I watched an episode of The Walking Dead the other night. The story was absolutely intriguing: what would the world be like if a disease turned almost everyone into zombies? The problem was, I couldn’t stomach the headshots or the body parts trailing behind the corpses. So I only ended up watching one and a half episodes. But it made me start thinking: all of us are zombies.

Huh?

I work with junior high boys and we always end up talking about interesting things (surprising, right?). One night we talked about this verse: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” Ephesians 2:1 NASB (emphasis mine). And it hit me: we are all zombies. We are walking around, talking, eating, breathing, living. And yet we are dead. Corpses. Living and dead and the same time.

Our physical bodies are alive, but our souls are dead. The moment Adam sinned, the entire human race was condemned to a zombie existence: shuffling around, searching for life, with no clue how destitute we are. We can no more cure ourselves than those poor wretches on The Walking Dead.

But there was someone who could. “But God is so rich in mercy, and He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead… ” Ephesians 2:4 NLT (emphasis mine)

The dead cannot save themselves. They cannot bring life back into their bodies. But God could, and He did. Can you imagine the scene? God walking up to a zombie, touching him or her, and restoring life back into the body and healing away the decay? The way the person would look afterward, with wonder and with thankfulness.

Right now I am picturing all those zombies on The Walking Dead and what that episode would look like if someone finally found a cure (maybe there is a cure on the show, I don’t know). What a happy day that would be, when they could finally become human again.