Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Dead in Sin

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 25, 1992. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-3. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. We live in a culture that encourages us to focus on ourselves, our needs, our goals, our fulfillment. But what if our lives only made sense when we see them as part of a much bigger story? This summer, we're featuring one of Tim Keller's longer sermon series in which he teaches about the core truths of the Christian faith and the big picture of God's ultimate plan of salvation for humanity, revealing how we can find real meaning, growth, and change in Christ. Let me take you to our passage. Believe it or not, we've left Ephesians 1 as of tonight.

No, don't thank me. And no applause. We finally moved on from Ephesians 1 because we're moving through the book, Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and we're beginning Ephesians chapter 2. And what I'm going to do is though you've got the first three verses in front of you, and that's what we're going to concentrate on tonight. I want to read into the passage a little deeper so you get an understanding of the subject.

Ephesians, we said, is about salvation. We shouldn't be afraid or unhappy about using that phrase. The word salvation, unfortunately, doesn't mean much to people today. And in fact, if anything, the word salvation has a negative connotation now. If somebody talks, and the average person here is someone talking about being saved or about salvation, they immediately believe that something narrow and shallow. People don't mind if you're religious, but if you talk too much about salvation, then they begin to think this is a narrow and shallow sort of religion. However, as we read in the scripture, the word salvation is maybe the richest word in any language.

That rather than being a narrow and shallow concept, it's the richest and deep. deepest one possible. Ephesians one, in a sense, looked at salvation and what it means to be a Christian and all of the privileges and the riches of being a Christian, and it looked at it more from God's point of view, how he controls all circumstances, how he works at his plan, how he puts his love on us and so forth. Ephesians 2 is really looking at what it means to be a Christian from the inside, not the outside, from our point of view, not God's point of view. Ephesians 2 is profound psychology. It deals with religious experience in an unsurpassed way. And what I'm going to do tonight is look at verses 1, 2, and 3, because that talks about sin.

Whatever became a sin. It's alive and living in Ephesians 2, verses 1 to 3. But I'm going to read to you all the way down to verse 10 to give you an understanding of this first passage. that we're going to be looking at for the next few weeks in which Paul tells us something about what it means to be a Christian from the inside, a participant's eye view of salvation. Chapter 2. As for you, Paul says, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world

and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time. gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, and following us desires and thoughts, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions and sins. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his

grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. A treasure chest. Let's take a little. look. I'd like to just look at the first three verses. For you who were dead in transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air and the spirit who is now at work and those who were disobedient, all of us lived also among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following

its desires and thoughts like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. My, What a downer. That's the way Paul starts talking about salvation. He starts by saying, you were dead in sin. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. All I want to talk about tonight is what Paul means when he says, you were dead in sin. The reason that this sounds like a downer, but it's not, is this.

you cannot understand, you cannot, let me put it this like, you can't be saved unless you realize you're in peril. You can't be saved unless you realize you're in peril. I don't know how many TV drama adventures, how many TV plots are based on this idea. Somebody has got a time bomb. There's a bomb in their backpack. Or they've taken poison and they've only got so many. the hours to live, or their pacemaker is going to explode the day after tomorrow. Something is wrong with the person. The person's in peril. The person's in danger. The person is

out backpacking in the Cierras. Or he's out traveling across the country in a car. Or she's over here and doing something. She doesn't know she's in peril. She doesn't know she's in danger. She doesn't know she ought to be rescued. And if you don't know that you need to be rescued, it's very hard to rescue you. You see? Remember, we've used a good illustration as Patty Hurst when she was kidnapped by her kidnappers, when she joined her kidnappers, and she didn't realize she was kidnapped, and she started to put on the beret and pick up the machine gun and take part in the robberies. It's very, very difficult to rescue somebody who's kidnapped who's participating in the kidnapping. It's very different to rescue somebody if you're difficult. It's difficult to

to rescue somebody if you don't know you're in peril. And the fact is, that is why, inevitably in the Bible, you can't be saved unless you know you need to be saved. You can't be rescued unless you know you need to be rescued. And it's extremely important, therefore, for us to understand sin. Now, you know, I could make an awful lot of other cases for why we have to try to understand sin and what it means to be sinful. There's, you know, we live in a, we live in a, we live in a, we live in an age that's tremendously confused about it. Early 20th century humanism really thought the idea of human evil was a primitive idea. Late 19th century, earliest 20th century, made fun of the Christian doctrine of sin. Really made fun of it. And really saw human beings as basically perfectable,

people who, if they were educated and if they were treated with dignity and humanity, would not grow into violent people. In the early 19th century, in the early 20th century, the whole idea was if you're a bad person, it's because you're raised bad. If you were a person who was evil and violent, it's because someone was evil and violent to you. In ourselves, we are good. Inherently, we're good. We're decent. We only get evil if we're twisted. And therefore, it's ignorance and poor child-rearing and all sorts of things like that. that to create the misery of this world. Most of that, optimistic humanism has been completely destroyed by the 20th century itself, by plain old-fashioned history, by World War I and World War II,

by genocide. And it's difficult to say, you know, the trouble with Hitler was his mommy didn't treat him right. It's difficult to say that about Ediamin and Pol Pot and Stalin. It's very difficult, but even beyond that, by the end of the 20th century, there's still a great rejection, of course, of the Christian faith, but more and more people are willing to talk about human evil. It wasn't that long ago that I read in the New York Times about an interesting new therapy, and this therapy, this is a way of helping you deal with your problems, is to recognize the fact that there's a shadow side to you. There's a good you, and there's an evil you. And the only way that you're going to overcome your problems is if you are willing to recognize that there's evil in you

and to find out what that evil is and to reject it and to turn away from it. Now, what a radical new therapy. Isn't that interesting? You see, what had to happen? That's something, of course, that Christians and the Christian Church has been saying is a way for you to deal with your problems for centuries. There's something about plain facts. There's something about plain experience that has exploded the myth that human beings are basically good and all of our problems come down to poor education and people who didn't read Benjamin Spock how to raise children. We've gotten rid of that idea, almost completely, and yet we're still very confused. Because right alongside of a growing understanding that human beings are wicked, and that there's

wickedness and there's real, there's real indelible, irreducible evil, evil in us that cannot be explained as something else. Evil that cannot be broken down into something else. You see, I think in the early 20th century, the idea of evil was if there's a human, if there's evil human being, you can break that down. That's a compound chemical, you know, it's not an element. It's a compound. You can break it down into, that person was mistreated, that person's a victim of racism, that person's a victim of oppression, that person is in ignorance, that person hasn't had decent education. We can break down evil into something. more basic than evil. And now that little chemical trick is now seen not to be possible.

That there really is something irreducible in us that's evil. There's something irreducible in us that's wicked. We're coming to that conclusion, and at the same time we wrestle. We still wrestle. We live in a country that because of the legal system and because of the therapeutic system, There's a tremendous number of people that are still trying to justify their evil by saying I'm a victim. Now, there's been a lot of articles about that in last couple years. What's called the cult of victimization, I don't want to get into that. But you see, right alongside of a growing sense, there really is evil, and there's a shadow self, and we've got to take responsibility.

And there's so many psychotherapies that are beginning to say, let's get down to it. We need to confess, we need to admit, we need to repent. These are secular therapies, too. At the same time, there's a lot of confusion because people are saying, well, I couldn't help myself. I'm a victim. I'm a victim of my DNA. I'm a victim of my chromosomes. There was a university president that last year was discovered to be making all sorts of obscene phone calls, in many cases, to his own staff from his presidential office. This is a major university in Washington, D.C. Well, he was forced to resign. Within a week on the Washington Post, somebody wrote an editorial saying, you can't help that sort of thing. because you see that's just the way some people are.

Their DNA and their chromosomes is what makes them do that kind of thing. They're not wicked. They're not wrong. They can't help themselves. Maybe that's true. All sorts of people debate those things. But you see, one of the great problems that we have in this culture now is to understand evil. We rejected the idea of the Christian doctrine of original sin a couple hundred years ago as a society.

and now we're faced with the fact of inveterate, indelible, irreducible evil, and we don't know what to make of it. So we debate it psychologically when, frankly, we can't deal with these things psychologically. There's a deeper level than psychology. Metaphysics, philosophy, theology. What is real and what is not real about evil is something that you're going to have to get into the area of faith, into the area of religion, into the area of philosophy. You can't deal with it strictly at a therapeutic level. You just can't.

When you see the Washington Post debating whether or not the president of American University, who was making obscene phone calls and sexually harassing people on his staff, was wicked or a victim of his chromosomes. You begin to realize we're never going to settle some of these burning issues unless we turn back to the resources of our faiths. Here we go. What do we learn about sin here? I'm only going to look at one thing that Paul says,

and I'm only going to deal with one particular aspect of the Christian doctrine of sin tonight, and that is you're dead in your sins. You're not sick in your sins. You don't have a bad cold in your sins. You're dead in your sins. A lot of people find that a very, very difficult thing to understand or to handle. It doesn't say, for example, that you are, you need improvement.

What Paul says is very, very blunt. If you are not quickened, as he says in verse four, by the Holy Spirit, if you haven't had a change from the outside in which God brings in his nature and brings you to life spiritually, if you're not in Christ, your life is a living death.

That's what it says. Life outside of Christ, Christ is a living death. I know that's blunt. I know that's stark. I know that many of you might think that that's outrageous. Let me show you what's behind it. Of course Christianity is outrageous. All I would like to argue for is that the alternatives are even more outrageous if you really are willing to stop and think about them in an objective way. Biblical language here, I must say, is actually sorted. I mean it. Sorted. Gross. And, and in a very, and in a way, and it, you know, in some ways very, very horrible. When the Bible talks about being dead in spiritually in sin,

it means that there is a tremendous parallel. There's a similarity between being spiritually dead and being physically dead. When Paul says you're dead in sins, he doesn't mean you're physically dead. He means you're spiritually dead. The spiritual death will lead to physical death, but right now it parallels physical death. And if you want to understand what that means, let's think about what a physically dead body is like, and that'll help us understand something about what it means to be spiritually dead. First of all, a physically dead body has no sensation. Now, I'll go through this rather briefly because I'm going to come back and go through it again in a little bit more elaboration. A physical body has no sensation. It cannot respond to stimuli.

It cannot respond to what's out there. Sensation is the way in which a body is aware of what's in its environment. Now, we have at least, well, we have five senses. I can be aware of what's out there because it touches me. I can be aware of reality through my sight. I can be rare of reality through my nose. I can be aware of reality through my ears. And, of course, I can be aware of reality through my stomach.

And anyway, or through my tongue, through taste. I can taste, touch, hear, see, and smell. that sensation. When you're spiritually dead, it means you cannot see, you cannot be aware of your environment. You don't know what's out there. It means not, of course, that you don't know what's physically out there. It doesn't mean you don't know that this is a music stand, that this is a microphone. To be spiritually dead means you don't know what's out there spiritually.

Things that everything else is more interesting than spiritual truth. The newspaper is more interesting. television is more interesting, but when it comes to spiritual truths, like the holiness of God and the sovereignty of His grace, and Jesus' death on the cross, and heaven and hell and righteousness, and adoption, those things, as we're going to see in a minute, are not things that you really are aware of as real. They are not real to you any more than the environment around a dead person is real to the dead person. The first part of death is no sensation. The second part of death, no control over the environment.

In other words, no strength. See, if I'm aware of my environment, that's sensation. If I want to do something about my environment, that's strength. That's mastery or control of my environment. If my brain says I want to hold the mic, I've got strength. If my brain sends a message through the nervous system to my muscle, and I hold it, and I grab it. Then I've got some control over it. The Bible says spiritually, you've got no strength.

For example, in Romans 5, 6, Paul says, when we were without strength, Christ died for us. When we were without strength. Romans 8, it says, the natural mind is unable to submit to the law of God. Paul says it does not submit. indeed it cannot. There is no motive or motor. If I want to take the mic, I have to want to, and then I have to have my want connected through the nervous system to my muscles so that I can actually motor my motive, so that I can do what I want to do. The Bible says that spiritually you can't want God. That's what it means to be dead in sin, and therefore spiritually you can't reach out

and grab him either. You can't take hold of them. You can't relate to him. You can't seek him. You can't submit to him. You're without strength. So like a physically dead body, a spiritually dead person has no sensation of the spiritual realm. Like a physically dead body, a spiritually dead person has no strength to submit or seek or do or give yourself to God. And last, one last thing, as a result of this, a physically dead body is ugly. Now, do you know why a physically dead body is ugly? Physically dead body is ugly to anyone who's alive. Because the body cannot hold itself together. Death always leaves a disintegration. The chemicals and the parts of the body that held together through the vitality that was in it, now that that vital principle is gone, the body begins to fall apart.

the longer the body is dead, the more it falls apart, the more it becomes pieces. And anyone who's alive looking at a decayed body is repulsed. And the Bible says, and has the audacity to say, this is where the whole language of the scripture I know is very sorted, but I'm simply trying to be true to the idea. The Bible says that that is exactly how we look to anyone who's spiritually alive, and especially how we look to God. When God looks at us, we're told even our best deeds, it says in Isaiah,

is as a bloody, gory cloth. When God looks at us, he sees what you see when you look at a dead, rotting body. When he looks at our soul, when he looks at our heart. That's what he sees. That's all of what it means when Paul says, you're dead in your sins. You're not sick in your sins. You're not going down for the third time. You know, there's an old Baptist hymn that we used to sing in my church in Virginia.

I was sinking deep in sin, far from the something shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me. Now safe am I. don't ask me about the grammar, but they had to make it rhyme, you know? Okay. Any of you ever hear that? You say, I was sinking deep in sin. That's not what the Bible says. It says you're sunk deep in sin. It doesn't say, I was sinking deep in sin far from the shore,

very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. I'm going down for the last time. Jesus hears my cry and he comes out to me. That's not what it says here. What it says is not that you're sinking in sin, that you're sunk in sin, see? Not that you're drowning in sin. You're drowned in sin. Not that you're actually up on the surface holding out for Jesus, but that you're at the bottom of the sea and you don't even know he's there and you're not even calling to him because you're dead. Now, somebody's got to say, yes, that's not only sorted, but I think it's unreasonable. I think I believe any normal and intelligent person will right away say, this is extreme. This is extreme. Yes, you say, there are plenty of people who are broken.

There are plenty of people who are hurting. There's plenty of people who aren't submitting to God's will like they should. But most people are trying. Most people are trying to be decent. Most people are trying to be loving. They're trying to be compassionate. They're trying their very best to live as they ought to. The idea of being dead seems to be overblown, seems to be exaggerated. It seems to be over sensationalized. It seems to be tabloid theology, you see. And I would just like to make the case. And I've done this before, but I've never done it in the evening service anyway, a case on why Paul is able to say this and why Jesus is able to say this as well. You yourselves, so there's got to be people out here tonight who say, now by your definition, I don't know if I'm

a Christian or not, I certainly never experienced this new birth that you're talking about, or I don't know if I have, but I'm not dead. I might be sick, I might be hurting, I might not love God as much as I want to, I might not believe like I'd like to, but I'm not dead. I'm moving around. I'm, I have some sensation, I have some strength. See, I've got some moral sensation, and I got some moral strength, but I'm not dead. Yes, you are. Why does God allow suffering in the world? How can one religion be right and the other's wrong? science basically disproved Christianity? Tim Keller addresses these questions and many more in his book The Reason for God. Drawing on literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and potent reasoning,

this book will challenge you to gain a deeper understanding of the Christian faith, whether you're a believer seeking to understand your faith better, whether you're exploring Christianity yourself, or whether you're reading it with a friend who's searching for answers. When you give to gospel in Life during the month of August, we'll send you two copies of the reason for God, one for you and one to give to a friend. It's our hope that through reading the book with a friend, you can have conversations about the claims of the Christian faith. To receive your two copies of the reason for God, as our thanks for your support, simply make a gift at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Thank you for partnering with us. Your gift helps the message of Christ's

love go out all over the world because the gospel truly changes everything. Let me make my case. There are levels of life. There are gradations of life. And to each gradation, though each gradation is life of a sort, to the higher grade, the next lower grade is like a living death. There's vegetable life. There's animal life. And then there's human physical life. Every one of those is life. Why? Because the vegetable has sensation, right? And it actually has some control over its environment, as we're going to see. The animal has more sensation and even more control over its environment. And the human being has even the most sensation, human physical life, and has the most control, as we're going to see. I'm going to go right through this.

But the fact is that though every one of those types of those types of people, of life is life on its level. As a human being, if you're living at the level of an animal, if you've had some kind of brain damage and you have the functioning level of a frog, are you alive or not? Not by human standards. You're in a living death. If an animal has almost drowned and has pulled out of the, you know, I've seen this happen, it's pulled out of the lake and is essentially, you know, so brain damaged that the door, that the dog dog is now functioning at the level of a tomato. We call it even, it's an awful thing to say about someone of a human gradation or of an animal gradation who is now operating at this level.

We call it a vegetable. Is it alive? In a sense. But you see, when you're living at the level of vegetable, when you're actually an animal, when you're actually a human being, it's a living death. You're alive and yet you're not. I know this is sorted. What the Bible says is there is a level of life, a spiritual life, that is as much above natural human physical life as natural human physical life is above animal life and as animal life is above vegetable life. And therefore, unless you understand that, as an animal is alive, but when a human being is functioning down there, it's a living death. So from God's point of view, we were all built for spiritual life, but we are living only at the level of human physical life, and therefore,

it is like a living death. Ever seen Night of the Living Dead? You're dead, but you're moving. You're decaying, but you're talking. It's horrible. It's awful, and that's how we look to God. Let me show you, and let me explain. All right, for example, look at the level of vegetable. A vegetable, a tomato, has some sensation. It's nothing but tactile sensation. Nothing but. It can sense its environment only if it's touching or if something has come very close to it. It can sense the sunlight.

It can sense water. It can sense things that are actually touching it in certain ways. But it's got no sight. It's got no hearing. And there's all kinds of things in its environment that it's not even aware of. Let's move up a notch. You have animals. Animals are different than vegetables because animals have five senses. They can touch, taste, see, and smell, and therefore there's things that the animal,

pardon me, that the vegetable has in its environment that are there, but they're not aware of. The animal is able to see all sorts of things that the vegetable can't see, but the animal is different than the human in this sense. We have five senses, but beyond that, we've got what's called rationality and the ability to reflect. the animal cannot see justice and tragedy. We can see it. The animal cannot see joy or sorrow, really. The animal cannot see right and wrong. Things that are there, things that are obviously there, but the animal can't see. And there's things that the animal can see and be aware of that the vegetable can't be aware of. If an animal comes down to the sensation level of the vegetable,

it's a living death. If the human comes down to the level of the animal, It's a living death. Let's turn over to the second way we define life. Sensation, the other one is what? Mastery, control the environment. What can a vegetable do about its environment? Well, it depends. What can, I say, a plant do about its environment?

Some plants can turn toward the sun. Some plants obviously can grow toward the moisture. Occasionally you get a Venus fly trap or something like that that can, you know, respond to certain stimuli in a kind of fascinating way. They've got some, but a very small amount. Animals are different. Animals actually can do far more in control of their environment,

but they can only react. They do it all through instinct. Human beings are a higher order of life altogether, and what human beings can do is they can reflect. They've got self-control. Do you know what it's like? Some of you probably do. when through addiction to something

here you are knowing what you're doing is wrong what you're doing is destructive what you're doing is despairing and yet you're watching yourself do it what's happened to you? You're living at the level of an animal see animals can do a lot more than plants but animals can only respond they can only react they can only

they only have instincts you see reflexes. A human being is higher than an animal because a human being has self-control. A human being can reflect. A human being can make decisions. A human being can move away and decide not to do something. When a human being has sunk down to the animal level, you feel that you're dead. You're alive, but you're dead. You're gone through the motions, but you're dead. When an animal has moved down the level of the vegetable, it's like a living death. Now, when the Bible talks about spiritual life, it's saying that there is a kind of life as much higher than the human physical as the human physical is above the animal.

Look at sensation, first of all. Unless the Holy Spirit has come and given you a new spiritual awareness, there's all sorts of things out there, real things that are there that you're not aware of. Put it this way. unless you've got spiritual life, if you're in a state of death, spiritual death, then things that I mentioned before, the holiness of God and the sovereignty of God, and the adoption of us into the family, and grace, and heaven and hell and righteousness, and the word of God, and the inheritance in the future, and glory, all of these things

to a spiritually dead person are either a nonsense or B, abstractions. There's two, the reason I say nonsense or abstractions is because there's two kinds of spiritually dead person. There's the kind that say, I don't believe at all in any of this religious stuff, and then there's the other kind of person who believes at all. But they're still spiritually dead. What?

Yes. Sensation means something is real to you. Now, I can usually tell if somebody's spiritually dead, though theoretically only, in an abstract sense only, they believe in the Apostles' Creed and they believe in all these Christian beliefs. Because you see, when you sit down and talk with them when they're going through troubles and you open the Word of God, and they're going through tremendous troubles, and you show them that God is their father, that He's adopted them, that God is in charge of everything that's happening, that Jesus Christ suffered, not so that we might not suffer, but that in our

suffering we might become like him, that one second of heaven is going to make amends for a thousand, thousand lives full of torture, that heaven will make amends for all. So what you do with a person, what you're supposed to do with yourself when you're suffering is you just expose yourself to all these truths. And a spiritually dead person who says that they're Christian and who, you know, theoretically believes in all that, they look at you and they say, so what? You're going to glory. So what? Your father loves you. So what? That doesn't mean anything to me. I'm in despair. You see what I mean? Some people who are spiritually dead look at these truths and they're not aware of them and they say, they're not real to them and they say, this is nonsense, but other people

are not aware of them and they think they believe, but they're just theoretical and they're just abstractions. They're not realities. When you become spiritually alive, when you go through the new birth, that's one of the first things you notice, isn't it? If you had a church background, you know, if you were raised in a Christian faith, any kind of church, when you're born again, when the new life comes in, when you're quickened and you're no longer dead in trespasses and sins, one of the first things you begin to say is, wait a minute, I'd always heard this, but now look at it. I'm electrified by these things. I'd always heard about God's love in an abstract way, but now I see he does.

I'd always heard about sin. I always knew I was a sinner, but now I'm convicted. I'd always heard about heaven, but now it's something that make amends. It makes amends. It changes me. It electrifies me. It thrills me. It disturbs me.

What's happening? These things are real to you. Before, you were a spiritual vegetable. You were a spiritual animal. And all of a sudden, things that were just abstractions and theoretical, they become real. They smite you. just like the sun smites your eyes, just like a hammer smites your hand. So the truth smite your soul because you're awake, you're alive, or spiritual strength. Let's look at that. Don't you see?

In the area of sensation, a spiritually alive person, spiritual human life is as much ahead of and beyond physical human life, as physical human life is above animal life, because it's a higher order, it's a new order of sensation. Or let me go over to the idea of mastery and control of your environment. Animals only have instincts. Human beings have more self-control, more reflection. They have more mastery over their environment, you see. They're not just responding to their environment.

They're not just reacting, they're acting. And yet, when you're spiritually alive, you find you have a new kind of self-control that you never had before. If you're not a Christian, or if God is just a theoretical abstraction, you know, you might say I'm a Christian, but he's not real to you. You don't really have this spiritual life. What really controls you? What controls you? Your peer group controls you, or your political ideology controls you, or your culture controls you, or your ethnicity controls you. There are certain things and people and groups and standards which really do control you. As soon as you become a Christian and the realities of God's holiness and of his truth and of his love and of his righteousness and of his glory,

as soon as they begin to hit you, suddenly you have got a mastery you never had before. In the past, if you knew that to tell the truth meant you would lose your job and maybe lose your career, what would you have done? Well, see, if God's not real to you, what else have you got but your career? If in the past, in order to keep your sexual integrity, you knew that you were going to be rejected

by the professional group that you most wanted to be part of, how could you have resisted? Because, you see, if God's not real to you, if glory's not real to you, if there isn't a bigger reality than just earth and right here, then you are really completely controlled by the things that give your life meaning. As soon as God is the thing that gives your life meaning, you can laugh,

you can snap your finger in the face of anything. You no longer say, well, I do it this way because I'm Italian and all Italians do things this way. And all of my Italian friends would look at me and say, what are you doing that for? I have to do it that way. Or because I'm Irish or because I'm Jewish or because I'm Chinese. I mean, I wouldn't even think of being something else, but as soon as you become a Christian, as soon as there becomes a standard, as soon as it becomes a reality that's bigger than your ethnicity, that's judging you in your ethnicity, you're lifted up above and you receive a freedom. Listen, there is nobody, there is nobody more of an individualist than a Christian. because a Christian knows that if I'm the only person left on the face of the earth that believes the Bible,

and everybody else is all right to kill this kind of person, and I see the Bible says it's not, a majority of one, I can stand against everybody else in the world. It doesn't matter because I know I'm right, because I have got a self-control that nobody else has got. I have got an integrity that nobody else has got. What if they kill me? So what? because glory, because righteousness, because the father, because of the love, there is a freedom and a power over your environment that you've got in human spiritual life that's as much above the human physical life as the human physical life is above the animal life. Don't you see, therefore, when the Bible says you're dead in your sins, it's talking

about spiritual death. Don't you see, you are dead until the Spirit of God comes and changes you. Conclusion, the only way to really define a Christian is not intellectually, is not culturally, and it's not institutionally. Don't you see that being a Christian or not being a Christian is not a matter of degree, but it's a matter of essence and quality? You either are a Christian because you've got spiritual life, or you're not a Christian because you don't. Christianity is not a matter of degree or gradations. Being a Christian does not mean I'm working toward a goal. I'm adopting a certain way of thinking or a lifestyle. I'm on my way. You either are a Christian or you're not. You see, because you're either, listen, you're either

a human being or you're an animal or you're an eggplant. I mean, you know, eggplants don't say, well, I'm on my way to being a dog. I'm hoping I'll be a dog. You know, dogs don't say, you know, unless you watch some of the strange science fiction movies and so on, dogs are not on their way to being human beings. You're one or the other, and it has to do with creation. When you're born again, something gets a hold of you in the center. What happens to you is you look at things that maybe you've always thought were nonsense, or at least, always thought of its theoretical abstractions, and they become solid, and they become real. And you know what you say? Like in Psalm 73, where the psalmist says, when I was embittered toward you, and when I was rebellious

toward you, I was as a beast toward thee. And that's exactly how anybody who's really a Christian has felt. You can look back and you can see a time in which, you know, the level of life that you experienced in terms of sensation, in terms of mastery over the environment, was something, it was a living death. When you become a Christian, you sense your creator recreating you. Something gets a hold of you in the center.

Something gets a hold of you by the throat of your soul. It's moving you and it's changing you, it's shaking you, and it's turning you into something completely different. I mean, this is the, you know, the only way to understand the message of the gospel is to understand in supernatural terms. And, unfortunately, all the crazy, fantastic novels you've ever read about people having brain transplants and dogs becoming human beings and eggplants becoming dogs and all that sort of thing, believe it or not, that's the closest thing you've got to what you have here. God comes in

and plants a new principle of life in you and pulls you. And pulls you. you up from a lower form of life into a higher form of life. No, your IQ doesn't go up. I'm sorry. Your IQ begins to operate with a whole new direction. There's a whole new dimension to it. It doesn't make you smarter. It makes you more aware. Okay? Listen, a man born blind with an IQ of 180. If suddenly he was given his sight back, it doesn't mean his IQ goes up to 120, 190 or a 280. What suddenly happens is his IQ is released. It's liberated into a whole new realm, and that's what it means to become a Christian. Put it this way. When an animal looks at a flower, what does the animal see? Can I eat it? When a human being looks at a flower, what do you see?

You see the same flower the animals saw, but you see something different. You see something beautiful. you see something comforting, you see something intricate that the animal didn't see. When a Christian looks at the flower, what does the Christian see? Something different than the person sees

whose dead in trespasses and sins. A Christian can get all the power for living out of looking at a flower and thinking of it in terms of his creator. You know, a Christian looks at the flower and says, my God, yeah.

The Christian looks at the flower and says, what beauty must be lurking in your heart? that you would bestow this kind of beauty on a world as broken as this, what is the new world going to be like? And if you would bestow this kind of beauty on an inanimate plant, what will you be giving to your children? And you get excited and you get electrified just by thinking of the plant spiritually. Because it's a whole new realm. You've got spiritual life. You've been recreated. You've been pulled on up. The difference between being a Christian and not being a Christian.

Christian is not one of gradation. It's not one merely of moral effort. It is a matter of, it's a difference of essence and quality. Well, I'm done. Somebody says, what do you mean you're done? How do I get that? Well, you know, we're going through this text, and I only got to, these first three verses are all about sin. They're all about death. They're all about the peril. And the latter, the, the other verses have to do with the solution, the rescue. and the new life. See, when you ask, well, what are we supposed to do about the fact that we're dead in sin?

It's as simple as this. Are you unhappy with the idea? Are you alarmed by the idea? Do you suddenly begin to say, I want that kind of life? Then you're not dead. If you were dead, you would think what I'm saying is either nonsense

or else it would be a complete abstraction. Wouldn't alarm you, because as soon as you're alarmed, as soon as you're moved, as soon as you begin to be affected by spiritual truth, it means there's sensation. There's sensation. And with sensation comes control and strength. If you're alarmed, if you're unhappy, don't sit around and say, oh my gosh, it must be dead. Well, if you're crying about it, you're not all dead. It means

God's there. He's working on you. He's talking to you. And what you have to do is turn around and say, oh, creator, recreate me. You know, like the man who Jesus touched, touched and he couldn't see straight. He was getting sensation. He was blind. But when Jesus touched him, Jesus says, do you see you right? And he looked around and says, not exactly. I can't tell the difference between men and giant sequoias. And Jesus touched him again. And if you're concerned that maybe you don't have this new life, then go back and say, oh, Lord, touch me. And friends, there's a lot of you here that don't really understand what it means to stir up this new life. Your new life is a lot like a fire. The way to keep a fire going is to

stir it up. Look at your human physical life. Look at it. What if you don't exercise? What if you don't eat right? Huh? What if you don't ever go to the doctor? What if you don't take care of it? What's going to happen to you? You'll be down to the animal or the vegetable pretty soon. You've got to maintain it. Christian friends, do you see what you've got to do? You have got to say, I was dead, and there's still a lot of deadness in me, but I want life and I want more life. I could boot off of, you know, it's like booting off of A or B-Drive. I can boot off of my old natural life, or I can boot off of my spiritual life in the way in which I look at this flower, in the way in which I deal with this trouble that's coming up on Monday, in the way in which I look at

my life and look at the world. Dear friends, are you alive or are you dead? Let's pray. Father, all we ask now is that you would grant you. to us the knowledge and the sensation of your truth so that we can find ourselves growing more and more into your life. I pray, Father, that there's anybody here who's not sure whether they've got that life, that they would come to you and say, Lord Jesus Christ, I see enough to see that I don't see. Touch me. Give me your sensation. Give me the new life. Give me the new life. that I so desperately need. And Father, those of us who've got it, help us to be willing to confess to you right now

that we really don't live off of it. We don't boot off of it. We don't stir it up. Father, show us how to exercise and nourish ourselves and keep this stir up, this new life in us. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel Center teacher,

and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1992. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, will Dr. Keller was Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.