M-G: 2.14.13 // Spiritual Zombies

Flipping through the channels the other night I came across a program called, “The Walking Dead.” According to AMC Networks, it is “the most watched drama in basic cable history.”1 Given the cultural obsession today with vampires, werewolves, and zombies, I can believe it. The storyline is based on a comic book series about survivors living in a post-apocalyptic world in constant peril not only from slow-moving survivor-eating zombies but from other survivors who refuse to pull their resources together to survive on a desolate planet full of cannibals.

The positive thing is you can kill the walking dead easily because they move so slowly. Now if their teeth happen to catch up to you, they can do some serious gnawing. Though these zombies have a pretty healthy bite, for some reason they never have been able to walk normally. Maybe one day they will make a hybrid zombie in the future that can walk like a survivor; that would make for some scary scenes and situations. One episode of graphic death was enough for me, but what really caught my attention was a commercial for “Deadyourself.” You can go to a website by the same name and take your picture and transform yourself to look like the walking dead.

Imagine living in a world of 7 billion people walking the earth but nearly all are spiritually dead, and you were in the minority of those spiritually alive, say, less than two hundred and fifty million. These dead people look just like you and me, but they are not cannibalistic like the chewers on AMC. They may be our neighbors, co-workers, and even attend the same church we do! We see them everywhere we go: at shopping malls, supermarkets, schools, restaurants, sporting events, concerts, civic forums, and so forth. What makes them different than us is that they are spiritually dead, but we are spiritually alive and outnumbered big time! How can we recognize the spiritually dead if they look the way we do?

In his letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, Paul gives us a description of the spiritually walking dead; they walk according to the flesh. They may not literally eat human flesh, but they lust to satisfy the appetites of their own flesh which is their base or sinful nature. We as believers were not only once spiritual zombies before receiving Christ, but can still act like the world when we walk in the flesh and not in the Spirit. Paul told the Galatian believers, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). “Walk” refers to all of the activities of the individual life.

Paul catalogs a short list of activities that identify spiritual zombies: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, reverie, and the like” (Gal 5:19-21a). He goes on to say that “those who practice [emphasis mine] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21b). Though we have been regenerated, we still possess a sin nature, and therefore, are not immune to committing any of these sins. Thankfully, there is forgiveness and restoration of fellowship available (1 Jn 1:9).

Paul reminds the Ephesian believers that they were once “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1), who “walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). Paul then identifies with them by saying, “Among whom also we all [emphasis mine] once [suggesting not now because of Christ] conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” (Eph 2:3) … “having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph 4:18). This blindness is due to a personal choice of unbelief (2 Cor 4:4; cf. 1 Cor 2:14).

All that is in the world of spiritual zombies is “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” which “is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it” (1 Jn 2:15-16). In verse 12 of chapter two of Ephesians, Paul indicated “that at that time [as a spiritual zombie] you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world [emphasis mine]. These are some of the evidence and conditions of being a walking dead (those who walk in spiritual darkness).

As regenerated believers, we shouldn’t be acting like spiritual zombies at all. Paul challenged the Galatians, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. The fruit of such a spiritual walk is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22-23), quite a contrast to the chewers. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires, no longer walking like the dead who do not know Christ (Gal 5:24).

This is the best kind of “deadyourself” – crucifying or mortifying the flesh by saying, “No” to those carnal passions and desires in the power of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual zombies have an insatiable desire to satisfy the flesh and do not possess the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:9 contrast Gal 4:6). Those who have been made alive by the Spirit of God do hunger for His fruit, avoiding the deeds of the flesh. 

I guess I could go and “deadmyself” for fun by using one of my photos to make me uglier than I already am! It’s a morbid thought but harmless really. What is not so funny is craving the flesh in the spiritual realm (satisfying the appetites of the sin nature). To Yahweh, it is as ugly as it gets. Are we walking like we’re alive in Christ or like the walking dead?  

Eph 2:4  But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

Eph 2:5  even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

Eph 2:6  and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

Eph 2:7  that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Eph 2:8  For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,

Eph 2:9  not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Eph 2:10  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. <><

1http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead/about