People who worship God are under the covering or veil of scripture and are not aware of the truth that God does not exist at all. These are said to be dead to the truth. The revealing of this truth to them is termed the first death. There are several occurrences where this death is referred to in the scriptures as it is a fairly common state for the general public to be in. One such example is found in Matthew 8:21 as follows.
M't:8:21: And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
M't:8:22: But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.
By Jesus saying “let the dead bury their dead” we are given an insight into what being dead means. In truth dead people can’t bury other dead people so we know that something else is indicated by this statement. The dead who do the burying are those who believe in the covering or veil of miracles and all manner of god worship and not the truth.
Jesus himself was counted as dead even whilst he was living. We see this in the verse from Revelations 1:5 below in which we learn that Jesus is the first born of the dead.
Re:1:5: And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,
And the same thoughts are expressed in Colossians as follows.
Col:1:18: And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
Now we also see these insinuations when Jesus is preaching to the populous as in John 5:25
Joh:5:25: Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
This verse is referring to the common people who were under the Jewish religion at the time. Only living people can hear of course and the reference to the dead hearing is calling on this spiritual metaphor to describe people who are dead to the truth. Other indicators can be found to support this notion. We cite verses from 1Peter 4:5
1Pe:4:5: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
1Pe:4:6: For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
The First death therefore is to understand that there are no such things as gods. This spiritual death is what is experienced by the Baptism
as being the death that people go through in order to be cleansed of sin.
Ro:6:3: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Ro:6:4: Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Ro:6:5: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: