Dying to Sin

Imagine the awful inconvenience of being declared dead by the United States Government. Consider this true story:

Susan and Darby Nye of Arlington, Virginia, have been married for 30 years and were looking forward to many more in retirement when Susan started receiving condolences from various federal agencies regarding the death of her husband. But there was one big problem: Darby was alive and well.

It started when Darby’s purchase at a pharmacy was declined. He called to find out why. “Well, they said the Social Security Administration has informed us that you are dead,” he said.

When someone dies, they’re supposed to be put on the Death Master File. The Social Security Administration uses the death data to terminate benefit payments and report deaths to other agencies. But one typo can mistakenly declare someone dead, digging a grave that buries them along with their finances.

Darby’s plight as a categorized deceased person is not singular: it is estimated that every year, some 12,200 U.S. citizens are declared dead by the Social Security Administration due to "keystroke errors." Those affected become like the walking dead, unable to secure a job, make financial transactions, file taxes, or visit the doctor, and for months on end, must endure the nightmare of convincing a large bureaucracy that they haven't yet bit the dust.

Possible Preaching Angle:
Being declared legally dead is a terrible inconvenience for people in our society. But being declared legally dead to sin is a tremendous blessing for believers that promises incredible freedom and hope.

Benjamin Schreiber is very much alive. But that hasn’t stopped him from arguing that he died four years ago. After the convicted murderer collapsed in his prison cell, doctors restarted his heart five times. Recovering back at the Iowa State Penitentiary, Schreiber filed a novel legal appeal. He claimed that because he died before he was resuscitated, he had technically fulfilled his life sentence when his heart stopped. Schreiber filed for post-conviction relief, claiming that he was being held in prison illegally.

Judges, however, aren’t buying it. A district court judge wasn’t convinced by his creative attempt to find a loophole in the law, saying that Schreiber’s argument was “unpersuasive and without merit.” The fact that Schreiber was able to file a legal motion petitioning for his release, the judge added, “in itself confirms the petitioner’s current status as living.”

Dying for a brief amount of time doesn’t amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card. The Iowa Court of Appeals said that the 66-year-old will remain in prison until a medical examiner determines that he is dead for good. Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote, “Schreiber is either alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is dead, in which case this appeal is moot.”

Noting that they couldn’t find any case law that would back Schreiber’s position, the appeals court judges also ruled that he couldn’t have it both ways—claiming to be dead as far as the criminal justice system was concerned while simultaneously going on with his life.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This creative legal claim was of no help to this convicted criminal. He is bound by the law as long as he lives. In contrast, however, this is the certain hope of every believer. Because we are connected in a living way with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ we are dead and forever free from the demands of the law. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). “You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). “Therefore, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ” (Rom. 7:4).

A man returned to his native country to find that the authorities no longer believed in his existence upon this mortal plane. Constantin Reliu returned to Romania after a 20-year-stay in Turkey to find that the Romanian government, at his wife's urging, had previously declared him deceased.

Unable to corroborate any details with his wife, the Associated Press conducted a phone interview with Reliu from his residence in Barlad. "I am a living ghost. I am officially dead, although I'm alive. I have no income, and because I am dead, I cannot do anything."

Reliu explained that in the early nineties, he left to work in Turkey. Upon returning and discovering his wife's infidelity, he decided to leave again for good—or so he thought. In December of 2017, Reliu was detained by Turkish officials for having outdated residency documents, and was deported back to Romania in January where he discovered that authorities believed him already to be dead.

Border agents subjected Reliu to six hours of testing and questioning, asking him topographical questions about his hometown and measuring the contours of his face compared to old passport photos. They finally released him after their investigation was satisfied.

Officials in Barlad, however, were not as accommodating. Citing his delay as a clerical error, they denied his request to overturn the death certificate on the basis of it being too late.

Potential Preaching Angles: 1) Even when presented with evidence, people have a hard time believing the truth. Innocent people suffer when others fail to take responsibility for their mistakes. 2) This story also illustrates a wonderful truth for Christians-we are also legally dead but alive. Since we died in Christ, sin and death have no power over us.

It's not every day you hear a story starting with "when I died," but that's how 22-year-old Amber Moloney remembers February 6th. Moloney, a university senior studying exercise science, was one of three fitness interns at Hilton Head Health this semester. And just like every other day the interns (Moloney, Audra Weis, and Shane Wilson) went through their daily routine, leading fitness classes before working out together before dinner.

But on this day, something went wrong. In the middle of their workout, Weis, noticed Moloney in the opposite corner "moving weird," she said. Moloney collapsed "face down in a pile of dumbbells," Wilson recalled. He immediately turned Moloney over, exposing her "bright blue face" and moving her away from the equipment.

As Wilson quickly began performing CPR, Weis dialed 911. Moloney began coughing and spitting up foam but remained unresponsive, so Wilson continued his compressions. When the EMTs arrived in less than six minutes, Moloney had a heartbeat. But, moments later, Moloney's heart stopped again, so they used a defibrillator and shocked her about four times. The next thing Moloney remembers is waking up on the fitness room floor with about four EMTs towering over her.

The ambulance then rushed Moloney to the hospital. After a week Moloney had surgery to have a defibrillator implanted to prevent similar cardiac arrests in the future. Aside from a three-inch scar near her heart, you would not guess by looking at her that Moloney went into sudden cardiac arrest less than three months ago.

A few weeks after her "when I died" experience, Moloney attended the inaugural South Carolina Resuscitation Conference on Hilton Head Island, where she shared her story as a cardiac arrest survivor.

Possible Preaching Angles: Amber Moloney unexpectedly died one day in February but was brought back to life by her friends. Believers died the day we came to faith in Christ (Romans 6:1-4) and we continue to die every day as we pick up our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23)

I've heard people say, "I'm checking out Christianity, but I also understand Christians can't do this and the Bible says you're supposed to do that. You're supposed to love the poor or you're supposed to give up sex outside of marriage. I can't accept that." So people want to come to Christ with a list of conditions.

But the real question is this: Is there a God who is the source of all beauty and glory and life, and if knowing Christ will fill your life with his goodness and power and joy, so that you would live with him in endless ages with his life increasing in you every day? If that's true, you wouldn't say things like, "You mean, I have to give up ___ (like sex or something else)."

Let's say you have a friend who is dying of some terrible disease. So you take him to the doctor and the doctor says, "I have a remedy for you. If you just follow my advice you will be healed and you will live a long and fruitful life, but there's only one problem: while you're taking my remedy you can't eat chocolate." Now what if your friend turned to you and said, "Forget it. No chocolate? What's the use of living? I'll follow the doctor's remedy, but I will also keep eating chocolate."

If Christ is really God, then all the conditions are gone. To know Jesus Christ is to say, "Lord, anywhere your will touches my life, anywhere your Word speaks, I will say, "Lord, I will obey. There are no conditions anymore." If he's really God, he can't just be a supplement. We have to come to him and say, "Okay, Lord, I'm willing to let you start a complete reordering of my life."

A recent article from the BBC opens with a line that sounds like it could be from a sci-fi flick: "'When you are at 10C [50 degrees Fahrenheit], with no brain activity, no heartbeat, no blood—everyone would agree that you're dead,' says Peter Rhee at the University of Arizona, Tucson. 'But we can still bring you back.'"

Rhee's claim is true. He's referencing a bold new medical procedure that (though only tested on animals so far) drains the body of its blood, and cools it far below normal temperature, reducing cell activity that would normally lead to irreversible organ or brain damage. After a wound or injury is stabilized, the body's blood is put back in, and the patient is warmed. A heartbeat returns on its own as the body warms, and—at least in the animals tested—the patient wakes up groggy, but "back to normal" the next day.

Trials of the potentially life-saving procedure are planned to begin on critically wounded gunshot victims in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in the near future. "Killing a patient to save his life" comments The New York Times.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It's a remarkable illustration of a spiritual principle. When we are critically wounded through sin and brokenness, the only hope for life is to pass through what appears to be death first—giving up everything for the "death" of following Jesus.

In 1967, a student named Libby attended with her boyfriend, Tom. During the final commitment evening, both submitted their lives to the Lord. For 30 years, Tom and Libby Little served in Afghanistan, providing vision care to the people of Kabul throughout seemingly endless wars and conflict.

In August 2010, shortly after conducting a two-week medical camp in a remote valley of northwestern Afghanistan, Tom and his medical team were ambushed and killed. Upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her husband, Libby said, "Although Tom was killed in 2010, he had already surrendered his life to God's good purposes way back in 1967." For four decades, Tom had submitted himself to his divine master. So in one sense, Tom Little had already died in Christ prior to 1967, and he would always live through Christ even though he was ambushed and killed in Afghanistan.

If there is a terror about darkness because we cannot see, there is also a terror about light because we can see. There is a terror about light because much of what we see in the light about ourselves and our world we would rather not see, would rather not have be seen.

— Frederick Buechner, U. S. writer and preacher (1926–)

We want to be a saint, but we also want to feel every sensation experienced by sinners; we want to be innocent and pure, but we also want to be experienced and taste all of life; we want to serve the poor and have a simple lifestyle, but we also want all the comforts of the rich; we want to have the depth afforded by solitude, but we also do not want to miss anything; we want to pray, but we also want to watch television, read, talk to friends, and go out.

It's a small wonder that life is often a trying enterprise, and that we are often tired and pathologically overextended.

—Ronald Rolheiser, president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas

Dallas Willard writes about a 2-and-a-half-year-old girl in her backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called "warm chocolate"). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.

The little girl soon resumed her "warm chocolate" routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a 2-and-a-half-year-old can make it: "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?" Nana (being a little co-dependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate. Three times she said, as she continued her work, "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?"

Then Willard writes: "Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong."

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well. It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one—the quietest one; the one that we least acknowledge making—is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall. God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, "Where are you?"

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid," Adam answered, "so I hid." Don't look at me, God.

Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. He died that we might live--but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died to himself that he might live unto God. If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God, is dead.