From Spiritual Death to Life
Dr. Valson Abraham
Go into a mortuary and try to carry on a conversation with a dead person lying in a casket. No matter how charming, charismatic or logical your words and personality, you will get nowhere. That dead person cannot respond.
A spiritually dead person cannot respond to the things of God. God is a stranger and riddle to him. He cannot perceive God in the world or people around him. A life with God is meaningless and without value to him. He has no longing for God. He gives his life only to those things perceived in the five senses because they are the only things he knows.
Most people see imperfections in themselves and in others, but those who are spiritually dead tend to blame them on forces in our past, other people, our present circumstances or on the bad karma of past lives. They put blame upon something wrong in the environment. A spiritually dead person may attempt to “clean up his act” and overcome his faults through moral and mental discipline and religious practices. Just try a little harder, they believe, and they will eventually get there.
All of this thinking is like putting band-aids on cancers. Morality and religion do not deal with the root problem. That root problem is sin. Sin is another word for spiritual death. We sin because we are sinners. We sin because we are spiritually dead, absent from the life of God.
Just as a dead man cannot respond to the world around him, a spiritually dead person cannot respond to the things of God without a radical intervention. Logic and eloquence are of no use. Only the Holy Spirit can provide that needed intervention.
In John 16, Jesus tells His disciples that He will soon leave them, but He will give them the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.
In other words, the Holy Spirit, the creator of life, is the only one who can bring life out of spiritual death. Only the Holy Spirit can awaken a spiritually dead person to God.
Only the Holy Spirit can awaken that person to his sin. Only the Holy Spirit can awaken a spiritually dead person to the righteousness of God greater than his sin. Only the Holy Spirit can awaken a spiritually dead person to the Good News that Jesus has judged his sin at the cross and makes him righteous before a good and righteous God.
This is why Jesus told His disciples to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit in their midst and upon each of them. Only then would they have the power to speak with authority that would awaken people from spiritual death.
When the disciples spoke under the power of the Holy Spirit, spiritually dead people came alive by the thousands. In the Book of Acts, the church added and then multiplied the number of people who were being saved.
Such is not the case in most of our churches today. Too many churches have forgotten about the Holy Spirit. Churches rely more on gimmicks rather than the power of the Holy Spirit.
As a result, few people are convicted of sin. They do not see the righteousness of God to which they fall disastrously short. They do not conceive the power of Jesus at the cross and in the resurrection to judge the devil who has darkened their minds. As a result, our churches have become powerless, and our society has remained a mess.
The solution to our basic problem is both simple and profound: re-discover the Holy Spirit and His power to convict of sin, righteousness and judgment. Then we will see a big turnaround in society at every level. Problems that have lasted for years and even centuries and millennia will be transformed in ways that will surprise everybody.
We will also see the gospel reach into every corner of the world, including those parts of the world that most of us have forgotten. I can tell you from experience, millions of people in India are groaning for the Desire of the Nations. Only the Holy Spirit can convince them that His name is Jesus Christ.
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Father God, thank you for the ministry of the Holy Spirit, bringing me from spiritual death to life. Thank you for enabling me to live in fellowship with you. I pray for the power of your Holy Spirit to awaken hundreds of millions of spiritually dead people in the days ahead, in India and in every part of this world. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.