How to Die a Spiritual Death (Part 1)

If people in our world fear physical death so much, just imagine how much fear will strike their hearts when they realize as a result of their rejection of Christ, they will also die a spiritual death.

I want to show you from John 8:21-30 four life-principles to live by if you want to die a spiritual death or live eternity separated from God alongside of others who reject Him. The religious leaders that Jesus is dialoguing with had no one to blame but themselves. Use these four principles to check your heart this morning. If you want to die a spiritual death …

1. Abide in self-righteousness (John 8:21-22) – “Then Jesus said to them again, ‘I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come. So the Jews said, ‘Will He kill Himself, because He says, ‘Where I go you cannot come’?’”

 Where was Jesus going? This is a reference to Him being crucified, buried and finally His ascension into heaven. This is what He meant when He said He was going away. And Jesus comments that after this has occurred, they would still be looking for Him. And the religious leaders would want to find Him in order to continue to follow His life and teaching but would never find Him because He will no longer be on earth. As a result of this failure to locate Christ to follow Him, Jesus pronounces an awful judgment upon their life. They will “.” They will die in a state of no forgiveness, which means they are going to die without salvation. They will die in unbelief and not be able to join Christ in heaven, which is why He says, “.”

People who reject Christ die in their sins. They die unforgiven. They die with a life-time of unatoned for, unpaid for, accumulated sins. That is the disaster of all disasters. That is a one-way guaranteed ticket to never go to the place where Jesus dwells. Jesus is saying the reason they were abiding in self-righteousness is because they were not preparing themselves for life after death. They were dying a spiritual death because they were not preparing their souls for eternity. They were abiding not in Jesus Christ but in their own self-righteousness.

John MacArthur explains their unwillingness to accept Jesus words this way: “Their ignorant mocking came about because of their self-righteousness. Do you understand that? They mocked Him because they didn’t think they needed a Savior. The whole idea of them dying in their sins was ludicrous to them. After all, they were the spiritual ones, they were the religious ones, they were the orthodox. They kept all the laws and all the rituals and all the routines and all the ceremonies and all the traditions with exacting detail. They had absolutely no idea that they would ever be going to any other place than heaven. They were so self-righteous that Jesus’ warning was a joke and they laughed until they died and then they cried and they still do.” (“4 Ways to Miss out on Heaven”)

Self-righteousness leads to a spiritual death. When someone is self-righteous they are thinking upon everything in relation to themselves and not God. If you want to die a spiritual death, you start by abiding in self-righteousness. You start by building a world system around your own ideas and not God’s. You start by living your life for yourself and not for the Lord. You invent a style of religious that suits you and don’t pound your chest and say, “God be merciful to be a sinner.”

The truth is you are saved by Christ; the lie is you are saved by anything other than Christ. That lie can come in all kinds of packages: You can be saved by following these rules, doing these routines, belonging to this or that system, being good enough to outweigh your shortcomings … there’s a myriad of possible systems to counter the one truth, and they are all part of Satan’s big lie. If Satan can get somebody into a system that says they are righteous, it’s very hard to extract them from it.

A businessman well known for his ruthlessness once announced to writer Mark Twain, “Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the 10 Commandments aloud at the top.” “I have a better idea,” replied Twain. “You could stay in Boston and keep them. The religious leaders were not doing this. Are you?