No one is arguing that this is physical death. We are saying that a man's spirit is dead. Only God can make a man's spirit become alive.
Paul is literally talking about the human spirit in Ephesians 2:1.
Now, please show where Paul is making an analogy or allegory in this passage. So far you have avoided the issue.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
This describes spiritual live more than applying physical death to Spiritual death. If you allow, Scripture will provide its own interpretation.
The difference is one's spirit is dead while the other's spirit has been made alive by God.
God, by his sovereign grace, chose to give life to one spirit while leaving the other spirit dead in trespasses and sin.
It is all God.
I believe the dead analogy of some here goes back to a simplified and watered down version of the gospel where every aspect falls within a narrow and humanistic view of salvation. In terms of the Bible, I believe we are (or should be) dealing with a more Christ-centered understanding of Life and death, Light and darkness.
Yes apart from Christ, all men are dead in their trespasses and sins. (This is the equal footing.) Every human spirit is dead in sin.
God must animate the human spirit, which died at the fall. God does this solely by His choice according to His will by His grace. No human effort can ever accomplish it.
God determines who is in Christ and who isn't. God determined that before the foundation of the world.
I fail to grasp the reason you attribute to the spirit a quality of life or death founded in the physical. I do not understand why it is necessary to add to a definition provided in Scripture. It seems that if it were best to speak of the lost as if they were corpses God would have done so. But instead He defined spiritual life and spiritual death in relation to Christ (not being made alive so that you can believe in Christ but that believing in Christ you are made alive).
No. You do not believe first. You have the process backward.
1) God makes me alive.
2) I believe. (Why do I believe? Because God gives me the gift of faith.)
I'm going to say my communication skills are failing me (although JonC seems to be picking up what i'm putting down :) )
Paul doesn't use an analogy. He states the condition that we are in, Dead to God. *WE* (People in this thread and another thread) have been comparing a physically dead person with a Spiritually dead person and ascribing similarities..."A corpse cannot reach for a life preserver". A dead man "cannot hear". A Dead man "Cannot walk", etc. TRUE, a physically dead person cannot do any of those things. But what can a Spiritually dead person do? What can he not do? You guys have taken the analogy too far in that you have not stuck with how the Bible characterizes a SPIRITUALLY dead person...see my list above.
I might even go as far as to say Paul wasn't giving an analogy at all, YOU guys are. Paul was relaying spiritual information about what it means to be spiritually dead. You are adding to the intended meaning of the text when you say things like "Dead men cannot reach for a life preserver."