An assistant principal at an elementary school was recently accused of accessing the school district’s internal system in order to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter. Her 17-year-old daughter was elected homecoming queen at Tate High School in Pensacola, Florida. But school district computer experts could tell that the votes came from the same IP address. They knew something was wrong. It turns out that her mother, the assistant principal, was arrested along with the daughter for the scheme. Authorities were not exactly sure who cast the fraudulent votes. I imagine those two sat in jail at some point with wildly running emotions wondering, “What’s wrong with me?”
All of us have asked that question at one time or another, “What’s wrong with me?” I am not speaking about, “What’s wrong with you.” No, the title of the message is “What’s wrong with me?”
Ephesians 2 is the classic text on the Bible’s teaching on sin. But it’s also the classic teaching on the Bible’s view of salvation. In fact, if God had commissioned a website about heaven and who gets in and who’s prevented, the home page would be Ephesians 2. For the next few minutes, I want to explore how the Bible addresses what is wrong with us in order for us to understand how God fixes us.
1. What’s Wrong with Me?
When you ask the Bible, “What’s wrong with me?” the Bible is blunt – really blunt. Like a doctor giving you your diagnosis, it points to your underlying spiritual condition.
1.1 Spiritually Dead
Paul says you were dead in sins twice: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins … 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses…” (Ephesians 2:1, 5a).
The thought is so important the Bible repeats itself. The Bible isn’t describing your condition as you are physically dead. Instead, it is describing your spiritual condition as spiritually dead. What does it mean to be spiritually dead? It means you are unable to respond to God.
Now, these first three verses have almost everything you need to know about the biblical doctrine of sin. And it’s easy to see that the Bible is drawing a tight connection between your spiritual life (or your lack of one) to your moral life. Sin is when you fail to conform to God’s law. The Bible says the human race is in rebellion against God and His ways. The Bible says, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4b).
Again, Paul is incredibly blunt here in his diagnosis of humanity. You ask Paul, “What’s wrong with me?” and he says, “You’re spiritually dead. You’re morally dead.” The Bible doesn’t say you are sick in your sins, but you are dead in your sins. It’s not as if you have the equivalent of a “moral cold.” No, instead, you are dead in your sins. The Bible’s views on what’s wrong with us haven’t been popular for decades now.
1.2 The Imposter Syndrome
I recently came across an article entitled “Why Highly Successful People Seek Therapy.” I was amazed to discover that of the five most common reasons highly successful people go to counseling and seek therapy - the number one reason is what is called the “Imposter Syndrome.” Imposter Syndrome is the persistent feeling that you are just not good enough - that you are inadequate, that you are a fraud and a fake. In other words, it is a struggle with self-esteem. And this impacts everybody - even the richest, the most successful, and the most famous. One in four young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four tell us they’ve considered suicide, according to a CDC report from this past summer. The number of people adults who are experiencing depression has tripled in the United States in the past year. We know there’s something wrong with us emotionally and psychologically.
1.3 Unions and Labor Management
We know something’s wrong with us socially as well. You read the history, for example, of labor and management. It’s interesting if you know anything about this kind of thing. When unions don’t have enough power, the management takes advantage of them. The workers are sent into dangerous settings where their very lives are risked simply trying to put bread on the table. Then the pendulum eventually swings. When the unions get too much power, then there’s no accountability. Soon, productivity plummets, and they essentially “cook the goose that laid their golden egg” until the company is not competitive. The company goes down the drain. Yes, there’s something wrong with all of us, no matter if we are white-collar, blue-collar, or even no-collar.
1.4 Checks and Balances
Again, the Bible’s teaching can be empirically verified here. Our nation’s founders divided our government into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. This decision was to ensure that no one specific branch would exercise too much power. So the founders created a separation of powers. These wise men knew there was something wrong with us – we don’t handle power well. There’s something wrong with us emotionally, socially, and inherently. The founders knew by experience that future generations couldn’t be trusted to govern the people. What did we learn in school but … “Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
So there’s all this evidence for the Bible’s teaching that we are morally depraved and spiritually dead. We see it around us, and we feel it inside of us.
1.5 Verse One
Listen again to the Bible’s diagnosis: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Now verse either speak of your past or your present – it’s that simple. The Bible doesn’t say you are in the doghouse with God. No, it says you’re in the morgue. Now, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, you are spiritually a “dead man walking.” The Bible says that every home without Jesus is a funeral home. Every person in that home without Jesus is a corpse. And every bed in that home is a casket. We are spiritually dead apart from Christ.
And we can empirically verify the Bible’s teaching here.
1.6 All Categories and Classes of People Are Included
The Bible isn’t describing a special class of people: “among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3).
It’s not saying that the Hell Angels biker gang is spiritually dead. It’s not just saying that Nazis are spiritually dead. It’s saying Scott Maze was spiritually dead. It’s saying you either were or you are spiritually dead. This is every person in their natural condition from birth. It makes no difference if you are educated or illiterate. You can be spiritually dead with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas. And you can be spiritually dead if you failed to receive even your GED. Education doesn’t “move the needle” spiritually.
It makes no difference if you are rich or poor. You’re spiritually dead in the palatial lots of Westlake with their multimillionaire dollar home. And you’re spiritually dead if you were living in a tent under a bridge. Prosperity doesn’t move the needle spiritually.
And it makes no difference if you are religious or pagan. Religion doesn’t move the needle, either. You can be baptized/christened at birth by loving parents. You know all the ins and outs of church culture – no matter for the Bible says, you are spiritually dead. Education, prosperity, or religion doesn’t exempt you from your condition.
The Bible declares that this whole world is a graveyard where people live their lives. The Bible doesn’t say you are in the doghouse with God. No, it says you’re in the morgue.
1. What’s Wrong with Me?
2. Why Do I Do Wrong?
2.1 Toby’s Fraud
NPR ran an interesting piece entitled “Psychology of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things” some years back. It was about the time when the people of Enron did their thing. Then you had Bernie Madoff followed by the subprime mortgage crisis. It was a multilayer fraud cake! The story speaks of a man named Toby who grew up with his brother on a farm in Ohio. Toby looks outside of his parents’ house dining room window one day and sees his dad on the ground. Thinking he’s had a heart attack, he runs to his dad’s side to find a newspaper story in his dad’s hand that describes how his brother defrauded people. Toby is only twenty years old when his dad says to him, “Promise me that you will never get into any trouble like this.” Toby says, “I won’t, Dad. I swear I won’t.”
Twenty-two years later, Toby is in front of the very same judge that sentenced his brother, only this time Toby was sent to prison for fraud. He created mortgages out of thin air to cover the tax evasion penalties of nearly $300,000 he ran up with the IRS. Toby found himself drinking daily to cover his guilt and was only happy to confess when the FBI showed up asking questions. What makes a man do something like this when he promised his father not to engage in illegal behavior? What’s wrong with Toby?
2.2 Spiritual Dead Means What?
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins…” (Ephesians 2:1).
What does it mean to be spiritually dead? There are similarities between a physically dead person and a spiritually dead person. Have you ever been around a dead person?
I was near several the past couple of weeks. In my role as pastor, I see a lot of dead people ?. Go as close as you want and speak as loud as you want; they cannot hear you. Shout at the top of your lungs. They are dead, and they cannot hear you. A dead person cannot respond to any stimuli. A dead body can’t respond. Kick it, poke it, or stab him. You get nothing. Again, there are similarities between a physically dead person and a spiritually dead person. Sin will kill you physically eventually, and sin has killed you spiritually unless you’ve received Christ.
The Bible isn’t teaching that you cannot do any good in any sense. Instead, the Bible says no one part of our lives is completely pure before God. To be spiritually dead means I do not respond to God. I have no desire for Christ and for holy things. God is dead to me.
1. What’s Wrong with Me?
2. Why Do I Do Wrong?
3. Where Did I Go Wrong?
3.1 The Source of Sin
The Bible names three sources for this nature. Again, you come by what the Bible describes as “spiritually death” in three ways. First, our sin is inherited from our parents: “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:2-3).
The Bible says you don’t need to learn to sin. Nobody has to teach you. Nobody has to sit down and say, “Here’s how to do wrong.” The Bible says you are by nature a sinner. You have a sinful nature, and this Bible uses the word “children,” which points us back to our parents.
3.2 Pelagius
A name that may not be familiar to many of you from history is a man named Pelagius. History knows him as a heretic, but he was an Irish monk around the turn of the fifth century. This is what Pelagius taught: we do not inherit a sinful nature from our parents. No, we don’t have a bad nature, but we do wrong because we have bad examples. We have bad models, and that’s why we do wrong. Now, there are millions of Pelagians around the world today, but they have never heard of him. Lots of people believe that we are born good or, at best, born morally neutral. “The reason we sin is that we learn it from our environment,” they say.
Yet, the Bible calls every single one of us intrinsically spiritually and morally evil. Jesus said: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11)!
Yet, the vast majority of people don’t feel this. In fact, if you spot a truly evil person, we often point back to their environment. Again, we find someone who is undeniably evil, and we say, “This person was mistreated. They were a victim of racism. They were oppressed. They were refused a good education.” And the Bible doesn’t deny that these are contributing factors to our immoral nature (more on this later). So Pelagius said it was only our environments that caused us to do bad.
3.3 Nature and Not Nurture
Someone says, “Well, I couldn’t help myself. I’m a victim. I’m a victim of my DNA. I’m a victim of my chromosomes.” Psychology usually breaks this down topic between nature versus nurture. When probing the questions, “Where does morality come from?” Or, how do children learn right and wrong? The Bible argues that it’s nature and not nurture. Again, nurture can hurt us too, but primarily it’s our inherited sinful nature that is the culprit.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—” (Romans 5:12).
The one-man is Adam, the first human to walk on the earth and the first human to sin along with his famous wife, Eve. Your sinful nature is inherited from one generation to the next. Why do we compete with one another and not cooperate with one another? Why are we so prone to envy and revenge? Why is reconciliation so rare when revenge is so popular? Why are so many people motivated to mass shootings in our day? Why am I not inwardly content when I accomplish my goals and dreams?
We are not blank slates at birth, as a philosopher, John Locke, said. Instead, we have are bent to the morally wrong decision at our birth.
Source #1: sinfulness nature is passed along from our first father, Adam.
3.4 The Prince of the Power of the Air
Again, Paul is identifying the sources that move us away from God. Here’s the second source. Source #2: Satanic forces: “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).
There is a real being called Satan, and he influences you tremendously. CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is a fictional account where a senior demon instructs a younger demon on how to best tempt humans. One day a sound atheist was reading at the British museum when he began to think seriously about God. The senior demon said his serious thoughts about God’s existence seemed to undo 20 years of work. He could see the Spirit of God really close to making real progress with the sound atheist. So instead of whispering an argument in his mind, the demon simply suggested that the man was hungry. Off to lunch, the demon silenced any serious objections to his atheism by telling him that he couldn’t think about such serious issues on an empty stomach. The man was distracted by such a simple thing. The Bible says you are pulled toward sin by a nature that was inherited all the way back to the first humans. And there is demonic activity to incite you to do wrong.
3.5 Nurture
Source #3: Sinful Patterns: “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).
Where many people think of Christ-followers as living narrow lives, the Bible says the opposite. It’s those outside of Christ that lack real freedom: “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin’” (John 8:34). In today’s text, you’ll see the word “following” twice in verse two. This word doesn’t fully communicate the force of the Bible’s descriptions of what happens to those outside of Christ. Indeed, the original word behind this could be translated as “mastered.” We are mastered as a slave would be mastered. Yes, our environments also matter. Bad moral environments don’t help us achieve moral excellence. Certainly, racism and oppression hurt so many people, and it only propagates more racism and oppression. Hurt people hurt people. You follow the popular ways of the world. You followed the crowd. You followed their pattern. You were/are puppets on a string.
There’s someone here who wants to argue with me, “I’m not a Christ, and I am free to do whatever I want to do.” Yes, every word you said is true – I would agree with you totally. You put a Bible in front of an addict, and he’s free to do whatever he wants. You put a Bible in front of a self-righteous racist, and she’s free to do whatever she wants. And you know what he wants. And you know what she wants, don’t you?
Jesus said we are a slave to sin.
3.6 Old Prospector
I heard about an old, mean prospector who came into town in a little mining town out west, and a cowboy out there thought he’d have some fun with the old prospector when he saw him coming. This cowboy stepped out of the saloon with his six-shooters and looked at the old man there with his mule covered with dust, and he said, “Old man, have you ever danced?” He said, “No, don’t believe I have.” He said, “Well, you’re going to dance now,” and he started shooting the ground right under the feet of that old prospector who kind of lifted up his feet and did a little dance there. And everybody thought it was really funny. And the cowboy was reaching into his belt to reload his six-gun, and when he looked up, he was looking down the barrel of a double-barreled shotgun that the old prospector had. No time to do anything: he was at the mercy of the prospector now. And the prospector said, “Cowboy, did you ever kiss a mule?” The cowboy said, “No, but I always wanted to.” Here was a man who was free to do whatever he wanted to do, but he was under a strong compulsion. Likewise, Jesus said we are a slave to sin.
3.7 Tom Brady Interview
In one of the most insightful interviews, 60 Minutes sat down with Quarterback Tom Brady in the summer of 2005. He’s one of the most celebrated and accomplished athletes of our day. Listen to what he said: “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings, and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think: God, it’s gotta be more than this. I mean, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be. I mean, I’ve done it. I’m 27. And what else is there for me?”
What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with me?
The fact is if you recognize this and you agree with the Bible’s diagnosis of you, something powerful has happened inside you. The fact is you can’t be saved unless you know you need to be saved. You can’t be rescued unless you know you need to be rescued.
1. What’s Wrong with Me?
2. Why Do I Do Wrong?
3. Where Did I Go Wrong?
4. What Did God Do About It?
God stepped in and came to your rescue. God does something amazing for us: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace, you have been saved—” (Ephesians 2:4-5).
4.1 Resurrection
The solution isn’t education or more money, or a better place to live. God resurrects your dead spiritual life. God did provide a better example. Instead, God performed a miracle by brings your spiritual life back from the dead.
4.2 But God
Look how verse 4 begins, will you? “But God …” – two of the most beautiful words you’ll ever hear. Those two words can change everything. You cannot climb out of the grave. You cannot save yourself. Your life messed up? “But God …” Is there a habit you can’t break? “But God …”
God so loved you that He sent His only Son so that you would not perish but have everlasting life. God entered your grave to raise you to new life.
4.3 God’s Love
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, five even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace, you have been saved—” (Ephesians 2:4-5).
Did you the word “love” is used twice? His great “love,” noun, with which He “loved” us, verb.
What’s wrong with me? Nothing that God cannot fix. This is a before and after picture. Where are you this morning? Or you the before, or are you the after? Jesus Christ makes a huge difference in your life.
Non- Believers - Invitation
Don’t you want to have a secure future in Christ?
