Zombies. Everywhere you look lately there seems to be a zombie, or sometimes even a crowd of them. I wonder what you call a group of zombies… a herd, a pride, a school, a congress? Zombies can be seen everywhere lurching down the street, groaning and moaning, and sometimes even in a flash mob doing Thriller moves in unison.
Romans 8
10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.Recently, a coworker told me she was going to fly home for her son’s wedding. She mentioned that she had to stop and get some latex and her black dress before she left. I guess the quizzical look on my face prompted her to explain. “Oh, it’s a Zombie wedding, and the Bride’s colors are black and blood red” she explained. “I need the latex so that I can apply a few open wounds and scars to my face.” All I could manage to say was “…You gotta bring back pictures.”
Ephesians 2
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Zombies of course are popularized in movies and T.V. as the recently dead brought back to life by radioactive meteorites, ancient viral infections, or even science gone wrong. If you are bitten by a zombie, you will turn into one yourself. The living dead are sometimes slow and lethargic, however sometimes they move like an 11 year-old hyped up on Mountain Dew and Double-stuffed Oreo’s. Typically though, they have but one single-minded, all-consuming, goal… to devour you.
At this point I am sure you are hoping I am going somewhere with all of this. The Bible talks about us as Christians being dead to our old selves, killing the old man so to speak. We are made alive again in Christ, the first of those who rose from the dead and was made alive again. Sounds familiar huh? But of course, we are talking physical versus spiritual reanimation. We have been baptized and buried with Christ, we are dead to our sin so that we can walk again in the newness of life.
Romans 6
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;…
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
We, my Christian friends, are the zombies in this analogy. We are the living dead. We have been buried and raised again in Christ. We lurch around in the realm of the “normal living” people and try to “infect” them by spreading our condition and make them like us. The Bible says we are to exerchomai euangelion – spread the good news of the Gospel. And like the Hollywood zombies, we should also have one single-minded, all-consuming, goal… to spread our condition to all those who are not dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.
