to be born again, entering through belief and then after this, God does the regenerating work of new birth. The order is clear within the context that faith precedes eternal life, “so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” Ephesians 1:13 also repeats this same order, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” Romans 5:2 says, “We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand” (CSB).

Back in Ephesians 2:5, “dead” is mentioned for the second time and is contrasted with “alive.” What is correlated with alive? It is the phrase, “by grace you have been saved.” So alive means to be saved by grace but the whole phrase is down in verse eight which also includes faith. And what is the opposite of being alive? It is being dead. But if alive means quite simply, to be saved, then dead means to not be saved. Either you are living in sin or you are not. Either you have faith or you do not. This is what verse eleven continues to explain that Paul’s audience were formerly “Gentiles in the flesh,” the “uncircumcision,” and “were at that time separate from Christ” and “excluded,” separated from “the covenants of promise,” “having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 11-13). That’s what dead means and they became alive through faith in God’s love for them because of the work of Christ’s life and death on their behalf. The key theme in this chapter is separation from God and living in sin. That’s what dead means. Alive means the opposite of that.

We can even understand this concept through our own experiences of how before many of us came to Christ, we were living in the debauchery of the world, and sin dominated our lives. We had broken minds and broken hearts and found ourselves in a very hopeless and fatiguing state. We didn’t know God or have a relationship with Him. We never experienced the presence of God or the sanctifying goodness of the Scriptures. We were just running ourselves empty and following a pattern of self-destruction. But then we heard about Christ or had a touch of His presence and that was enough to convince us to believe and then God gave us a new heart and now we live always seeking to do all that is pleasing to Him because of our love for Him. So then, we are “no longer strangers and aliens,” but “fellow citizens with the saints” and members “of God’s household” (v. 19). We are alive because we are no longer separated from God but have the abiding life of God within us who is continually vivifying our nature.

Is faith our own or can we only have faith if God gives us faith?

The Calvinists think that faith comes with the new birth as a whole package deal which God decides to give to whomever He will and to not give to whomever He will from His decisions in eternity past. And so, unless God decides that He wants to save you, and chooses you, and decides to regenerate your heart, then you never had a chance, and it was impossible for you to have ever had faith; but you are merely a reprobate, and were doomed from the womb. But is faith really a package deal with regeneration in this way?

What about the example of the Centurion’s faith for his servant to be healed? He sent messengers to Jesus to tell Him to just say the word and he believed that if Jesus did, his servant would be healed. When Jesus heard this, it says, “He marveled at him, and turned and said to the crowd that was following Him, ‘I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith’” (Lk 7:9). Jesus marveled at him, which means that He was amazed at how great his faith was. He was impressed. But why would Jesus be that way and say such things if Jesus was the one who gave him all that faith? Doesn’t that seem like a ridiculous proposition? Was the faith deterministically and irresistibly given to him by God or was it his own faith? If it was given to him by God, then why did Jesus marvel?

Another example is this woman who came to Jesus “who was a sinner” (Lk 7:37). She brought with her an alabaster vial of perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet with it and was wiping His feet with her hair. People were upset about this because that woman was an unclean sinner, probably a well-known prostitute. But despite this known condition of hers in being a sinner, she initiated a profound act of love to Jesus. It was a great selfless sacrifice to God in loving Him. The perfume she anointed Jesus with was extremely expensive and people were complaining in how she was being wasteful and unwise. After this Jesus says to those with Him, “For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” Then people were saying, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?” Jesus forgave her sins here as the result from her responding to Jesus in faith and through that faith, love. But that faith came before she approached Jesus and her heart had cleansing before she approached Jesus. Otherwise, she would not have given this costly sacrifice to Jesus. Her faith made her well before Jesus declared forgiveness over her. After Jesus declared her forgiven, He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (v. 50). Say what?! Someone needs to correct Jesus’ theology. He’s not giving all the glory to God! He just said your faith has saved you... Can you believe that…? He didn’t say, “My faith has saved you,” or “I regenerated you and made you irresistibly come to Me” or “It’s grace that saved you.” He said, “Your faith has saved you.” Wow, what an Arminian… tsk-tsk. Someone needs to get Paul and Jesus together in a room together to argue this out. Jesus must be off base here to say that faith saves. Or, maybe He is actually telling the truth... Faith is our responsibility and choice in coming to God kind of like how this woman did, and receiving God’s grace and forgiveness, believing that God loved her. Does not Paul also always contrast faith against works, indicating that faith is indeed not a work? So on what basis is there for the Calvinist to reject faith preceding regeneration as being some kind of work? “Your faith has saved you.” Those were Jesus’ words, not mine.

How also do we suppose that the believers in the Old Testament were saved? Was it by faith as Paul points out? (Ro 4). Paul says, “For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (v. 16). Did you hear that? “By faith” in accordance with grace, meaning, faith is the means by which we receive grace. And if we are grafted in to this covenant of Abraham as Paul says in Romans 11 and if Abraham is the father of us all because of believing in God to be justified, then that means even as in the Old Testament people were justified before God, so also are we. But they did not all have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, did they? No, for the presence of God only lived around most of them in the glory cloud or in the temple, and only lived inside a few of them like David. Recall that there were those who had already believed and were justified before God before receiving the gift of the Spirit in Acts 19, and also the thief on the cross in Luke 23 was justified without receiving the gift of the Spirit. Even Jesus’ disciples did not have the indwelling Spirit during the time of Jesus ministry (Jn 7:39; 14:17).

But if they did not all have the presence of the Spirit within them, were they properly regenerated and brought to life as Christians are today? No. The cleansing was a lesser cleansing as Paul says, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses” (Acts 13:38-39). Under the Old Covenant, there was a lesser cleansing. It wasn’t like the doctrine of regeneration that we have today. Their experience was different. But they were saved nonetheless through their faith, though not being vivified through the indwelling presence of God. Does that mean that they were still dead in sins? No, because it was faith that brought cleansing to their hearts and purged sin from their hearts. But God did not irresistibly draw them to Himself as many people of Israel perished in the wilderness because they did not have faith though God wanted them to have faith.

God left the choice up to them as it was said, “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve” and “So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants” (Josh 24:15; Dt 30:19). They were told to choose because their faith was their own faith and their volition was their own volition. God would not make them do it. That’s why He says, “Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live” (Ezek 18:31-32).

God was indicating to them that they needed to change their own hearts through faith in Him, changing their minds, and changing their ways. Why else would God ask them why they would die if it was only in God’s deterministic choice whether they would live or not depending whether or not God wanted to regenerate their hearts? But if it were completely up to God, He would have renewed their hearts because He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Yet, He did not do that because the responsibility was theirs to repent, and that is something God would not irresistibly control because He gave them a free-will. God is not playing charades here.

Do you see the problem here? The absence of Old Testament regeneration through the Holy Spirit while people were still justified and saved through faith means that God did not have to make them alive first in order for them to believe. They believed apart from the vivifying presence of God. But according to the Calvinistic system, how could anyone believe apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit? Under that framework, they can’t, can they? So were Old Testament saints still corpse-like dead? Had a miracle ever been performed on their hearts in order to make them believe? So then why did they believe?

At this point, I would caution you to not pull out proof-texts to prove your presuppositional Calvinistic beliefs. Don’t start there. Start with faithful exegesis of what the Word of God really says. Don’t force your presuppositions into the text to make it fit your worldview. Unless you change your mode of thinking on this, then presuppositional thinking will be your default setting. Don’t assume a text means anything or proves your point just because it sounds like what you’re thinking it means. Read and study the context. Acknowledge your own presuppositions and challenge yourself to think different.

Other uses of the word “dead” in the Bible

Many have falsely equated this term dead to be in their mind like a lifeless corpse, incapable of anything and may sometimes use biblical stories to justify or support this definition of dead. For example, Lazarus was dead for four days and then Jesus miraculously raised him up. But that is not even referring to salvation. It was a miracle regarding his physical body and a glimpse into the resurrection power of Jesus which we will experience one day when our bodies are resurrected on the last day. Let’s not over-spiritualize the text to make it mean more than it actually means. If we come to passages like Ephesians 2:1 and bring our own imaginative understanding of “dead” or bring our own presuppositional understanding to the text like “Total Depravity” apart from interpreting the word dead based upon the context, then this is simply eisegesis.

There are many instances in the Bible where dead does not only apply to unbelievers and dead also does not mean to be fully incapable of responding. Take for example the story of the prodigal son. It says at the end, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found” (Lk 15:32). The definition of dead here cannot mean physically dead, nor can it mean incapable of responding since it says, “he came to his senses” (v. 17). Then he proceeds to rationalize in his own mind about why he can trust in the goodness of his father so as to come back to him and to receive help. Then he walked over to his father’s house. He had volition. Yet the reconciliation did not come yet at this time. He was still “dead” at this time as he came to his senses, rationalized in his own mind, and walked over to his father. But then once he was reconciled with his father, he was declared to be alive since death was about estrangement to his father and life was about the relationship being made whole, happy, and lively. He was once living his life in a self-destructive way in which he lost his way but then he came back to his father’s house and found peace, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Perhaps if this story were to illustrate the Calvinistic worldview, the son would not have come walking over to the father but the father would have sought out the son, and when he finally found him, he found his corpse dead in the pig’s feeding trough as he had drowned in it, and then after this, he miraculously brought him to life. That is kind of how they think conversion works. Volition to seek out what is good and right can only be supernaturally granted to them because otherwise, they would not seek after God so as to find Him since they are “dead.”

What about the church of Sardis? Revelation 3:1-2 says, “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.” How dead are they? Are they morally incapable to respond to the truth? Or are they just “dead” because that’s a description of them not having the life of God in their church because they had soiled their garments with sin and unbelief? So then it’s about separation and lawlessness, right? Dead is an idiom used here to describe that. Secondly, why are they called to “wake up” if they are dead? Dead people can’t wake up because they’re dead, right? Dead people can only be made alive. So why doesn’t God just say, “wait a little while and then I will make you alive”? Perhaps He does not say that because they are not morally incapable of responding to His call to “wake up,” but they are actually morally and spiritually capable of responding and they have ears to hear this call as well so that they can respond. Anyone who hears the message of Jesus and wants to respond, will respond, and Jesus wants them to respond.

What about James 1:15 that when lust has conceived it brings forth death? That does not mean Total Depravity, does it? Or a corpse-like inability to spiritually respond to God? In Colossians 2:13 it says, “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.” Does dead mean what the Calvinists think it means here? Hold on. Let’s back up just one verse, “having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” Did you hear that? Through faith. The word “through” is about the means by which we were made alive but it was Christ who made us alive. Our faith is a relevant factor here to being made alive. He did not make us alive apart from our faith. In the Calvinistic framework, faith is redundant. They just call it “the ordained means of grace that God uses to bring people to salvation” while still believing that regeneration precedes faith. But wait… how do those two beliefs co-exist? Does faith precede regeneration or not? I’m confused… But as I said, faith is redundant if God is just going to zap people into salvation anyway with no regard to faith. In that case, Paul is just wasting his breath here every time he mentions faith.

“In Calvinism: You are made alive in order to admit that you were dead. You were given a new heart in order to admit you had a bad heart.” ~ Leighton Flowers.

This topic will be continued in the next article