Passing From Death Unto Life

"This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:24).
That the natural man is dead in trespasses and sins is no mere figure of speech; it is a solemn reality, an awful fact. It is ignorance and the denial of this fact which lies at the root of so much of the false teaching of our day. What the natural man needs first and foremost is not education or reformation, but life. It is because the sinner is dead that he needs to be born again. But how little this is pressed today! The unspeakably dreadful state of the natural man is glossed over where it is not directly repudiated. For the most part our preachers seem afraid to insist upon the utter ruin and total depravity of human nature. This is a fatal defect in any preaching: sinners will never be brought to see their need of a Savior until they realize their lost condition, and they will never discover their lost condition until they learn that they are dead in sin.
But what does Scripture mean when it says the sinner is "dead"? This is something which seems absurd to the natural man. And to him it is absurd.

"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
To the natural man it seems that he is very much alive. Yes, and Scripture itself speaks of one that lives in pleasure as being "dead while she liveth" (1 Timothy 5:6). Herein lies the key to the meaning of that expression employed by our Lord in His teaching upon the Good Samaritan. Describing the condition of the natural man under the figure of one who had fallen among thieves, who had stripped him of his raiment and left him wounded by the wayside, the Savior termed him "half dead" (Luke 10:30). Mark then the absolute accuracy of Christ’s words. The sinner is "half dead": he is alive manward, worldward, sinward, but he is dead Godward! The sinner is alive naturally — physically, mentally, morally — but he is dead spiritually. That is why the new birth is termed a "passing from death unto life" (John 5:24). And just as the deadness of Abraham and Sarah — in their case natural deadness, for they but foreshadowed spiritual truths had to be quickened by God before Isaac could be born, so has the sinner to be quickened by God into newness of life before he can become a son of God... This was taken from Gleanings in Genesis by A.W. Pink Chapter 21 The Birth Of Issac pages 246-247 below is the link to the online book... You comments and thoughts are appreciated... Brother Glen

http://www.grace-ebooks.com/library/Arthur W. Pink/Gleanings in Genesis - Arthur W. Pink.pdf