Intro: I logged onto the internet on my wife’s computer Friday to find the threes company star Suzanne Somers was on the Oprah Winfrey show. She was talking to Oprah and her audience about how hormone replacement therapy had helped here defeat the monster of menopause. If I remember correctly she said that if more people were hormonally balanced the world would be a better place.
What is really wrong with her thinking? It is like attacking wrinkles with a facelift, belly fat with liposuction, a child’s anger and lack of attention with pills. It is attacking the symptoms and not the underlying situation.
What we find in Ephesians 2 is a continuation of Paul’s principles of our identity. Instead of attacking the symptoms in Paul’s straight forward way he goes right to the condition that has caused mans present situation. Statistics say that one in one die. There is no treatment that humans have come up with that can stop this condition.
Paul had just finished talking about the power of God in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and His ascension into heaven. We see why that power has to be supernaturally applied to your life and mine.
I. The situation
A) Dead in trespasses and sin (2.1)
This condition is not something that suddenly afflicts us as people. Since the fall of man every person born is dead spiritually. There is a disconnect from God that cannot be repaired by man. If you have not placed you faith, you confidence, your trust in Jesus you are lifeless toward God. What is the cause of the disconnect between God and man? Sin! God told Adam and Eve in Genesis in the day you eat of it you will die. However they both lived for many years after their first disobedience. They were now disconnected from God. Here is a news flash we are not sinners because we sin! We sin because we are born sinners. We come into the world spiritually disconnected. (Don’t believe me fill a room with 2 to 5 year olds place toys in the mix and give it ten minutes. You will believe in the sinful nature of man)
What you find Paul saying is that those dead to God are dominated by other sources.
1) Dominated by the world system
“In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world.” 2.2
The word walked here means to make ones way or to progress. It is Probably Paul using a Hebrew way of saying to live. If you are dead to God you live for this world only.
If you are dominated by the world you thinking and living will be controlled by it.
What does the world value? Things. What does God value? People. What does the world value power, what does God value people. What does the world value prestige what does God value people. Don’t be surprised when people disconnected from God think like the world.
2) Dominated by Satan
The world system screams there is no God but the devil seduces us to reject God. It doesn’t matter what it is the devil will whisper sweet nothings to you to get you to stay disconnected from God.
3) Dominated by self (flesh)
The world screams to drown out God, the devil seduces away from god, but the flesh (your inner desires, drives) will shove you to sin. We are so easily corrupted from the outside because without Christ we are already corrupt inside.
Think about the little boy who was disciplined by his mother for kicking his sister in the shins and then pulling her hair. His mother said, “Sam, why did you let the devil make you kick your little sister and pull her hair?” He said, “Well mother, the devil made me kick her, but pulling her hair was my idea.”
B) Destined for God’s wrath
We are doomed because of what we are not what we do. We are by nature children of God’s wrath. Romans 5.18 “one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all human beings.” Once again we sin because we are sinners, not we are sinners because we sin. We inherit our sinful nature.
This is part of the doctrine of depravity. That simply means that every part of us is affected or infected with sin. This doesn’t mean that people disconnected from God are completely incapable of doing good. Many that are disconnected from God never go to the depths of depravity that Hitler or Stalin or John Wayne Gasey or others did.
It does mean that our emotions, our will, our mind, and heart are completely disconnected from God if we are not made alive in Christ.
This is a terrible situation. Everyone is separated from God because of our very nature. So what solution does Paul give?
II. The solution
“But God” The best but in the entire world. It is a conjunction of change. Paul is transitioning us from dead in sin to alive in Christ. This but means we don’t have to remain dead and unresponsive to God. This but means there is hope that we don’t have to be separated from God. This but means we don’t have to be controlled by outside or inside forces. This but means that God’s power can work in us and on us. This but changes our destiny. This but changes our identity. This but changes everything.
The solution to being dead is resurrection.
A) God gives us love instead of judgment (2.4)
"Because of His great love with which He loved us." What is the end result of a life that is dead and disconnected from God? Jesus Himself tells us again and again of a Godless eternity. Matthew 13.42 all evildoers will be thrown into a furnace of fire. Matthew 25.46 the goats on His left hand will into eternal punishment. These are not hellfire and brimstone from a fundamental preacher. These are the loving warnings of the savior.
2.7 “that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
After the loving warning there is the loving promise. Even though by nature we deserve the judgment or wrath of God if we are in Christ we will instead experience the riches of His grace.
God’s riches in grace are like a bottomless bank account.
What makes God’s grace so amazing, we deserve judgment. We can never exhaust His bottomless grace.
B) God gives freedom instead of captivity
Remember those dead to God are dominated by the unholy trinity, world, Satan, self.
These will keep you blind to life and glory of Jesus. What God does through His love and grace is take us out of captivity and make us co-heirs with Christ. That is what it means in verse 6 by raised up with Him, and seated with Him in the heavenly places. When we trust Jesus as savior and Lord the unholy trinity loses its ability to keep us captive. Col 3.3 tells us that our hearts are now in heaven. Our lives are hidden with Jesus. Heaven holds our affection and is what attracts us now. We now live longing for our true home with God. We are not longer controlled by the spirit and system of this world. We are now confident in Christ.
C) God gives us life instead of death
“even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive (God) together with Christ.”
Ezekiel 18.4 “the soul who sins will die.” Romans 6.23 “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” 1 Timothy 5.6 “she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.”
If you live this life for yourself you are dead in sin. There are many people this morning in Carlisle, AR, US, World that are walking, breathing, eating, driving cars, doing all manners of things yet they are dead and disconnected from God.
The promise we have in Christ is not judgment, it is not captivity, it is kindness, freedom, and life. Life as it was meant to be. Life free to know God and share that with others.
Conclusion: Are you living with the situation dead in trespasses and sin disconnected from God? Or are you living in the solution made alive in Christ? There is one solution for disconnect from God, that is to reconnect through Jesus Christ.
