2 Timothy 2:11
It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:
Ephesians 2:1
And you has he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
2 Corinthians 2:16
To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.
It is almost a movie trope, where a character goes about his business, even interacting with others, not realizing they are dead. To add to the irony, they may see others as dead, who are really alive. This is the exact irony we all experience in the world, and as Christians. Scripture describes a time when we were all “dead in trespasses and sins” and “alienated from the life of God” through the ignorance within us. But the dead don’t recognize their status as being dead. To them, “life” consists in the endless fulfillment of bodily desires. To govern those desires is to them is the same thing as “death”. But in that state, they are totally unaware of the different kind of life that Adam first had in the garden with God. When Adam lost that life, he had in fact “died” even though he still physically breathed.
To be dead with Christ, is to live with Him. That is to say, it’s like dying to the very undead state we were in before Him. It is a return to the fellowship of the Spirit of God that Adam had in the garden to begin with. We were never meant to just be bodies alone, completely untethered to the spiritual life in God. When you are born again, that spiritual life is restored. You aren’t just a body with bodily desires, you are a revitalized spirit with spiritual desires. What satisfies you is no longer only the things of the body, but the things of the Spirit.
To those who are dead, this looks like death. It “smells” like death - because your life no longer consists in the endless satiation of bodily desires. Peter described it like this:
1 Peter 4:4
Wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
But to those who are in Christ, those who are dead are missing out an entire dimension of life that they are totally ignorant to. As believers, we need to remember that to be dead with Christ, is to live with Him. It is not about asceticism for asceticism’s sake, or self denial for self denial’s sake. It’s about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It’s about the life of God. In Christ we are exhorted to remember that, unless we allow the old ways of death in us again:
Ephesians 4:17-18
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, [18] Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
