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The Five Stages of Spiritual Growth
Stage 1:
In the first stage, a person is spiritually dead, meaning that he or she has not been born again. This stage
is characterized by the word unbelief. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1 that we were all dead in our
trespasses and sins. Without Christ, we are separated from God, who is life, so when we are separated
from Him, we will eventually die a physical death. But this is not all. Without Christ, we are dead
spiritually as well. Revelation 20:14 speaks of the second death, which will be experienced by all who
enter eternity without receiving Christ. When we accept the good news – salvation through Christ – we
are saved. At the moment of salvation, we are born again. (John 3:3-5)

A lost person is called a natural person in Scripture.

I Corinthians 2:14-16 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually
discerned. 15The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16“For who has
understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

A dead person cannot understand the Bible, because he has no spiritual life in him. He is dead in his
sins. This verse says that a spiritual truth is discerned by a person’s mind given new life by the Holy
Spirit. Does this mean that a person cannot put his faith in Christ when he hears the Gospel by an act of
his free will? Some theologians say that man is so dead that he cannot have faith in Christ unless God
gives him that faith. If he is elect, then God will give him the faith. If he is not elect, then the gift of faith
is withheld. They use Eph. 2: 8-9 and claim that the gift of God is the faith to believe. However, a
proper exegesis of this passage reveals to us that the “gift of God” is the gift of salvation, not faith.
Norman Geisler describes what it means to be spiritually dead.

Even after Adam sinned, becoming spiritually dead (Genesis 2:17) and a sinner by nature (Eph. 2:3),
he was not so completely depraved that he could neither hear the voice of God nor make a free
response. For “The Lord God called unto the man, ‘where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in
the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid” (Genesis 3:9-10). God's image in Adam
was effaced by the fall but not erased. It was marred but not destroyed. Indeed, the image of God
(which includes free will) is still in human beings. This is why murder (Genesis 9:6) and even cursing
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of other people “who have been made in the likeness of God” are sins (James 3:9)
When the Bible says a lost person is dead, it is using a figure of speech to describe the fallen state of a
man. In other places, it is depicted as sickness. That description does not imply a person with the ability
to hear or respond to God (Matt. 9:12). Man is sin sick. It implies that man’s depravity was a corruption
of his mind, not its destruction. The image of God in fallen humans remained intact after the fall. Even
unsaved people are said to be created in God’s image (Gen 9;6). The image is marred by not obliterated
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by sin (James 3:9). Man continues to have a free will to respond to God’s call or to reject His call, and
every person will be held accountable for his own decisions.

37 https://discipleship.org/blog/the-5-stages-of-growth-for-disciples/
38 Norman Geisler, Chosen but Free, Bethany House Publishers, p. 45.
39 Ibid, p. 63

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