ONE of the delights of living in York was to be able to walk around the city walls. It was not a circular tour. Part of the wall is missing. Those parts that remain in-tact, however, were my regular Sunday morning outing for some time.

I was generally alone. In spring the daffodils were a beautiful picture on some of the grassy slopes below. The thing I remember best, however, is the feeling of elevation the walls gave. They were just high enough to make me feel that I was not part of the "rat race" below. I could look down on the traffic and pedestrians who were unaware of being watched. They were like little ants scurrying here and there. Everyone was busy doing something or going somewhere. Soon I would be back down there doing my share of rushing about too!

Perhaps you too have reflected on life in this way. Perhaps you have wondered how God sees us when He looks down at us. How futile our activities must sometimes seem to Him. All that energy and effort expended to achieve... what?

At the end of the day it is how God sees us that really matters. We can fairly easily deceive other people. We can pretend to be something we are not. We can make believe that we are righteous because we look respectable. But we cannot fool God. It is how we appear to Him that is important.

Seeing Things God's Way
The Bible helps us to see things from His point of view. It helps us to see ourselves as He sees us.

Jesus once told a parable about a man who must have found this difficult to do. He was young. He saw things only from his own standpoint. He asked his father if he might have his share of the inheritance early. Unaware of the sadness he caused, he left the family home and went away.

We call this man the prodigal son. It didn't take him very long to get through his fortune and to be in need. Eventually he came to his senses. Back home his father had slaves. They were well treated, for his father was a good man. They had board and lodging provided. Yet he, a member of the family, was worse off than those slaves. He had no food and had taken work minding pigs.

He resolved to swallow his pride and go back. He rehearsed a little speech with which to greet his father. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants."

The father listened to the son admitting how foolish he had been. He heard him confess his guilt. He never allowed him to ask to be made a servant. The father was glad to have him back as a member of the family. "This my son was dead and is alive again," he said. "He was lost and is found."

I don't think the young man thought he had ever been lost or dead. He had certainly never taken his last breath and been put into a grave. He had not died in that sense. Yet he was "dead" to that family.
None of us has difficulty in understanding what Jesus is saying. He is not using death in the way we normally think of it.

Just imagine that we had to draw a conclusion about death from this chapter alone. We would have to say that death is being away from the father's house. Life for the prodigal was coming back home. This is so important that Jesus makes the father in the story repeat the words., He wants to be sure we know the meaning.

Death
In the Bible death is sometimes spoken of in this way. It is being away from God. It is not obeying the message of Jesus. It is putting other things in our lives before God. In these ways we can be "dead" even while we are alive. We may feel alive, but we may not be so to God. Paul says this:

"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…"
(Ephesians 2:4,5)

In other words, we are dead in God's eyes for so long as we remain in our sins.

This is a very serious matter, and not one to be treated lightly. It may come as quite a shock to many to realise this, but it is what the Bible teaches. It is easily possible that any of us can be dead in God's sight even while we think ourselves to be alive.

This is an unpleasant thought. Until we can accept it, however, we shall not be able to remedy it. Unless we appreciate the seriousness of our situation, we shall not value God's help.

The Bible shows that we can be rescued from this kind of death. It shows that we can come alive. This involves a sort of paradox. In order to come alive in God's sight, we have to die! Let me explain.

We have all of us lived for ourselves. Even if we are not guilty of dreadful crimes, we are still sinners. We are sinners because we have lived for ourselves and not for God who made us. The Bible says we need to "die" to that way of life. We need to "kill" the selfishness. We need to "mortify" (put to death) our old selves and all our wrong doing.

Another Death
Baptism has already been mentioned in a chapter about the work of Jesus. It is in baptism that God forgives our sins. Baptism is also the "death" that we must die if we want to live for God.

"do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? ...For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(Romans 6:3,10-11)

There are people I know who claim to have been baptised, but who have not died in this way. Their baptism was carried out when they were small. They did not renounce an old way of life. They were not capable of willingly taking on a new one. Such are not truly baptised.

It is essential that we come home to God with the attitude of the prodigal son. We must appreciate our true situation before Him. We have to be willing to "eat humble pie", to admit our foolishness, to repent. We have all squandered the father's goods. If we have wasted nothing else, we have all wasted a part of our lives. God's gift of life has been misused, spent on ourselves. We need to see ourselves as we appear to God and repudiate the past.

If, then, we are willing to serve God, He will receive us as children. We can be "alive unto God". We shall matter to Him. He will count us as part of His family. 