Mostly Dead
Mostly Dead Is Not All Dead
I wish I could sit every sincere Christian down—coffee in hand—for a long, honest conversation with Paul's letter to the Romans. Not a casual read. A reckoning.
Paul didn't write chapters. He wrote a single letter meant to be heard as one unbroken argument. Take Romans 4–8 (better yet, 1–11) in a single sitting. Follow the connective tissue—"therefore," "so then," "for." Pause at each comma. Ponder at every period. Let each line confront you like a mirror that refuses to lie.
Because here is the problem:
we have mistaken chapter-a-day reading for serious study,
then wondered why our faith feels thin.
We talk about grace. We sing about victory. And yet many of us have lived as though sin still holds the deed to our bodies. We fight it, we fear it, we limp beneath it—forgetting that Romans 6 doesn't describe a battle. It declares a burial.
And when Paul does describe a battle, we mistake it for the normal Christian life, because we didn't follow his logic the way he built it.
Paul isn't offering coping strategies.
He's reading a eulogy.
And the corpse? The old you.
Somewhere along the way, we started whispering a softer gospel.
Even some of the greats blurred this point.
Charles Spurgeon once quoted a friend who said, at age eighty,
"I find the old man is not dead yet."
And Spurgeon, in his usual warmth, agreed:
"Our old man is crucified, but he is long a-dying."
I revere Spurgeon. Few lights have burned brighter in the history of preaching. But bright lights cast long shadows, and this is one of them. Not heresy—a sentimental error. A beautiful thought that stopped one verse too soon.
Because Romans 6 doesn't hesitate. It doesn't hedge.
"Our old man was crucified with Him."
Not "in process." Not "still struggling."
—Was.
Past tense. Finished event.
Then Paul makes the most audacious claim in the letter, as if daring us to take him at his word:
"For he that is dead is freed from sin."
Not "will be." Not "metaphorically."
—Is.
Present tense. Ongoing reality.
And as if to drive the nails deeper into the old man's coffin, Paul presses the symmetry until it becomes impossible to miss:
He died unto sin once;
you, likewise, reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin.
He lives unto God;
you, likewise, reckon yourself alive unto God through Christ.
Death has no more dominion over Him;
therefore sin shall not have dominion over you.
This isn't poetry. It's a proof.
Christ's death is your death.
Christ's life is your life.
The dominion that lost its claim on Him lost its claim on you.
Divine equivalence. The ledger balanced once and for all.
And that's when I hear it—
the voice of Miracle Max, wagging his finger from The Princess Bride:
"Woo-hoo-hoo! Look who knows so much!
Well, it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead.
There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead."
Mostly dead.
That's how too many believers live—half-buried saints still arguing with corpses. We nod to the cross but keep the casket cracked open, just in case the old man wants back in.
Paul leaves no room for mostly:
If we were only mostly dead, then Christ was only mostly crucified.
And a mostly crucified Christ cannot raise the dead.
He died—completely.
So did we, in Him.
His death equals your death.
His resurrection equals your freedom.
If Christ is fully risen, then you are fully free.
Not will be. Is.
And if that sounds like mere semantics, it is not. Identity language forms expectation, which is why you should understand that The Noun Always Wins.
Stop negotiating with a corpse.
Stop trying to rehabilitate what God already buried.
Romans 6 is not asking whether you feel dead to sin.
It is telling you what God has already done in Christ, and commanding you to reckon accordingly.
So read Romans 6—slowly, stubbornly, like your soul depends on it.
Because it does.
And the next time the old man starts whispering from the grave,
smile, lean in close, and say:
"Woo-hoo-hoo. Look who knows so much."
Then shut the coffin.
He was crucified with Christ. Believe God, not the corpse.