The Mirror Test

In the past, when somebody died people conducted certain tests to make sure those folks were really dead because they didn’t have the clinical tools available to them that we have today. People may appear to be dead when in reality they are in a coma and unable to respond. To make sure, one of the tests used was the mirror test.

Dead, or Just ‘Sleeping?’

Tests like the mirror test have been used for millennia to be sure someone was dead rather than being in a coma. For instance, some people used to place a string on the wrist of someone recently ‘departed’ and buried. That string was then brought up out of the casket and through the earth and was attached to a bell at the gravesite. When this was done people were paid to sit in the graveyard at night so they could hear the bell ringing if the ‘dead’ started to pull the string (hence the term graveyard shift).

Many cultures used to ‘bury’ the dead by placing them on elevated platforms, one of the reasons being that the person could climb down from the platform if they were still alive. There’s the old fashioned wake, and then we have the mirror test, which was widely used to determine if there was breath left in the body. A mirror was held up to the nose and mouth, and if fog formed on it then there was till breath left in the body –the person was still alive!

What does the mirror test have to do with spiritual things? Quite a bit, actually.

Death To Self Through Life in the Spirit

When we hear the gospel and believe it by committing ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Bible explains that we have, in essence, died to our old, sinful nature (termed the flesh).

2 Cor 5:14-15

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; 15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. NKJV

In place of our old self (our fleshly and self-centered nature) we have been given the life of Jesus. God places His Spirit within us as the source of our new found life in Christ and, even though we make mistakes, the Spirit of God leads us further into our new relationship with God through Christ.

Rom 8:9-11

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  NKJV

We have become dead to the demands of the old nature through the new nature of Christ Who now lives within us! The question then is, “Are we really dead?”

This is Part One of a multi-part series. Keep watch for the next installment!