Zaó Nekros
Zaó Nekros
Romans 6:13
“… present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead”
ὡσεὶ ἐκ νεκρῶν ζῶντας
hōsei ek nekrōn zōntas
“To live dead.”
The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror drama television series based on the comic book series of the same name. In it, people run from zombies who are dead people animated through a world wide virus. At first, it appears that if bitten or scratched by a zombie then you get infected and will become a zombie yourself. Later, we discover that everyone is already infected – thus they are the real “walking dead” – not the zombies.
There is a striking paradox throughout the New Testament: spiritually, things are not always what they appear to be.
A person may be physically alive—breathing, walking, working, and interacting with the world—and yet Scripture can describe that person as spiritually dead. Jesus Himself used this kind of language when He said,
22 But Jesus *said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Matthew 8 & Luke 24:4-5 KJV
“Let the dead bury their dead.” The outward appearance is life, but inwardly there is separation from the source of life.
Conversely, the person who has “died with Christ” has entered into a different kind of life. Paul tells us to consider ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ.” And in Romans 6:13 he gives us an especially striking expression:
“Present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead.”
This is the great spiritual reversal.
Those who appear alive may be spiritually dead, while those who have died with Christ are spiritually alive.
Death and freedom from the old law of sin
Paul develops this idea further in Romans 6:
“For he that is dead is freed from sin.”
As an illustration, we can picture this through the familiar concept of legal finality. In human law, a person cannot simply be subjected to a second prosecution for the same offense as though the first judgment had never occurred. Death represents an even more decisive separation: a dead person is no longer functioning as a living subject under the ordinary claims and obligations of this present life.
Paul uses death in a similar spiritual picture. The person who has died with Christ has experienced a decisive break with the old dominion of sin. This becomes even more interesting when we consider the distinction between
physical death, ceremonial uncleanness, and spiritual life.
Under the Mosaic Law, contact with a human corpse rendered a person ceremonially unclean. Scripture says:
“He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.” Numbers 19:11
This was a matter of ritual or ceremonial uncleanness. It did
not mean that the deceased person had necessarily been sinful, nor did it mean that Jesus’ dead body was morally or spiritually unclean. Jesus was completely sinless. Yet His physical body, having truly died, would have belonged to the same physical category of a human corpse to which the Mosaic laws of corpse impurity applied. His death was real. His body was a genuine human body, and His corpse was genuinely dead. In John 20:17, Jesus tells Mary:
“Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”
This gives us a useful illustration.
The body can be physically dead while the purposes of God are moving toward resurrection life. And in Christ, the apparent contradiction becomes even greater: the One whose body lay dead in the tomb was simultaneously the source and author of resurrection life. His death was not the end. It was the passage into resurrection.
The Christian possesses spiritual life now, while still living in a mortal body.
“He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Romans 8:11
So the resurrection life that has already begun spiritually will ultimately extend to the body. And Romans 6:13 gives you perhaps the strongest single phrase for the whole concept:
“alive from the dead.” It sounds almost like a contradiction—which is exactly what makes it useful for illustrating your “things are not spiritually what they appear to be” theme.