Apostle Tracey Robinson All Rights Reserved 2023

• As you know by now or have heard that you/we were born in sin spiritually dead to continue a life dead in sin and transgressions, in which we all lived when we followed the control and the influence of the knowledge of good and evil through the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air (also known as the prince of the power of the air).
• Spiritual death began in the Garden of Eden and sin entered. It was in Adam and through Adam that sin ushered in death for all humanity.
• Romans 5:12 KJV Amplified says therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death as the result of sin, so death spread to all men, [no one being able to stop it or to escape its power] because all men sinned.
• As you come into the knowledge of good and truth, in which you are being transformed as a new creature in Christ; you are conforming to the Will of God and no longer to your Will and its deeds.
Ephesians 2:1-7 KJV Amplified
1 And YOU [He made alive], when you were dead (slain) by [your] trespasses and sins.
2 In which at one time you walked [habitually]. You were following the course and fashion of this world [were under the sway of the tendency of this present age], following the prince of the power of the air. [You were obedient to and under the control of] the [demon] spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience [the careless, the rebellious, and the unbelieving, who go against the purposes of God].
3 Among these we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh [our behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature], obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind [our cravings dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings]. We were then by nature children of [God’s] wrath and heirs of [His] indignation, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God-so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us,
5 Even when we were dead (slain) by [our own] shortcomings and trespasses, he made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; [He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him, for] it is by grace (His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation).
6 And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
7 He did this that He might clearly demonstrate through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless, surpassing) riches of His free grace (His unmerited favor in [His] kindness and goodness of heart toward us in Christ Jesus.

1. Characteristics of being spiritually dead before and after Salvation:
   • Spiritually dead is a person that is physically alive but spiritually dead and separated from God. One that is in constant rebellion and opposition to God and the Spirit of God in His people.
   • Spiritually dead is the state of every man (male and female gender) born of a woman before receiving God’s grace. We all have inherited a sinful nature therefore we were born “spiritually stillborn”.
   • Spiritually dead is alienation and the separation of our souls from God. (Ephesians 2:12).
   • Our mind, emotions, and Will are still functioning but cut off from the life of God.
   • Isaiah 53:6 says it like this, we all are like sheep that have gone astray; we turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all.
   • Sin separates us from God, our source and fountain of spiritual life and light.
   • Spiritually dead is to live and remain living like the world in word, deed, action, and thought.
   • Still accepting the world and your flesh immoral lifestyles and ungodly motives that will never line up with God’s purpose and intent for Himself, the Church, and you.
   • The world will love you if they see bits and pieces of themselves still operating in you.
   • Spiritually dead sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, St Luke 1:79. Because God is holy and sin is offensive to Him.
   • The ruler of the kingdom of darkness is Satan and the walking dead follow darkness and its rule.
   • Satan rules from an evil and wicked spiritual kingdom.
   • This is why spiritual warfare is against the kingdom of darkness, its powers, principalities, its rulers of the darkness of this world, and against all spiritual wickedness that sits in high places. (Ephesians 6:12).
   • Spiritual warfare is never against the Kingdom of Light. We must know the difference by the fruit the Kingdom bears.
   • The spiritual kingdom of darkness appeals to the outward man and his appearances to keep your inward man dead to its (flesh) sin and transgressions.
   • Satan and his demons work through your flesh to keep your heart and mind spiritually dead to make his kingdom spiritually real to you.
   • Actively disobey God in faith and in your actions, 2 Thessalonians 1:18 KJV Amplified says to deal out retribution (chastisement and vengeance) upon those who do not know or perceive or become acquainted with God, and [upon those] who ignore and refuse to obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   • The spiritually dead are enslaved to gratifying the cravings of their sinful nature, which is the flesh to follow its desires and thoughts.
   • So, you see no one is making you do this, it is housed in your uncircumcised (uncrucified) flesh. Once you come into the knowledge of right and wrong you are accountable for the subtle, deceitfulness of your flesh and its behavior and actions.
   • It is through the hearing of the Word that holds you responsible and accountable.
2. Characteristics of being spiritually alive in Christ:
   • Spiritually alive means to be highly sensitive to sin and to be mindful of its realities in your life and in the lives of others you are associating with.
   • Spiritually alive is to have your spiritual connection back to God restored with a fellowship of spiritual communications in love, faith, and obedience to His Will.
   • To now have a spiritual heart of flesh that has been transplanted by the Spirit of God.
   • Being spiritually alive in Christ is the reason to celebrate any birth, especially your new birth; the fact that I am spiritually home again in my original home; and my soul’s destiny is eternal Heaven with eternal life.
   • Recognize first of all that “no one can serve two masters” for you will love one and hate the other. (St Matthew 6:24).
   • Don’t continue to be conforming to the world but allow the Word of God to transform you by renewing your mind so that when your test, trials, tribulations, suffering, and persecutions come that you will be (or maybe) able to discern God’s Will, know His Will for you is good, accept it, and be perfected in it. (Romans 12:2).
   • Don’t love the world and the things of the world. 1 John 2:15 says that if you love the world the love of the Father is not in you.
   • Fellowship with the world is an enemy to God. Don’t be friends with the world to just be friends but be a friend to win their soul out of their enslaved bondage just as the Lord God freed you from your sin and its penalties, but according to His Will.
   • James 4:4 KJV Amplified says You [are like] unfaithful wives [having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world’s friend is being God’s enemy? So, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God. RAW, but cut and dry!
   • Make sure that no one makes you captive again by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism and vain deceit (idle fancies and plain nonsense), following human traditions (men’s ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world), just crude notions following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe and disregarding [the teachings of] Christ (the Messiah). (Colossians 2:8).
   • This also includes being argumentative about the interpretations of the scriptures; being hostile toward one another because you may know more or less than the other with a different understanding and application of the Word of God, etc.
   • This includes speaking heresy and not being able to rightly divide the Word in Spirit and in Truth
   • You are spiritually alive when you are living a life and lifestyle that displays the armor and equipment of a soldier in Christ.
   • Being strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might not your might but all His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, Ephesians 6:10-11
   Colossians 2:12-15 KJV Amplified
   11 In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, but in a [spiritual] circumcision [performed by] Christ by stripping off the body of the flesh (the whole corrupt, carnal nature with its passions and lusts).
   12 [Thus you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism, in which you were also raised with Him [to a new life] through [you] faith in the working of God [as displayed] when He raised Him up from the dead.
   • If your baptism has any wrong doings of your old nature resting upon it you need to be baptized again to rid yourself of the stain and condemnation of that sin and transgression committed.
   13 And you who were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature), [God] bought to life together with [Christ], having [freely] forgiven us all our transgressions,
   14 Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross.
   15 [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].
   • Now, after hearing all this why don’t you want to go all the way with God to serve God in Spirit and in Truth? Why won’t you surrender your all to Him and His Will? Why won’t you allow the Spirit of the Word of God to transform you and cause you to conform to the Will of God?
   • STOP yielding to your own understanding and trying to reckon things with God your way.
   • Don’t worry and wonder why people are doing what they do but still say they love God.
   • God can and will handle it!

In closing,
• All disobedience, rejection, unbelief, doubt to and toward God’s plan of Salvation for you brings in spiritual death.
• Yes, these are evil powers that are still working in and through your flesh to keep you spiritually dead. It is not your own mind and your own way!
• To deny and reject the Will of God is spiritual death to your soul.
• The spiritually dead are those who have not and will not surrender to God but are being empowered, embodied, and energized by the power of darkness in every imagination of the thoughts of their (Man’s) heart is evil continuously.
• If you are in a place of stagnation, a place of complacency, or a place of always believing that you are trying to do the Will of God but something or someone always causes you to stumble, hinder, or fall, then are you spiritually dead?
• You wonder why you cannot or will not let go of the memories of your past; why sinful people to include family, are always present and with you in spirit. Or are you still attracting people of your past with their ways once like your past to soon find yourself back doing the things of your old nature again? If so, then you are still spiritually dead.
• Leaders, lay people, are you still trying to work the work of Him that you say have called you into His righteousness through your feelings? So, you try to imitate being spiritually alive to try to make yourself look like what others do or say that God is saying and doing, then you are spiritually dead? God is a diverse God that moves as He pleases.
• The evil powers that are at work against you are in rivalry (that is competition, feuding) with the Holy Spirit that is over you and dwelling in you.
• Yes, He will hover over you until He crucify your flesh and its Will so that He can come and dwell in, reside in, live in you for Him to be the influencer, the possessor, and the controller of you and your vessel.
• How were you born again? Is it the imitation of others? Satan need you spiritually dead to survive in his tactical war against God. Will you be spiritually born-again God’s way or will you be spiritually dead walking the earth still serving sin and its creator?

Amen
Sunday, October 1, 2023