Dead to You

Dead to me.

He's dead to me.

She's dead to me.

That's dead to me.

Have you heard of this? People use this phrase when they are referring to someone or something that they have absolutely no dealings with. If someone is "dead" to you, they are not actually dead, but because of your feelings of disdain towards them, they may as well be dead to you. They may as well be dead because you have regarded them as dead despite them being alive.

It is such a harsh rebuke. It's a dangerous cut off from someone or something. It's a deadened relationship... A severed situation ... Something that will not and cannot be revived. It is someone or something buried away from our minds with no expectations of life returning to it. If it's dead to you, it's infinitely done for, to rise no more.

And as believers, there are somethings that should be dead to you. "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3:3). You ... You should be dead to you.

That sinful nature of ours should be dead to us. Before this verse, Paul said "Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." (Colossians 3:2 NKJV) And in verse one he says, "If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God."

Dead to us. Ungodly ways of thinking, speaking and behaving should be dead to us. Usually, when people say something or someone is dead to them it's because they were greatly offended. A women scorned by a man that was supposed to love and respect her may say that man is "dead" to her because of his ill-treatment of her.

An employee may leave a place of employment and say, "That job is dead to me" because they were unappreciated as a worker. They say it's dead to them because they are now making a conscious decision to indefinitely walk away from someone or something that did not serve them well. They refuse to be mistreated; therefore, that thing and that person is dead to them ... Dead and never allowed to disrupt their peace, joy, and sanity again.

If only we thought of sin the same way. If only we looked at how our sinful nature has severely mistreated and misaligned us. Everytime sin occurs in scripture, we see how it ripped prosperity and peace from people. Adam and Eve were torn from the Garden of Eden due to sin. The Promise Land was snatched from Children of Israel due to sin. And if you evaluated your own life, I'm sure you'll find an area or two that sin has robbed you of your possessions, relationships, or peace of mind.

The consequences of sin has not been friendly to anyone. Much like the enemy, sin has killed, stolen, and destroyed us or our possessions. Sin has called us out of our rightful alignment with God. Yet, at times, we continue to answer the door for sin when it knocks.

It's like being in a disillusioned, dysfunctional relationship. It looks as if things are well. But in reality, your partnership with sin means you nothing but harm. Because of how sin has treated us, it should be dead to us. But we should be alive to Christ because of how well He has treated us.

If our life is hidden in Christ, we have tucked away our desires for His desires. Our life has quite literally become Him as Paul stated in Colossians 3:4, "When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory."

Dead. You should be dead to you. You, your life, your desires ... All dead, which honestly is a hard thing to do. But Christ said in Matthew 10:39, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it." Although it is hard to die, I'd say it's even tougher to keep losing to sin.

So, may we die to ourselves and may God help us to do so. We've suffered too many losses. We've taken too many beatings and lost too much ground over a failure to die to ourselves. So, let's finally begin to gain by losing ourselves to Jesus.

That's all I have for you. God bless and keep you. Until next time, take care.

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Thank you for reading this week's Write On! Wednesday word. The Now, That's A Word! YouTube Channel is here: YouTube.com/@nowthatsaword

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Sincerely,

Quin Arrington