Sermon from Pixley UB

In the first part of Ephesians 1, Paul praised God for the greatness of His mercy to us in Jesus Christ. In the second part of chapter 1, he interceded with God to enlighten our eyes to appreciate, to understand, to come to a greater comprehension of God’s mercy to us in Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 Paul now sets the mercy of God against the backdrop of our predicament. In Ephesians 2, verses 1-3 in particular, Paul is going to tell us in the starkest terms the truth about humanity – the truth about us. He will describe to us the state of our hearts, the state of ourselves apart from Christ, apart from His grace, apart from His mercy as human beings in this fallen world – and it’s not a pretty picture.

Paul isn’t telling us this to depress us. The Apostle Paul wants us first of all to be realistic about human nature. All around us today, even in this world of trouble, people continue to say that the answer to the problems of this world is found in the human heart. The Apostle Paul wants to say to us, ‘No, my friends. All of the problems in this fallen world are found in the human heart, but the answer is not found there, but somewhere else.’ And it is that ‘somewhere else’ from which we get our Christian optimism even in the midst of this dark and depressing, sinful world, and that’s what Paul wants to point us to this day.

The Apostle Paul has a bleak but realistic message to share with us in this great passage, and the message is this: The natural state of all human beings is spiritual death. Apart from the mercy of God, apart from the grace of God shed abroad in our hearts by Jesus Christ received by faith, we are spiritually dead.

Now what does Paul mean by that when he says that we’re spiritually dead? This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all Christian doctrines to believe because the world tells us differently and our own experience tells us differently. We say, “What do you mean I’m dead? I am very much alive. I walk, I speak, I make choices. I am alive.” And the Apostle Paul says to you, ‘No, you are dead.’ What does he mean by that? Well, the Apostle Paul means a number of things.

First of all, when Paul says that you are dead he means that you are in a state of spiritual alienation from God. Life is communion with God, and apart from communion with God there is no real life. You can be breathing, you can be doing what you want to do, you can be choosing what you want to do, and yet, if you are a human being created in the image of God and you are not in saving fellowship with the God who created you for eternal fellowship with Himself, you are not experiencing life. Jesus came to give life, not because we already had it, but because we had forfeited it in our sin. And so the Apostle is saying, “Here is the status of all humanity apart from the grace of Christ: spiritual alienation from God, and that means to be dead even if we’re walking and breathing and choosing and saying and doing.” It means spiritual death.

But the Apostle Paul explains here also this state of death has come from, and notice what he says: our transgressions and sins. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Sin is the root of this spiritual death. This death has been brought about by sin, and Paul uses this term transgression indicating a transgression against the law of God, going across a boundary that God has set; but he also uses that term sin, which means to miss the mark, in which Paul’s emphasis is not just that we missed the goal by an itty-bitty bit like we miss the bull’s eye on a target practicing site, but he means that we failed to meet the purpose for which God created us. It’s a horrible thing, and the Apostle Paul says this is the source of the spiritual death in which all humanity apart from Christ finds itself. This alienation Paul calls death. We are dead.

Now this is utterly alien to what the world tells us about ourselves as humans. The world tells us that we are basically good and if we just make ourselves determined we can do anything. And in the realm of salvation those two propositions are utterly lethal. And the Apostle Paul is there to tell us that with regard to our salvation there is no help in us, there is no good in us, that can make us right with God. And furthermore, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. Now, that’s vitally important for us to hear. Paul understands that what he is saying is out of step with the world of his day even as it is out of step with the world today.

So many people tell us, “Here is the Christian message: ‘Be confident with yourself. You can do it.’ That’s the Christian message,” they say. And the Apostle Paul says, “Here’s the beginning of the Christian message: you are dead.” Now, you couldn’t find a more complete opposite to what we often hear pawned off as Christianity today and the truth, than what Paul says here.

So, the first thing Paul says is this: Everybody – everybody – apart from Christ is in this condition. Everybody apart from Christ is dead, spiritually dead. Everybody.

You know, maybe you grew up looking at those “B” horror movies like Night of the Living Dead, in which zombies come back and terrorize the community, but the Apostle Paul is saying that humanity apart from Christ is really living the life of the living dead. We think we have life. We think that we are alive, and yet we are dead. And the Apostle Paul is asserting here when he says (notice in verse 1), “You were dead...” and then again in verse 3 “...Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath....” He is asserting that the spiritual condition of spiritual death is universal. Every human being apart from Christ is in this spiritual condition.

Now, you may have met unbelievers who are delightful to be with. They are alive intellectually, they are smart, they’re brilliant, they’re fun. They may be kind, they may be generous, and yet the Apostle Paul is saying no matter how kind and smart and intelligent a person is, apart from Christ that person is spiritually dead. Because whatever (Paul says elsewhere) “...whatever is not from faith is sin.” Those who are living not for the glory of their Creator, no matter what good things they are doing, are not producing those good things from life deep in the depths of their soul, and so the Apostle Paul is speaking of a predicament that is universal here. Everyone is dead in sin.

Secondly, he goes on to say this: We are not only dead in sin, we are in active rebellion against God. Look at verse 1: “...your transgressions and sins.” He speaks of breaking God’s law and missing the point, missing the mark, missing the goal, the purpose for which we have been made. Look at verse 2: “...in which you used to live....” That’s a term expresses the whole tendency of our lives. “You live in the light” is a way of saying that you follow the truth, but when you say that you live in darkness, it’s a way of expressing that the whole of your life is bent toward the darkness, toward that which is not God’s will. And so he goes on to say in verse 3, “...all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and follow its desires and thoughts....” Paul is saying that our spiritual condition of deadness is not just some theoretical thing that preachers speak about in order to manipulate you to respond to their message, but it is something that is evidenced in our outward life. It can be seen in our actions and in our choices, and the Apostle Paul says this: What we see then, apart from Christ, is that men and women rebel against God. They live lives which are evidenced by living in the “cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts.” They are lives of active rebellion against God.

One of the things that is so striking about what Paul says here is that we live in a generation that tells us if you desire to do it, it could not possibly be wrong. And the Apostle Paul is saying “My friend, that is an evidence that you are spiritually dead when you think that way.” When you think that if you desire it, it must be good, it must be something that adds to your life, and therefore no one can tell you that you can’t do what you desire, you are simply giving irrefutable proof to the truth that you are spiritually dead. Because these desires, though they may be alive and burning in us, these desires which are according to the flesh are not desires that are begotten of life, but they are begotten of death and they lead to death. And the Apostle Paul says there’s your proof. And this generation around you says ‘We will do what we want to do, and it is wrong for anyone to tell us that we can’t do what we want to do.’ They are simply proving the Apostle Paul’s point.

But he’s not done. He goes on to say, thirdly, and you’ll see this especially in verse 2, that the lives of those who are apart from Christ reflect the dominion not of God, not of life, but of what? The world, the flesh, and the devil. The lives of those who are apart from Christ reflect the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Listen to Paul’s words:

In other words, the Apostle Paul is saying that those who are spiritually dead are dominated and directed by the urgings and the desires and the instincts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. They’re not getting their marching orders from God; they’re getting their marching orders from the world, from the sinful desires of the flesh, and from Satan himself. This is the spiritual condition in which everyone apart from Jesus Christ finds him- or herself.

IV. We are totally unable to help ourselves.

And Paul’s still not done with the bad news. He goes on to say that we are totally unable to do anything about this situation. We are absolutely enslaved. We have been captivated by this dominion, this direction, these influences of the world and the flesh and the devil. Notice again those stark words: “You were dead in your transgressions and sins...”; you "...lived … gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” The Apostle Paul is saying that we are in a state in which we cannot rescue ourselves, because we like this dominion. We like to indulge these desires.

In a world in which people are controlled by pleasure, not pain, we like being dominated by the world, the flesh, and the devil. We don’t sense any need for liberation, and we are in fact spiritually dead to all that is really alive. This is what we call, for shorthand, the doctrine of total depravity; that is, that every part of every human being apart from the saving and restraining grace of God, is morally corrupt. We are corrupt in our mind, in our will, and in our affections. We don’t think straight about these spiritual things. We don’t long “straight” about these spiritual things ... we don’t desire “straight”...our desires are twisted. And we don’t will “straight.” We don’t choose the right thing, we don’t want to do the right thing, we are not inclined to the right thing. It’s not that the Apostle Paul is saying that we are in God’s spiritual doghouse; the Apostle Paul is saying ‘No, you’re in the morgue!’ You’re not in the doghouse. There’s nothing that you can do to make up for this and you wouldn’t even if you could, apart from the grace of Christ. You are dead in trespasses and sin.

This is the doctrine of total depravity, and the importance of it is this: The Apostle Paul is saying that the answer to our spiritual condition is not in any way found in ourselves. The source of our redemption cannot in any way come from ourselves; it must come from somewhere else because the source of our problems comes from ourselves.

I know that that is a pessimistic estimation of human beings, but the only way that you can get hope in the Scriptures is not to look deep within your own heart, but to get out of those hearts and out of the labyrinth of sin there and look up to God in His saving faith and grace and mercy and love. And that’s what the Apostle Paul is doing. He’s painting a grim picture, a true picture, a realistic picture, of the human predicament.

V. We are justly under the judgment of God.

We are dead in sins. And Paul’s still not done. He says, and you’ll notice it again in verse 3, that we are “...by nature objects of wrath....” In other words, we are justly under the judgment of God. He is right to condemn us in our sins.

The human condition is universal no one escapes. It isn't a matter of race or gender, political persuasion or economic status. There is no escape whatsoever--except two little words: "But God. . . ."

Verse 4 begins: “But because of his great love for us, God …” That is the sudden glimmer of hope that breaks in upon us in the next verse, I didn't want to close this message without giving you a peek into the next verse, to see that while, in our natural state, we are dead and without hope, we have good news that begins with two words: "But … God. . . ."

Paul knows it is important that we first understand the depths from which we have come, the condition of death from which we need to be released. That condition is still present in our Christian lives whenever we choose not to act upon the available resources of Jesus Christ within us. But the non-Christian literally has no hope without God. This knowledge should motivate us to praise God and to share Christ with those who are not just dying, but are dead apart from Him.

Those two words, "But God. . ." echo in our ears and bring us hope of a wonderful life beyond this condition of death into which we were born. Yes, we are children of wrath. Yes, we are dead in our transgressions and sins. But God!



	"The Truth about Us"
	Ephesians 2:1-3
	In the first part of Ephesians 1, Paul praised God for the greatness of His mercy to us in Jesus Christ. In the second part of chapter 1, he interceded with God to enlighten our eyes to appreciate, to understand, to come to a greater comprehension of God’s mercy to us in Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 Paul now sets the mercy of God against the backdrop of our predicament. In Ephesians 2, verses 1-3 in particular, Paul is going to tell us in the starkest terms the truth about humanity – the truth about us. He will describe to us the state of our hearts, the state of ourselves apart from Christ, apart from His grace, apart from His mercy as human beings in this fallen world – and it’s not a pretty picture. Paul isn’t telling us this to depress us. The Apostle Paul wants us first of all to be realistic about human nature. All around us today, even in this world of trouble, people continue to say that the answer to the problems of this world is found in the human heart. The Apostle Paul wants to say to us, ‘No, my friends. All of the problems in this fallen world are found in the human heart, but the answer is not found there, but somewhere else.’ And it is that ‘somewhere else’ from which we get our Christian optimism even in the midst of this dark and depressing, sinful world, and that’s what Paul wants to point us to this day. I. We are dead in sin. The Apostle Paul has a bleak but realistic message to share with us in this great passage, and the message is this: The natural state of all human beings is spiritual death. Apart from the mercy of God, apart from the grace of God shed abroad in our hearts by Jesus Christ received by faith, we are spiritually dead. Now what does Paul mean by that when he says that we’re spiritually dead? This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all Christian doctrines to believe because the world tells us differently and our own experience tells us differently. We say, “What do you mean I’m dead? I am very much alive. I walk, I speak, I make choices. I am alive.” And the Apostle Paul says to you, ‘No, you are dead.’ What does he mean by that? Well, the Apostle Paul means a number of things. First of all, when Paul says that you are dead he means that you are in a state of spiritual alienation from God. Life is communion with God, and apart from communion with God there is no real life. You can be breathing, you can be doing what you want to do, you can be choosing what you want to do, and yet, if you are a human being created in the image of God and you are not in saving fellowship with the God who created you for eternal fellowship with Himself, you are not experiencing life. Jesus came to give life, not because we already had it, but because we had forfeited it in our sin. And so the Apostle is saying, “Here is the status of all humanity apart from the grace of Christ: spiritual alienation from God, and that means to be dead even if we’re walking and breathing and choosing and saying and doing.” It means spiritual death. But the Apostle Paul explains here also this state of death has come from, and notice what he says: our transgressions and sins. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Sin is the root of this spiritual death. This death has been brought about by sin, and Paul uses this term transgression indicating a transgression against the law of God, going across a boundary that God has set; but he also uses that term sin, which means to miss the mark, in which Paul’s emphasis is not just that we missed the goal by an itty-bitty bit like we miss the bull’s eye on a target practicing site, but he means that we failed to meet the purpose for which God created us. It’s a horrible thing, and the Apostle Paul says this is the source of the spiritual death in which all humanity apart from Christ finds itself. This alienation Paul calls death. We are dead. Now this is utterly alien to what the world tells us about ourselves as humans. The world tells us that we are basically good and if we just make ourselves determined we can do anything. And in the realm of salvation those two propositions are utterly lethal. And the Apostle Paul is there to tell us that with regard to our salvation there is no help in us, there is no good in us, that can make us right with God. And furthermore, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. Now, that’s vitally important for us to hear. Paul understands that what he is saying is out of step with the world of his day even as it is out of step with the world today. So many people tell us, “Here is the Christian message: ‘Be confident with yourself. You can do it.’ That’s the Christian message,” they say. And the Apostle Paul says, “Here’s the beginning of the Christian message: you are dead.” Now, you couldn’t find a more complete opposite to what we often hear pawned off as Christianity today and the truth, than what Paul says here. So, the first thing Paul says is this: Everybody – everybody – apart from Christ is in this condition. Everybody apart from Christ is dead, spiritually dead. Everybody. You know, maybe you grew up looking at those “B” horror movies like Night of the Living Dead, in which zombies come back and terrorize the community, but the Apostle Paul is saying that humanity apart from Christ is really living the life of the living dead. We think we have life. We think that we are alive, and yet we are dead. And the Apostle Paul is asserting here when he says (notice in verse 1), “You were dead...” and then again in verse 3 “...Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath....” He is asserting that the spiritual condition of spiritual death is universal. Every human being apart from Christ is in this spiritual condition. Now, you may have met unbelievers who are delightful to be with. They are alive intellectually, they are smart, they’re brilliant, they’re fun. They may be kind, they may be generous, and yet the Apostle Paul is saying no matter how kind and smart and intelligent a person is, apart from Christ that person is spiritually dead. Because whatever (Paul says elsewhere) “...whatever is not from faith is sin.” Those who are living not for the glory of their Creator, no matter what good things they are doing, are not producing those good things from life deep in the depths of their soul, and so the Apostle Paul is speaking of a predicament that is universal here. Everyone is dead in sin. II. We are in active rebellion against God. Secondly, he goes on to say this: We are not only dead in sin, we are in active rebellion against God. Look at verse 1: “...your transgressions and sins.” He speaks of breaking God’s law and missing the point, missing the mark, missing the goal, the purpose for which we have been made. Look at verse 2: “...in which you used to live....” That’s a term expresses the whole tendency of our lives. “You live in the light” is a way of saying that you follow the truth, but when you say that you live in darkness, it’s a way of expressing that the whole of your life is bent toward the darkness, toward that which is not God’s will. And so he goes on to say in verse 3, “...all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and follow its desires and thoughts....” Paul is saying that our spiritual condition of deadness is not just some theoretical thing that preachers speak about in order to manipulate you to respond to their message, but it is something that is evidenced in our outward life. It can be seen in our actions and in our choices, and the Apostle Paul says this: What we see then, apart from Christ, is that men and women rebel against God. They live lives which are evidenced by living in the “cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts.” They are lives of active rebellion against God. One of the things that is so striking about what Paul says here is that we live in a generation that tells us if you desire to do it, it could not possibly be wrong. And the Apostle Paul is saying “My friend, that is an evidence that you are spiritually dead when you think that way.” When you think that if you desire it, it must be good, it must be something that adds to your life, and therefore no one can tell you that you can’t do what you desire, you are simply giving irrefutable proof to the truth that you are spiritually dead. Because these desires, though they may be alive and burning in us, these desires which are according to the flesh are not desires that are begotten of life, but they are begotten of death and they lead to death. And the Apostle Paul says there’s your proof. And this generation around you says ‘We will do what we want to do, and it is wrong for anyone to tell us that we can’t do what we want to do.’ They are simply proving the Apostle Paul’s point. III. The spiritually dead are dominated by the world. But he’s not done. He goes on to say, thirdly, and you’ll see this especially in verse 2, that the lives of those who are apart from Christ reflect the dominion not of God, not of life, but of what? The world, the flesh, and the devil. The lives of those who are apart from Christ reflect the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Listen to Paul’s words: “…you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient....” In other words, the Apostle Paul is saying that those who are spiritually dead are dominated and directed by the urgings and the desires and the instincts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. They’re not getting their marching orders from God; they’re getting their marching orders from the world, from the sinful desires of the flesh, and from Satan himself. This is the spiritual condition in which everyone apart from Jesus Christ finds him- or herself. IV. We are totally unable to help ourselves. And Paul’s still not done with the bad news. He goes on to say that we are totally unable to do anything about this situation. We are absolutely enslaved. We have been captivated by this dominion, this direction, these influences of the world and the flesh and the devil. Notice again those stark words: “You were dead in your transgressions and sins...”; you "...lived … gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” The Apostle Paul is saying that we are in a state in which we cannot rescue ourselves, because we like this dominion. We like to indulge these desires. In a world in which people are controlled by pleasure, not pain, we like being dominated by the world, the flesh, and the devil. We don’t sense any need for liberation, and we are in fact spiritually dead to all that is really alive. This is what we call, for shorthand, the doctrine of total depravity; that is, that every part of every human being apart from the saving and restraining grace of God, is morally corrupt. We are corrupt in our mind, in our will, and in our affections. We don’t think straight about these spiritual things. We don’t long “straight” about these spiritual things ... we don’t desire “straight”...our desires are twisted. And we don’t will “straight.” We don’t choose the right thing, we don’t want to do the right thing, we are not inclined to the right thing. It’s not that the Apostle Paul is saying that we are in God’s spiritual doghouse; the Apostle Paul is saying ‘No, you’re in the morgue!’ You’re not in the doghouse. There’s nothing that you can do to make up for this and you wouldn’t even if you could, apart from the grace of Christ. You are dead in trespasses and sin. This is the doctrine of total depravity, and the importance of it is this: The Apostle Paul is saying that the answer to our spiritual condition is not in any way found in ourselves. The source of our redemption cannot in any way come from ourselves; it must come from somewhere else because the source of our problems comes from ourselves. I know that that is a pessimistic estimation of human beings, but the only way that you can get hope in the Scriptures is not to look deep within your own heart, but to get out of those hearts and out of the labyrinth of sin there and look up to God in His saving faith and grace and mercy and love. And that’s what the Apostle Paul is doing. He’s painting a grim picture, a true picture, a realistic picture, of the human predicament. V. We are justly under the judgment of God. We are dead in sins. And Paul’s still not done. He says, and you’ll notice it again in verse 3, that we are “...by nature objects of wrath....” In other words, we are justly under the judgment of God. He is right to condemn us in our sins. The human condition is universal no one escapes. It isn't a matter of race or gender, political persuasion or economic status. There is no escape whatsoever--except two little words: "But God. . . ." Verse 4 begins: “But because of his great love for us, God …” That is the sudden glimmer of hope that breaks in upon us in the next verse, I didn't want to close this message without giving you a peek into the next verse, to see that while, in our natural state, we are dead and without hope, we have good news that begins with two words: "But … God. . . ." Paul knows it is important that we first understand the depths from which we have come, the condition of death from which we need to be released. That condition is still present in our Christian lives whenever we choose not to act upon the available resources of Jesus Christ within us. But the non-Christian literally has no hope without God. This knowledge should motivate us to praise God and to share Christ with those who are not just dying, but are dead apart from Him. Those two words, "But God. . ." echo in our ears and bring us hope of a wonderful life beyond this condition of death into which we were born. Yes, we are children of wrath. Yes, we are dead in our transgressions and sins. But God!