Dead men moral??

This was Matthew's status on facebook the other day, "What good is it to make a dead man moral?"  A very appropriate question to ask I'd say...

I think we all learned at an early age (that is if we grew up in a good christian home), the very basic truth about how we were dead in our trespasses and sins. I mean that was the precursor verse to present the Gospel to people, was it not? However, I think we focus on the sins part and don't look at the part about how we were DEAD. (Dead man walking should be the title of our life's journey, until we encounter Christ, 'eh.) Oh, anyway, I certainly never understood that I was dead. All my life, I was dead in my trespasses and sins, had I known I was dead, I think I'd want to know how to get the life I needed to be ALIVE. Well, wouldn't you? 

Instead, all my life, I tried to figure out how to make my life work, all my life, people tried to tell me how to be a better christian, mother, wife, daughter, person, friend and so on. I tried and miserably failed. I couldn't make my life any better, cause I didn't understand my core need. LIFE!! Not my own life, one whose life was capable of pleasing God perfectly - Christ's life. 

Just today I read the following portion of a quote in someone's facebook status; "To grow as a Christian is to have this new life increase in strength & energy, making daily conquests over the old nature, extending itself and expelling the evil, ultimately bringing these affections, feelings, desires, and thoughts of the heart into subjection to Christ." 

Here's the problem, if we know we were dead in our trespasses and sins, our very nature was spiritually dead, and when we come to Christ and receive new life in Him and become a new creation - is there room for the old nature? No the bible tells us, that the old is gone and the new has come. He removed our heart of stone (dead, not alive) and gave us a heart of flesh (alive). We no longer have the old we have the new. We are certainly not walking around with 2 natures, trying to let the new nature stomp out the old one. The old one is gone, there is no battle of the natures going on inside us. DUH!!! 

^{Colossians 2 ~ 9}For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. ¹¹In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, ¹²having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

 ¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

²⁰Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ²¹"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? ²²These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. ²³Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Col. 3 - ¹Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Folks we do not live to be good, moral or better. We live to express the life of Christ that has been deposited within us, who is now our very life, our very identity.