“And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses”
“He has made alive together with Him”
Jesus exchanged his death for our death and gave us his life. We are now spiritually alive to God in Christ. We are not now alive physically any more than we were before. This word “alive” is spiritual aliveness, the life of God, the life that God gives us (Ephesians 2:4,5).
Death is a result of having a sin nature or sin capacity. Before Adam sinned, he did not have a sin capacity, so he never experienced death. Once he sinned, he acquired a sin capacity. He experienced both spiritual and physical deaths. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The good news is Jesus took our death so we could have his eternal life (John 1:4; 14:6; 1 John 5:10-12). We receive physical life from our parents at our first birth; we receive spiritual life and eternal life at our second birth.
“Has made alive together” means to produce alive with, preserve alive with. Christians exist in God’s eternal life. At our conversion, we received spiritual life with Christ (Ephesians 2:5). God imparts this life to us at the moment of our salvation. In our union with Christ, God makes us alive in Christ. When a person receives Jesus Christ as their Savior, God performs a divine operation of giving them his life.
PRINCIPLE:
When we receive Christ, God gives us his very own life– eternal life.
APPLICATION:
The dead feel no pain. The reason non-Christians do not feel lost is they cannot feel anything spiritually. No dead person feels dead. A person does not have to feel lost; they are lost. The unbeliever exists in death and is in the process of perishing eternally.
When we were “made alive,” we entered into union with Jesus Christ for eternity. Do you have eternal life? You receive eternal life by accepting God’s gift of Jesus’ death for your sin. When you do that, you receive eternal life.
