208. Quickened
Ephesians 2:1And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.
Through Jesus Christ God has made us alive, and He promises to keep on making us alive. He has given us life and He continues to give us life. By God’s own life-giving power the Lord has caused us to be born from above through Baptism and faith. Our inner spirit was born dead to God; our human spirit is born to new life when the Holy Spirit enters our spirit and makes it alive. This is quickening.
Once this conversion event has taken place and the Spirit resides in our spirit and our spirit lives, that spirit continually affects the soul and gives life and positive energy to the soul; this process makes the dead soul live again with new life, life that arises out of the source of Life, God’s Spirit in the human spirit. The Holy Spirit convinces me of two things: I am dead in sins, and I am alive in Christ. Both are side-by-side true at the same time. By life, we mean a spiritual connection to the life of God; by death, we mean a spiritual separation from the life of God.
Human pride prevents us from seeing the deadness and darkness in which the soul exists. The Law brings repentance, which breaks the deadness by revealing it and by making the soul realize the need for the Gospel of forgiveness and life. Then the Gospelbrings the refreshment of new life. This is quickening. For the sake of life and living we need to hear Law and Gospel daily; for we are ever and always in danger of losing life and coming closer to death. If we absent ourselves from Law and Gospel for too long we discover that we are losing the freshness of life and gradually drawing closer to the stench of death. Daily we come before the Lord and say something like this: “I am dead in sins, I repent; I am alive in Christ, I believe.”
We have been promised a quickening. We may also employ this quickening power by applying it to the specific needs of living. The Spirit is ever present to make the forgiveness of sins real and effective and to apply the true and powerful life of God to the soul and the body. Quickening is real.