The Nature Of Spiritual Death

It can be clearly seen now that Spiritual Death is the Nature of the Devil and that Spiritual Life is the Nature of God,-that out of Spiritual Death come hatred, jealousy, and murder, and that out of the Nature of God come love, forgiveness, and peace. We can understand now the prevalence and power of sin in the world. We may legislate all we please; until we change the Nature of Man, sin will grow and flourish; we may stop it here or there, but it will surely spring up elsewhere. The only hope of the human is to give him a new Nature. Spiritual Death, then, is the Nature that lies behind all sin committed. Man commits Sin, because his Nature produces that kind oF conduct. Spiritual Death made Man mortal. Spiritual Life alone can make him immortal. That was a sad day for the human when Satan became Emperor of the Universe and let loose that hideous miasma of Hell, Spiritual Death.

POWER OF DEATH

What an awakening for Adam. He had been God’s under-ruler and king. Perfect beauty had gladdened his eyes at the rising of every sun, but now devastation has begun; the marks of Satanic Dominion are manifest everywhere. Spiritual Death has changed the Nature of all the Animal Kingdom, and the discordant cries of Hatred and malice are heard from wooded dell to open glade; carcasses of insects and beasts lie rotting in the sun; and Adam, the uncrowned king of Creation, grovels under the iron heel of Satan.

Spiritual Death becomes a hideous reality to him; his first horn son murders the second. He is made to feel with keenness the effect of his treason; he had not only sinned against God but also against his unborn children. A little grandchild is born into the family, and Adam names it Enosh, which means “mortal,” “frail,” “subject to Death,” or “Satan ruled.” Think of naming the first grandchild of the human race after his sin! Man is now united with the Devil. He is an outcast, an outlaw driven from the Garden with no legal ground of approach to God. He no longer responds to the call of God; he responds only to his new master.

Now we understand why Man is more than a transgressor, more than a law-breaker. Man is spiritually a child of the Devil, Man partakes of his father’s nature. This explains why Man cannot be saved by conduct. If he is ever to be saved, it must be by some one’s paying the penalty of his treason and giving him a new nature. Me can never stand in the presence of God as he is.
Man is lost today not because of what he does but because of what he is. Man needs a New Birth, that is, Life from God, because he is spiritually dead.

THE NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF SPIRITUAL DEATH

Romans 5:12, “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned.” Through one man’s sin Death entered into the world. The picture is of Death standing outside a closed door, man’s sin is throwing the door open and allowing Death to come in to the human.
This is not Physical Death, as we see in the verses following, for they say that “Death reigned from Adam until Moses,” indicating at the time of Moses that there was a cessation, in part at least, of the Dominion of Death. We know that nothing in Moses’ day kept men from dying physically. It has no reference to that, but it does have reference to another kind of Death. The remainder of the chapter proves this, for in this section of Romans Paul is contrasting Spiritual Death and Spiritual Life. That word “reign” really means “reigned as king”; so we under¬stand that Death reigned as king over the human race from
Adam’s day until Moses’. In Moses’ day God gave to him the Atonement of the blood of animals.
Blood represents Life, and Atonement means a covering. So God through the High Priesthood gave to the Jewish Nation and to the Gentile world, if they wished it, a Covering of Life. Through this we understand how Death’s Dominion as a world Emperor was broken.
Perhaps the most graphic statement in regard to Spiritual Death is in the 17th verse.

A literal translation reads, “for if by the trespass of one, Death seized the Sovereignty through the one.” Here is an awful picture; away back there in the Garden of Eden Death, that hideous monster seized the Sovereignty, the Dominion, the Kingship over Creation. It drove Life out and brought in its own rule of desolation. Then again in the 21st verse the same translator translates “that as sin reigned as king in the realm of death, even so might grace reign as king through righteous¬ness unto Eternal Life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Here we have the truth stated dearly: Death has seized the Sovereignty, and God’s Creation is under its Dominion. We understand that sin so prevalent today, scourging and blighting the human race, reigns as king in this awful realm of Spiritual Death where the whole human race lives today under the cruel Emperor Satan.

This is the only explanation for the present power of sin in the world. We could not explain sin otherwise. Sin is the outgrowth of Spiritual Death.
Spiritual Death is the soi! out of which all kinds of sin grow just as Spiritual Life, the Nature of God, coming into Man becomes the soil out of which all kinds of good actions spring

SPIRITUAL DEATH IS UNIVERSAL

“And He (Christ) shall destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that covers all people and the veil that is spread over all the nations; He shall destroy death forever and the Lord Jehovah shall wipe off tears from all faces and the reproach of His people shall He take away from off the earth for Jehovah hath spoken it.” Isaiah 25:7-9. This covering that covers all peoples; this veil is the veil of Spiritual Death. Now mark, it says here that it is a covering over all people, a veil that is spread over all nations. Romans 5:12 declares “death passed upon all men, for all sinned.” Matt. 4:16 says, “the nations that sit in darkness shall see a light and they that sat in the shadow of death to them did light spring up,”
Romans 3:9, 23 declare “that all are under sin,” and “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” From these Scriptures it is clear that the human race is universally under the dominion of Satan, that they have all become partakers of his Nature.

They have no legal right to approach God, and Satan is now their God and ruler. Jesus in speaking of this in John 5:24-25 says, “He that heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.” Jesus is speaking of the spiritually dead who by hearing His voice may come out of the Realm of Death into the Realm of Life, out of the family of Death into the family of Life. In the story of the Prodigal Son Jesus makes the father say, “This is my son that was dead and is now alive, was lost and is found.” In 1 John 3:14-15 it says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.”

Here we have the contrast of Death and Life: that is the contrast of the manifestation of the Nature of the Devil and the Nature of God; one manifests itself in hatred, and the other, in love.
“And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, “Wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience: “Among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest: but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved is, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved).” Ephesians 2:1-5,

Let us look critically at this section of Scripture: first, we were made alive when we were dead.
Second, we walked according to the prince of the powers of the air. Third, this prince is now working in the sons of disobedience just as the Holy Spirit works in the sons of obedience.
Fourth, we all once lived in the lusts of our flesh and were by nature children of wrath. Fifth, but God being rich in mercy, for His great love where¬with He loved us when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. Take this statement with Col. 2:13, “You being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.” From these Scriptures the case is made: Man is spiritually dead, under the dominion of the prince of the powers of the air, and this spirit is now working in and through man’s life carrying out the plans and purposes of this prince. All this substantiates our foregoing argument: the universal man must be Bom Again, and the New Birth is receiving the Life or Nature of God. John tells us that when we receive this Nature we love our brethren, and he that does not receive this Nature has hatred for his brethren.