A Christian is said to be "dead to sin" (Rom. 6.2,7,11). Yet Christian still sin from time to time, because the Christian does not recognize that he is dead to sin or to abide in this fact. Nobody thinks a Christian is incapable of sinning, for as long as we still have these bodies of flesh and blood there is still the possibility, but there is not the possibility of the believer refusing Christ, because the reason a person is a Christian is because his choice was an authentic one unto eternity, fulfilling the condition to receive eternal life. So the sinner who is spiritually dead doesn't mean he is incapable of receiving what Jesus did on the cross. It goes both ways. There is no absolute sense in these terms. Why should a spiritual death to God be taken in an absolute sense, while the Christian's being dead to sin is not? There is no biblical reason for doing so.

Eph. 5.14 commands, "Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." You are commanded to arise from the dead, hear the gospel and respond to it. Paul seems to be paraphrasing Is. 60.1-2: "Arise, shine; for thy light is come...gross darkness is over the people." Have any Calvinists every addressed this verse? We must conclude likening spiritual death to physical death is erroneous, for in such an analogy a dead man can't refuse God, but obviously some people do.