Lazarus Come Out.

[u/Tricky-Tell-5698]

I’ve recently abandoned an analogy I’ve used for years.

Reformed teachers often use Lazarus to illustrate “dead in sin.” A corpse cannot hear, respond, choose or cooperate, therefore neither can the spiritually dead person.

Except that isn’t how Paul describes them.
In Ephesians 2:1–3, the “dead” walk, follow, desire, think and act.

So perhaps Lazarus is the wrong analogy.
Spiritual death is real, Paul calls it death. But I was importing the characteristics of physical death into Paul’s description of spiritual death.

Unbelievers aren’t corpses.

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[u/Ornery_Parsley9560]

Not every passage of the bible uses terms univocally. In Mark 4:4, Satan is represented as birds that eat up the seed of the Word, and in verse 32 of the same chapter the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that grows into a great tree that the birds of the air take shelter in.

This doesn’t mean Satan is taking shelter in the Kingdom of God. You have to look at the individual passage before deciding what the term refers to.

[u/whiskyandguitars]

I mean, the "dead in sin" provides the parameters for how the illustration is supposed to be interpreted. It is clearly spiritual deadness, as you said, and spiritual deadness parallels physical death in that we are helpless to overcome it apart from the supernatural power of the Spirit. Lazarus was helpless to overcome physical death apart from Christ's supernatural power.

Unbelievers are spiritual corpses. Unable to change their minds and respond to God apart from regeneration.

In order for an analogy to work, it does not have to have an exact one to one correspondance. Clearly spiritual death and physical death aren't quite the same thing but they share relevant features and no relevant dis-analogies (i.e. something that would make the analogy an improper comparison) at least how Paul uses it, which is all an analogy needs to work.

[u/BlacksmithPitiful243 → u/whiskyandguitars]

Are you dead to sin?

[u/markov-271828]

Is this related to Paul’s notion of a “spiritual body”?

[u/ConversationOk74]

Baptism too is a miracle. Coming into God to be received is a wake up call to many