Then were all dead??? What does it mean?

2Co_5:14  For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:

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"Then were all dead". What Christ has done for the human race is something than can constrain our hearts through love. That is the only way to be saved. The constraints of His love alone can save us. Notice the tense used by Paul..."Then WERE or Are  all dead.". In either form it is a finished act. Christ's past death for us makes it so that all men are now free to choose life. Must they have good works first? NO. That would deny what we have just read. The provision is for the sinner to accept their own death to the power of sin in Christ alone and to come to God with nothing but the acceptance of His great love for them. A realization of that love can fill them with repentance. Something definite has past that God has accepted as complete. Another expression of scripture explains...1John 2:2  "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Notice again the tense "He IS the propitiation, (payment or sacrifice) for our sins". During this probationary time, while Christ ministers as our high priest, all humanity has a right to come before the throne of God and claim by faith the inheritance of Christ in God. All can claim to have satisfied the just requirement of the law upon our sin by faith in Christ. This is not to say that all men are justified by faith now....for where there is no willing faith in this act there is only condemnation. John 3:19. This is condemnation, that light is come into the world and that men loved darkness rather than light. But Christ has crushed the power of death over us by giving us a way to choose His life and accept His victory over the flesh. The just law of God is satisfied with Christ's way and when the sinner accepts Christ's crucifixion of the power of sin, he acknowledges that he too can be freed by that death of Christ from the power of sin in his own life. He serves in the newness of the Spirit. Millions professing Christ are following Him  in just the wrong manner that pagans follow their false works. Many Christians think that they must destroy the power of sin, as He did, by their own works of denial or sacrifice. But the true believer in scripture recognizes the futility in thinking that we can earn our own way. It must be in accepting what only Christ has accomplished for fallen man that we enter into living His life and denying the life of sin. Anything else is Babylonian confusion which we are adjured to abandon by the constraints of His love. Dear reader, lay down your own yoke and take the yoke with Christ, who alone is able and willing to bear the weight with you, that you cannot in your own strength endure.