Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States
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Would you please elaborate on "spiritual death, which is separation from God"?  What is meant by separation from God?

Adam was created a physical and spiritual being able to walk with God. Adam and Eve could have lived forever in this state of divine fellowship. However, by disobeying God they were immediately separated
from God; and thus died a spiritual death. Since then, all of their offspring are born spiritually dead and destined to die physically after a certain span of lifetime.

St. Paul designates all humans since Adam and Eve to be spiritually dead and "children of disobedience" (Eph 2:1-3). We are born into a world of spiritual darkness and disobedience; and  no longer bear the mark of His likeness that was bestowed upon Adam. Our relationship with God was a distant, fear-filled  one.. We became separated from Him, slaves to sin, and strangers. But God the Father, in His great love and mercy, has expressed His care for the spiritually dead; sending the Logos in the form of a man to earth from the power and glory of the heavenly places, to offer His life to the life of Adam's offspring, to us. God has delivered us, and has given us the resurrected life of His Son Jesus. God reconciled with us, and tore the veil that separated us from Him.

Accordingly, we are not spiritually dead or separated from God. The believers' identity is no longer in Adam, but in Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ and get baptized; we pass from death to life, becoming a new creation, linked with the life of our Lord. St. Paul describes our death and life in Christ saying:
"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. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him" (Rom 6:4-8).  
Unless we discipline ourselves to become spiritual beings, we will remain fruitless, purposeless in life, and separated from God. St. Paul says, "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, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Rom 8:5-6).
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