Sunday Sermons
Ephesians 2:1-3
Ephesians 2:1-3
2:1 “You were”: Here we are being reminded how terrible the Christless life was for Gentile and for Jew alike. “Dead”: Spiritually dead (Isaiah 59:1-2). Spiritual death is not the annihilation of the soul, rather it is separation from God (Ephesians 2:11-13). Barclay makes the following observations concerning spiritual death: “Sin kills innocence. No one is precisely the same after he has sinned. The experience of sin had left a kind of tarnishing film on his mind and things could never be quite the same again. Sin kills ideals. Each sin makes the next sin easier. Sin is a kind of suicide, for it kills the ideals that make life worthwhile. In the end sin kills the will. At first a man engages in some forbidden pleasure because he wants to do so; in the end he engages in it because he cannot help doing so. Once a thing becomes a habit it is not far from being a necessity. Sin kills ideals; men begin to do without a qualm the thing that once they regarded with horror. Sin kills the will; the thing so grips a man that he cannot break free” (pp. 97-99). Sin also destroys truthfulness, industry, integrity and all virtue. “It is also quite possible for one to manifest the most vigorous and mental life, while that the same time he is spiritually dead” (Eerdman p. 48).“Lots of people who make no Christian profession whatever, who even openly repudiate Jesus Christ, appear to be very much alive. One has the vigorous body of an athlete, another the lively mind of a scholar, a third the vivacious personality of a film star. Are we to say that such people, if Christ has not saved them, are dead? Yes, indeed, we must and do say this very thing”(Stott p. 72). See 1 Timothy 5:6.
2:1 “Your”: The sins and trespasses that killed us were our own. We were not born in sin (Ezekiel 18:20; Matthew 18:3-4; Romans 7:9; 1 Corinthians 14:20). One of the easiest ways to undermine the false doctrine of total inherited depravity is to point out that God has no plan of salvation for babies and infants. His only plan of salvation contains a condition that no baby can meet, that is, hearing the gospel (Romans 10:17), faith (Mark 16:16); repentance (Acts 2:38), confession(Romans 10:9-10) and a voluntary submission to baptism (Acts 22:16). Lenski argues, “The view that Paul refers to a nature that is developed by actual sins disregards this context” (p. 413). I would respond that the entire context includes such phrases as "your trespasses and sins", "wherein ye once walked", "among whom we also all once lived", and "doing the desires". How can anyone read these verses and walk away thinking that these people had not brought this condition of spiritual death upon themselves because of their own actions?
2:1 “Trespasses and sins”: “These two words seem to have been carefully chosen to give a comprehensive account of human evil. A ‘trespass is a false step, involving either the crossing of a known boundary or a deviation from the right path. A ‘sin’ means missing of the mark, a falling short of a standard” (Stott p. 71). Sin is called a "trespass", because sin happens when mankind ventures into an area in which he does not belong. "Sin" can never be called a "right". Abortion and Homosexuality are not “rights", they are "trespasses". The word rendered "sins" in the above passage means "missing the mark". Hence sin happens when we "miss" the real purpose for our existence (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). “One misses his mark by failing to fulfill his purposes in life. Our purposes in life are to act, think, and speak like God who created us, thus glorifying Him” (Caldwell p. 69). 2:2 “In which”: In which sins and trespasses. “You formerly”: Which means that in becoming a Christian one must stop such a lifestyle (1 John 3:9). “Walked”: “Once lived” (Gspd); “passed your lives” (Mon), see Colossians 3:7. Note that God does not view the sinner in isolated acts of sin, but in an entire lifestyle of sin. “According to”: Unbelievers also follow a “standard”, everyone is obeying or submitting to someone or something (Romans 6:13,16; Matthew 6:24). “The course of this world”: “Ways of the world” (TCNT); “lived under the control of the present age” (Gspd); “lived in accordance with the spirit of this present world” (Wms). The term “world” expresses an entire social value system. “It permeates, indeed dominates non-Christian society and holds people in captivity. People tend to surrender to the pop-culture and television and the glossy magazines. It is a cultural bondage. We were all the same until Jesus liberated us. We drifted along the stream of this world’s ideas of living” (Stott p. 73). “It is life lived in the way this present age lives it. That is to say, it is life lived on the world's standards and with the world's values. The essence of the world’s standard is that it sets self in the center; the essence of the Christian standard is that it sets Christ and others in the center. The essence of the worldly man is, as someone has said, that “He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” (Barclay p. 99). The man of the world then is not a freethinker, but a conformist the values of a society that has forgotten God (Romans 12:1-2).
2:2 “According to the prince of the power of the air”: The present age, the opinions and view of the world did not solely originate with mankind. The bottom line is that the present unscriptural values of society are the devil’s lies (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4). “Power of the air”: That is the whole empire of evil (Ephesians 6:12 “The spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places”). “The atmosphere or climate of thought which influences people's minds against God” (Bruce p. 283). “The moral atmosphere of the world, the air that men breathe, the ‘spirit of the age’, is vitiated by Satan with evil” (Erdman p. 50).
2:2 “Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience”: “The Devil is operating. He is not still or indifferent. When we adopt the spirit which characterizes him, we become like him” (Caldwell p. 71). See John 8:44. The Devil works "in" people, not by personally indwelling them, but by getting them to listen to his lies. Falsehood "works" in people. When you get a hold of some false concept, in any form, it never stays still (2 Timothy 3:13). If I choose to reject the truth, then I will end up believing what is false (2 Thess. 2:10-12). We cannot naively think that we can reject God, but still maintain a proper grasp of reality. Every opponent of the truth is a servant slave of the devil (2 Timothy 2:25-26). “Such things as psychology, social pressures, poverty, and so on, are simply not an adequate explanation of evil. ‘Simple folk are often better theologians than the learned of the schools’” (Coffman p. 141). “Now working”: The social deterioration happening in the U.S.A., is proof positive that the Devil is still very active, and nothing can stop the devil, except the gospel message (1 Peter 5:8-9). Education, social-status, money, culture, technology, and so on stands helpless before this spiritual being. Reality should teach us that man is out of his league, when he tries to fight the devil all by himself. “Sons of disobedience”: Who are characterized by disobedience, or disobedience is the characteristic feature in their relation to God. All this means that rebellion against God or ridiculing His standards is not smart or cool, but rather it simply reveals that one is a slave of Satan and is spreading his lies.
2:3 “Among them we too all formerly lived”: Notice that Paul includes himself in the “we”. Regardless of race, privileges, or culture, all found themselves in sin (Romans 3:23; 1 Timothy 1:13-15). No culture has a moral advantage over any other culture. Unfortunately, many people in our society seem to forget that. Many of the "sons of disobedience" in our culture have condemned the white European culture which settled North America, but have romanticized the various cultures of the American Indian and the South American Mayans, etc....But we are never told that such cultures practiced human sacrifice, cannibalism, that is those cultures had their own "evils". We must destroy the myth that North and South America were the "garden of Eden" before the arrival of European explorers. “Lived”: A good number of people outside of Christ do not view themselves as "living" a sinful life. They might argue, "Well, once in a while I do something wrong, now and then I let down my hair...but for the most part I usually behave in a very responsible manner." God sees a different picture. We would probably see a much different picture of ourselves if we stood back and observed our behavior every day. Just like the drug addict or alcoholic who does not think they are spending that much on their habit and who still thinks they are in control, so is the attitude of many outside of Christ. “Lusts of our flesh”: Stott makes some good observations concerning "the flesh"---“means not the living fabric which covers our bony skeleton but...self-centered human nature. There is nothing wrong with natural bodily desires, for God has made the human body that way. It is only when the appetite for food becomes gluttony, for sleep sloth, that natural desires have been perverted into sinful desires. Wherever "self" rears its ugly head against God and man, there is ‘the flesh’” (p. 74). “The flesh is anything in us which gives sin its chance” (Barclay p. 101). Anytime that we manifest opposition to the Divine Will, refuse to listen to God, or that we act like we didn't hear or really understand what the Scripture said. We are obeying "the flesh" (Romans 8:7 “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God”). “Indulging the desires of the flesh”: This would include sins that especially depend on the cooperation of the physical body for their fulfillment,“And of the mind”: “And of our imagination” (Con). “The purest essence of sin is not some horrible, unthinkable atrocity. It is simply living for self. The desires of the mind can be just as bad and sometimes worse. The mind demands its own way in matters of anger, pride, resentment, and revenge. In Paul's day people were often taught by Greek philosophy that everything physical is evil. It must have shocked them, however, to discover that the (wrong) desires of the mind are equally sinful (with the wrong actions of the body)” (Boles pp. 221-222). “The waywardness of our thoughts seems to be denoted, the random roaming of the mind hither and thither, towards this pleasure and that, sometimes serious, sometimes frivolous, but all marked by the absence of any controlling regard to the will of God” (Pulpit Comm. p. 61). “And were by nature”: Unfortunately, all of a sudden people forget everything these verses have taught when they encounter this phrase. Immediately they think, "inherited nature", that is, we were born totally depraved, inheriting the original sin of Adam. Wait a minute, such is contrary to what these three verses are teaching. These people are responsible for their former condition. They were dead because of their own sins (2:1), sins in which they had lived (2:2), sins that were the result of listening to the ways of the world (2:2), sins that resulted from sharing the attitude of disobedient men (2:2), sins that resulted from obeying selfish physical and mental desires (2:3), and sins that resulted from refusing to control their bodies and their thoughts (2:3). “It is not an accident of birth into the family of Adam that condemns men; it is what men themselves have done!” (Boles p. 223). The phrase "by nature" here means that which by habit and practice has become nature, that is, acquired nature or second nature. Calvinists run into big problems when they try to make "by nature" mean, "inherited nature", for Paul argues in the Roman letter that some Gentiles "by nature" did the things of the Law (Romans 2:14). How can people with an "inherited sinful nature" do "by nature" what is good? See also 1 Corinthians 11:15. “Children of wrath”: The objects of God’s wrath (Ephesians 5:6). “God's personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil, His settled refusal to compromise with it, and His resolve instead to condemn it. Thus Paul moves from the wrath of God to the mercy and love of God without any sense of embarrassment or anomaly. He is able to hold them together in his mind because he believed that they were held together in God's character. We need, I think, to be more grateful to God for His wrath, and to worship Him because His righteousness is perfect. He always reacts to evil in the same unchanging, predictable, uncompromising way. Without His moral constancy we would enjoy no peace” (Stott p. 76). “Even as the rest”: The Jews found themselves in sin, just like the Gentiles (Romans 3:9-23).
Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net/mdunagan@easystreet.com
