You Were Dead Eph 2:1-3 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. NKJV Intro: We have before us the approach of Paul to the Ephesian Church. They came to faith like everyone before them, by the power of the Holy Spirit and calling of God. Chapter One gives us some amazing truths about the plan of God. Paul shares with us that God was, is and always will be actively involved in His creation, and that includes each of us. Chapter one covers the call of God, how God choose us before the foundation of the world; he redeemed us by the blood of Jesus, granting us forgiveness of our sins, because of His grace. All of which resounds to His glory; having saved us He gets the glory for His grace and mercy. God used the written word and the spoken word to revealed His plan of redemption. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. As a result we have our eyes opened in order to see and understand our condition and God s offer. Having demonstrated His great power over death by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, placing Him at the Father s right hand in glory. Paul is outlining for us the plan of God and the order of events. What we see in Chapter one is God s perspective; what He purposed to do and how He was going to do it. Laying the foundation for all that would follow. In chapter 2 he talks about salvation from the perspective of the individual Christian. He shows what we were before God s work in calling us to Christ, what God did for us in Christ, and what we are now to become and do as the result of that working. T.S. Chapter 1 gives us the past, present, and future of God s great plan of salvation. Chapter 2 gives us the past, present, and future of those God chose to save. I. What We Were? Life is always full of surprises and one of the most common surprises comes in the area of our health. Over and over I have witnessed people who thought they were well; felt o.k., no indication of any problem only to wake up one morning to discover that they were desperately ill. Recently a friend of my went to bed with his wife and woke up to find she had died in the night; no indication anything was wrong. I have found that people do not like to talk about the fact that we are all in the process of dying. The moment you are born you are on a journey that will end with your death. It seems to me that this knowledge should motivate a person to plan for that eventual event, but most do not. Ignorance seems to be the most popular approach to life. You would think that people would do everything possible to protect their health, research nutrition, get the rest their body needs. Of course that is not what we see, most people actually abuse their bodies and hurry the process of dying alone faster than needed. I have found this same mentality to be true in the area of our spiritual lives. The over whelming majority of people have no clue as to their spiritual condition; simply because they have no idea what God has said in His Holy Scriptures. Like our physical bodies most people neglect the spiritual. Not knowing about something does not change the reality of whatever it is we don t know. Paul makes an all encompassing statement: you were dead. So Paul adds something to what everyone already knows; not only are you going to die physically, but you are already dead 1
spiritually. Paul describes this condition by stating they were in the past living according their disobedience and sins against God. This was proof that they were dead spiritually. Man has always tried better the world, do things that would make life more enjoyable. The reality is evident when we look at history and the wars that have devastated this planet. Man s inhumanity to man is hard to comprehend, but is seen very clearly. Paul highlights what is already evident that man is not well. In fact man is dead dead so far as his relationship to God is concerned. He is dead in... transgressions and sins (v. 1), as God warned he would be in Eden before Adam s fall. Dr. Boice makes this observation: Like a spiritual corpse, a sinner is unable to make a single move toward God, think a single thought about God, or even correctly respond to God unless God is first present to bring the spiritually dead person to life, which is what Paul says he does do. In Christian doctrine the crux of this matter is in how we regard the human will. Is it free to choose God, even in its fallen state? Some Christians believe this. Or is it unable to choose God, being bound by sin, as others say? This matter has been debated at length in the long history of the Christian church, and the church has always come out on the side of what Martin Luther called the will s bondage. There have been different ways of expressing this. Luther expressed it in different terms from Augustine, Calvin in different terms from Luther. Jonathan Edwards had his own original contribution. But all were united in saying that apart from the utterly unexpected grace of God in quickening the human mind and soul, no one ever willingly turns to God or embraces the offer of salvation. Sin enslaves us. Instead of turning to God, we run from him. No other view does justice to what the Bible teaches concerning the radical nature of sin and the totality of grace in salvation. Jonathan Edwards probably saw the matter most clearly. He said that the problem is not with the will itself, since the will is simply the mind choosing what the mind deems best. The problem is with man s moral nature, which is opposed to God, and with the sinful motives that flow from that corrupt nature. Edwards declared that the will is always free; we always choose what we judge best in a given situation. But as sinners we always judge wrongly. We think God undesirable. Hence, we always resist him and reject the gospel. II. Physically Alive, Spiritually dead Jonathan Edwards was right on target when he said that our free will always choose what we believe is best. The problem is our thinking is corrupted by our sin nature and do not see things as they really are. In Romans 3:10, As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understand, there is none that seek after God. All unsaved are dead toward God, but they are alive to all kinds of wickedness. Romans 3:18, There is no fear of God before their eyes. This is where the grace of God comes into play. God through His Holy Spirit can and does change our thinking, He makes us alive to God through Christ. What changes is our view of God and spiritual condition. God allows us to see that we need him and then we freely choose to accept His gift of salvation through Christ Jesus. Our understanding being opened to the truth of the gospel. When we understand what is at stake our will does come into play as God enables us to understand what was previously hidden. What a marvelous truth and blessing from God. He willingly takes those who are His enemies and does a work in their hearts and mind to bring them to Himself. What is clear is this: sinners are trapped by the very things that are destroying them. In church we offen speak of temptations coming to us from the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are the categories of sinful activity Paul speaks of. Only it is not mere temptation that the apostle has in mind, but actual 2
captivity by these forces so that the person involved constantly moves and operates only within their influence. Here Paul mentions these same areas, the unsaved are actually enslaved to them until they are liberated by God s power. We are enslaved to the world, because apart from the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2) we are unable to perform in any other way. This is one reason we need to know our bibles, because it is in the Word of God that we are brought aware of the real battle raging all around us. The answers to life are in the Scriptures, that is why Satan does everything to keep people away from the written word. The Holy Scriptures need to be central to any church and to the preaching coming from the pulpit. Knowledge is said to be power and in this case it is the power to overcome death. While the world does not want to be brought under the power of the Bible, the church or Christ; wanting to be free from God become enslaved to their own lust. Such persons are entirely controlled by the world s thought system. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, They think as the world thinks. They take their opinions ready-made from their favourite newspaper. Their very appearance is controlled by the world and its changing fashions. They all conform; it must be done; they dare not disobey; they are afraid of the consequences. Paul says that in our transgressions, sins, and disobedience we all followed the ways of this world (v. 2). The unsaved are enslaved by their own wicked lust, but also by the devil, because, as that verse also says, they followed... the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit now at work in those who are disobedient. This tells how the devil enslaves men and women. Satan is limited to his location so he needs a system that will do the work for him. It is through the philosophy of the world that he rules us. We are often our own worst enemies. We all struggle with the flesh, whose sinful cravings we are always at work to gratify (v. 3). Flesh refers, not to our skin, but to our fallen sinful nature, embracing both our fleshly desires and our wicked thoughts. We have fleshly sins of the more obvious sort: gluttony, laziness, lust, greed. But we also have inner, intellectual sins: pride, sinful ambition, hostility to the revealed truth of God, malice, and envy. Sadly we are trapped by these things. In our fallen state, we cannot turn from sin and seek after God; we cannot even stop sinning. We are on a path of selfdestruction and most have no idea what is happening or why. III. God s Wrath While most people think the wrath of God is limited to a final judgment there is in fact more bad news for the unsaved. John3:36, He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of god abides on him. Paul has laid out clearly the condition of unsaved people. Not only are they blind and enslaved to their our lust, not only are they following the Prince of this world (Satan), but they are even now under the wrath of God. After the description of these verses we find ourselves wondering if anything worse could possibly be said about fallen men and women. It seems as if nothing more could be added. Yet Paul does add something, something so horrible, so overwhelming that the other descriptions actually fade into the background when placed next to it. He says that in our sin we are by nature objects of [God s] wrath (v. 3). Very few today want to talk about the wrath of God; love and blessing, prosperity and health are what we are hearing from many pulpits. Many struggle with the wrath of God because they do not understand the overall plan of God. It is the wrath of God that should drive us to the love of God in Christ Jesus. Speak of God s love. Speak of mercy, even justice. But not wrath, at least not if you want to be taken seriously by people living in our century. I hear the objection, but it is an example of the very bondage about which Paul has been writing. The worldly mind does not take God s wrath 3
seriously because it does not take sin seriously. Yet if sin is as bad as the Bible declares it to be, nothing is more just or reasonable than that the wrath of a holy God should deal with it. Dr. Boice states that God s wrath is consistent, controlled, and judicial. That is what makes it so frightening. The doctrine of wrath does not mean that God merely gets angry from time to time, lashes out in anger, and then forgets about it. It is rather that his wrath is an inevitable and growing opposition to all that is opposed to his righteousness. The natural result of living in this sinful state is a diminishing of our understanding, our minds become darkened; that is they are not able to discern the light (what is actually true) and God s judgment is intensified against our sin. The more we reject God the more immoral our actions become. There is the present wrath of God against any act of sin, but also a future judgment that will be void of any mercy. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, It is mine to avenge; I will repay, and again, The Lord will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:28-31). The reality is this: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked or their final judgment. God in His mercy has provided a way of escape from the spiritual death Paul has described. IV The Mercy of God It is not possible for any man to do anything that would result in his forgiveness and salvation from the wrath of a Holy and righteous God. We cannot save ourselves, we cannot save others. Each individual person is responsible for their life and eternal destiny. The state of the unsaved man or woman is humanly hopeless. But what is impossible for men is possible for God. A radical problem requires a radical remedy, and God supplies it. I guess it would be easy to get an attitude with God, shake our fist at Him and ask why He allowed things to be as they are. Timing is everything and Paul shortcuts our bad attitude with the next verse. Before we can get totally despondent Paul gives us the great news, But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions it is by grace you have been saved (vv. 4-5). Dead in transgressions? Dead in sins? Absolutely that was our situation, but God is able to do the impossible and brings dead people back to life. His great love overcomes the impossible and does the inconceivable by giving us what we don t deserve, but desperately need, spiritual life. He calls them; and opens their blind eyes and allows them to understand their condition, which they rejected before. George Whitefield, compared this to Christ s raising of Lazarus: Come, you dead, Christless, unconverted sinners, come and see the place where they laid the body of the deceased Lazarus; behold him laid out, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, locked up and stinking in a dark cave, with a great stone placed on the top of it. View him again and again; go nearer to him; be not afraid; smell him. Ah! how he stinketh.... Was he bound hand and foot with grave-clothes? So are you bound hand and foot with your corruptions: and as a stone was laid on the sepulchre, so is there a stone of unbelief upon your stupid heart. Perhaps thou hast lain in this state, not only four days, but many years, stinking in God s nostrils. And, what is still more effecting, you are as unable to raise youryself out of this loathsome, dead state, to a life of righteousness and true holiness, as ever Lazarus was to raise himself from the cave in which he lay so long. You may try the power of your own boasted free-will, and the force and energy of moral persuasion and rational arguments (which, without all doubt, have their proper place in religion); but all thy efforts, exerted with never so much vigor, will prove fruitless and abortive, till that same Jesus, who said, Take away the stone, and cried Lazarus, come forth, also quicken you. 4
Unless God moves in the heart of men there is no hope. Today, if you hear his voice do not wait, do not put it off, do not turn away, there may never be another change to respond. The Spirit of God will not always strive with men. Do not harden your heart the consequences are eternal., 5