Can The Dead Believe?

This post may come across a little bit different then what you are expecting based on the title. I want to clarify that I am not writing about the physically dead, rather the spiritually dead.

As we see in Scripture, God gives us a long list of synonyms to describe the unbelieving man. He says they are unrighteous and ungodly, willfully ignorant and lacking understanding, immoral and full of every kind of evil. God defines them as children of wrath, cowards, liars, and walking abominations. They are disobedient, envious, murderous, and even spend their lives looking for new ways to commit treason against the Lord. In Ephesians chapter two God refers to them as Dead.

So what does this term dead even mean?

Shai Linne, a well known Christian rapper expresses his beliefs in his song "Election" by saying:

Some people say that we were drowning in the ocean
Barely floating until God threw us the rope then
Our free will helped us as we groped
Our faith is the hand that grabbed the rope and God put us back in the boat
Nope! Without apology I deny that analogy
Reality- we were dead at the bottom of the sea
I was a swollen corpse with hope no more
Until Jehovah the LORD dove from the shore to the ocean floor
Yeah, I was a corpse and I smelled like it
I’ll keep it simple, why did God choose me? Because He felt like it!
He brought me out, not an act of my volition
Breathed life into my lungs and didn’t ask for my permission...

Many of us have been to a funeral before. Either we ourselves have lost someone or we know others who have lost their loved ones. If we were to present a word picture for the word dead, then what else naturally comes to mind other than a man or a woman lying there in a casket unable to move, think, feel, taste, or see. This person is absolutely incapable of doing anything at all. Thus believing would be impossible for such a person because they are dead.

This illustration is used by many to support their views on Calvinism and in it is a very good illustration, but is it accurate? Often we find that analogies break down at a certain point, thus I beg the question, "Does this illustration pass or fail when it comes to the Word of God?"

In Hermeneutics, the study and interpretation of the Bible, there is what we call the Law of First Mention. This basically means that when a key word pops up we should look at the first Scripture passages where that specific word is mentioned.

In Genesis chapter two, God told Adam that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then he would die. What did Adam and his wife end up doing? They ate and died...spiritually speaking that is. Notice what happened though. They were not paralyzed by death and left there to rot. They could still move, see, taste, touch, smell, hear, and think. They were still very active.

You see, often we mistake death as meaning inactive when all it implies is separation. James 4:7 says that if we resist the devil he will flee from us. That implies separation, us from the devil, but in no way does that mean that we cannot believe in him.

A corpse in a coffin is a physical analogy attempting to portray a spiritual truth. It breaks down. We may go to a funeral and say, "Here lies Steve...," but this is not true. That is not Steve. Steve is either with God or separated from Him, but he is not in that coffin. That dead body is not Steve.

Let's imagine that the analogy is right. We know that we must be consistent with using it. Therefore, if a nonbeliever is unable to believe in God because he is dead, then so also the believer should also be incapable of sinning because we who are in Christ Jesus are dead to sin (Romans 6:2). This is where we see that the analogy breaks down because how often do we, even as believers, cast ourselves into sin?

If dead means inability, then we must be consistent with its usage. We would end up committing heresy by saying that we are without sin. However, if it means "separation" then things begin to make sense and fall into place.

What about the blind?

Well, an attribute of a dead man is that he cannot see. If this is the case, then why would Paul write in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan blinds the minds of the unbelieving? Why would you try to blind a dead man? Why put so much effort into trying to blind an already blind man? It doesn't make sense.

The reason is because often in Scripture the word death does not imply inability, rather it connotes separation. If man was unable to believe, then it wouldn't matter what Satan did to them because he would understand that trying to blind someone who already cannot see would be a waste of time and energy.

Conclusion

The truth is, that left without God, no man will believe. Thankfully, man is not left without God, therefore many will believe. Can the dead believe? Yes, because even in our state of wickedness God has not left us to ourselves. He is pursuing us and has sovereignly decreed that man would have free will. It is because of Him and His marvelous grace that man has the freedom to call out to Him believing in the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ so that we may be saved.

In Shai Linne's song above, both views are wrong. We didn't grab hold of the rope. We have no strength to pull ourselves up. And we are not a corpse on the bottom of the sea. God is in the boat and we are separated from Him. We are in the water. We cannot swim. We are drowning. We are about to lose consciousness and go under.

God yells out, "I love you! Do you want me to save you?" Gasping for air you and I with an almost unconscious voice said "yes" and God jumped in the water with the life preserver and grabbed hold of us. He climbed the rope ladder back onto the boat while carrying you and I on His shoulders. He laid us on the deck and performed CPR on us. He resuscitated us by breathing His breath into our lungs. He revived us.

He did all of the work in rescuing us. To Him be the glory!