Declared Legally Dead as He Sat Before the Judge   

The title above was also the title of an article published in the New York Times on October 11, 2013.  Written by John Schwartz, it tells about a man named Donald Miller Jr., a man who was declared legally dead in 1994.  He had vanished from his home eight years earlier.  Miller, age 61, told Hancock County Probate Court Judge Allan Davis that he disappeared in the 1980s because he was an alcoholic and had lost his job.  His ex-wife claimed that he had vanished because he owed $26,000 in overdue child support payments. 

Miller lived in Florida and Georgia before returning to Ohio around 2005.  He said his parents told him about his “death” when he came back to the state.  So Miller went to court to ask the Probate Judge to reverse the 1994 ruling that declared him legally dead.  He wanted to obtain a driver’s license and reinstate his Social Security number.

But Judge Davis turned down his request, citing a three-year limit for changing a death ruling.  He admitted that such was a “strange, strange situation,” and “I don't know where that leaves you, but you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned.”

The apostle Paul wrote about something similar in Ephesians 2:1-2.  Speaking of the condition of those in Ephesus before God saved them, he wrote, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air.”

Before coming to Christ for salvation, all of us were dead in our transgressions and sins.  We were separated from God (Isaiah 59:1-2), under the condemnation of death (Romans 6:23), and completely unable to resurrect ourselves!

Despite our sins, however, God loves us and has provided the way for us to eternal life.

In Ephesians 2:4-7, Paul wrote: “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us ALIVE with Christ even when we were DEAD in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Because of His great love for us, God sent His only Son to die on the cross for our sins (John 3:16).  Jesus “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). 

Jesus suffered and paid the penalty of death so that you and I can have eternal life!  According to 1 Thessalonians 5:10, “He died for us so that . . . we may live together with Him.”

Paul explained to Christians in Rome how God had raised them up: “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

The grace of God really is amazing!  And through His grace and the death of His Son, we are delivered from death into life.  Life that is abundant, and life that is eternal.