AN ANALOGY OF AN ANALOGY?

Over and over I hear Calvinist preachers use the story of the death of Lazarus in John 11 as a spiritual analogy for salvation.

They say, "We are dead in our sins - dead like Lazarus. And when you are dead, there is nothing you can do to be born again. You lie there and wait. And Jesus comes to those whom God has elected and calls them from their spiritual death into new life just as Jesus called Lazarus forth from the tomb."

There are several problems here, but one is that this leaves the Calvinist layering one analogy on top of another analogy. 

Jesus says unbelievers are dead, yes, but He is speaking figuratively. 

In Luke 9:60, Jesus says, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”

This is a case of figuratively dead people being left to bury people who are literally dead.

And in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father proclaims his joy at having his son back saying, "This son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found."

The son in that story separates himself from the father who loved him and the father sees it as a figurative death. 

(I rarely hear a Calvinist preach on the Prodigal Son story, but when they do, they typically bring their assumption that this son represents an elect person because he already belonged to the father.)

If you are determined to read the Lazarus story as a spiritual analogy, the most logical parallel is not being born again to salvation, but rather the physical resurrection of believers to eternal life.

THAT has the advantage of making sense of the context of the story and makes it an analogy of a physical reality rather than an analogy of an analogy.  

P.S. Another issue for Calvinists intent on using Lazarus to represent salvation: Death is not the only analogy Jesus used in speaking of the spiritual state of the unbeliever. He also used "illness": “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32)