Declaring someone to be dead, doesn’t always make it so. In 1937, a Frenchman, Angelo Hays, was racing his motorcycle and crashed into a brick wall headfirst. There were many injuries, and the doctors could not feel a pulse, so he was declared dead. His family held a funeral, and he was buried. Two days after the funeral, an investigation by the insurance company required them to exhume his body.

They found him in a deep coma, but after many surgeries and weeks of rehabilitation, he lived. By 1970, he was touring Europe with a special coffin that he invented. It had a food locker, a library of books and even a toilet!

Angelo’s story is a bit macabre, but hopefully it helps us recognize the very important spiritual truth that when you are dead (in your trespasses and sin) you are dead. Spiritually, there are no comas, no temporary lack of brain waves or missing respiration. When the body stops those processes, we are physically dead. When our hearts are not attuned to Christ, we are spiritually dead.

Dead means dead. There is no spiritual recuperation period, no middle ground or waiting room. At death, we are either carried into the presence of God or we are doomed to live for all eternity in a Christless hell. Those are very sobering thoughts. But they are the thoughts of the apostle Paul.

In Ephesians 2:1, Paul summarizes, “You are dead in your transgressions and sins…. gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.”

If Paul stopped there, we would be miserable. But he goes on to state, “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ…”

With Easter just around the corner, this week is a wonderful opportunity to turn our attention to the cross of Calvary. Let’s resist the urge to compare ourselves with someone else and feel “puffed up a bit” because we are not as “bad as so-and-so.” There are no degrees of “deadness.” “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom.3:23). We all need to see our condition clearly and embrace His mercy.

We are dead in our trespasses and sin, but God has made us alive. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith and not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).