When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Colossians 2:13,14
How many shows are out there where zombies are a big part of the plot? Well, I don’t have a final number but Rotten Tomatoes ranks the top 21 zombie TV shows[1]. And Wikipedia lists 48 shows[2] under zombies in television. In case you didn’t know, a zombie is where a dead body is made alive again. Old school zombies come back to life through voodoo. But the more modern, science fiction ones are reenergized through radiation, parasites, viruses, fungus, or some scientific experiment that went haywire.
Paul’s telling the Colossians that they were the walking dead before Jesus. Yes, their bodies were alive and they could move around. But when it came to God and their relationship with him, they were dead. This walking death wasn’t due to magic or some virus. It was caused by our two problems.
Sins – this wasn’t any accidental falling away. We were constantly choosing against and away from the truth. We knew what was right but we wouldn’t stand up for it.Like that famous line from, A Few Good Men[3], we couldn’t handle the truth. We knew what the truth was. We even knew who the truth was. But we turned away from it. We turned away from the one who made us. Loved us. Died for us. We have a sinful, unbelieving heart that has turned away from the living God[4].I know it’s not popular, modern, or even cool to talk about sin, but we can’t ignore the fact that it’s a real thing. We all know that somethings really, really wrong. Things wear out and break. People get old, sick, and die. Somewhere deep down we all know that things should be different. Better.And whether or not we say that we believe in sin, we all must admit that somethings not right. We all sense a brokenness. A emptiness. Like we belong somewhere, but we’ve lost our way. That, my friend, is the result of sin.
Uncircumcision of our flesh – this is another word that we don’t like to use. It’s an idea that we don’t want to think about. Paul’s not talking about the cutting off of some skin from men. Instead, it’s a powerful picture of our separation from God.This separation isn’t just that we do wrong or don’t do good. Oh no, it’s much more serious than that. It’s telling us the truth that everything we think about is influenced by our separation from God. Our words, thoughts, actions, and attitudes are all covered by our sinful selfishness.To put it more bluntly, we’re evil down to the core and there’s nothing that we can do about it. We don’t have the desire to follow God and do what’s right. Just the opposite, we’re hopelessly handcuffed to the evil inside.To use some words that we really don’t want to hear, we’re lost. But more than just lost, we want to stay lost. We don’t want anyone’s help to change from being lost. We’re hopelessly lost. We’re desperately lost. We’re eternally lost.
Yes, we’re really the walking dead. Our bodies are alive but deep down inside we dead. We’re totally dead. We’re absolutely dead. We’re eternally dead. And there’s not a thing that we can do to fix ourselves. Heck, we want to stay right where we are so bad that we’ll turn away from any help.
That’s why God had to come and save us. To buy us back. To rescue us. We were outsiders to God. Completely powerless to do anything about it. There’s an old hymn that says it so well.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood[5].
Will we hear the uncomfortable truth? We were strangers. We were wandering. He did all the saving. He did all the rescuing. He did all the paying of our eternal debt the eternally holy God. Looking carefully at our hearts, if we’re honest, we see how we’re not just a little but lost. But we’re eternally lost. Lost without God in our lives. Lost without God in the world. Lost without the hope of God.
Being the walking dead, we have no power, hope, or life of our own. It must come from the outside. In Jesus, there is his resurrection from the dead. And there’s our resurrection from our being dead. He can change us from the walking dead into his dearly loved child. So, what’s stopping us?
Noodling Questions
How easy is it to think about walking dead people? Explain.
Why can’t we think of ourselves as the walking dead?
How would you explain walking dead people to your friends and neighbors?
[4] Hebrews 3:12
[5] Come Thou Fount, Robert Robinson, 1758
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