Legally Dead

Last year, a woman I used to work with was dying of cancer, and her friends sent out weekly updates that seemed to go on endlessly. But when doctors turned off all life support systems, she passed.

In light of this, the phrase “legally dead” recently caught my attention. It means a terminal patient, kept alive on life support, is dead “under the law.”  Paradoxically, the whole world is condemned to death under the law, only kept alive by this world's life support systems. But if we are in Christ, we are no longer under the Law's condemnation: we have died to the law of sin and death, and to this world—we are really “legally dead” (Rom. 8:2; 6:6). And now, having been raised up with Christ, we are alive (Rom. 6:11): Christ is our life support (Col 3:2). Given that, how gruesome the thought that any believer who had been disconnected from the world’s systems would want to go back and be reconnected?

Is this why Paul asks, with such incredulity, “How can you who died to sin still live in it? ... Don’t you know that that you were crucified with Christ?” (Ro. 6:2, 6). I can still remember when I first understood this (Gal. 2:20), the day I found out I was legally dead.