Are the dead dead?

 

 Matthew 22:31-33

English Standard Version

31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his (Jesus's) teaching.

Jesus teaches that those who know God live on through out eternity even when we consider them to be dead. 

 

John 11:25-26

English Standard Version

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

 

In other words, we who know Jesus don't actually die.   The Bible teaches that only our bodies die. 

 

James 2:26

English Standard Version

...the body apart from the spirit is dead...

But those who have died and know Christ have never been more alive.  People on earth whose bodies are alive may actually be spiritually dead.   

If they are spiritually separated from God's Holy Spirit they spiritually dead.  

When the human spirit leaves the human body that body becomes dead.  When the human spirit is separated from God's Holy Spirit, they are spiritually dead right here while alive on earth. If you physically die in that condition, that condition becomes eternal, but it doesn't have to be. 

Romans 10:13

English Standard Version

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) will be saved.”

Jesus can hear you.  Call out for His help right now as Lord (or Boss of your life) in faith, and He promises to help you.  Turn your life completely over to Him.  That makes all the difference.  He can make you Spiritually alive!  His death for us removes the separation between our spirit and God's Holy Spirit!

Romans 8:1-11

English Standard Version

 

8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 

4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 

6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 

7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 

8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.