About this sermon
Paul reminds the Ephesians that they were dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air, and by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Romans 5 explains why: through one man’s sin, condemnation and death came to all. But God, rich in mercy, made them alive together with Christ, raised them up, and seated them with him in the heavenly places. As one transgression brought condemnation, one act of righteousness brings justification and life.
Sermon transcript
Turn with me to Romans chapter five, verse 12 through 21. Romans chapter five, starting at verse 12, we’ll really be looking this morning at Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three, but this passage in Romans has much to do with that. This then is God’s word.
Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, for until the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there was no law. Nevertheless, death reign from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sent in the likeness of Adam’s offense, who is a type of him who is to come.
But the free gift is not like the transgression for if by the transgression of the one, the many died much more did the grace of God and the grace of the, of the one man, Jesus Christ abound to the many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned.
For on the one hand, the judgment arose from one transgression, resulting in condemnation. But on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions, resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, Much more, those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. So then, as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men, even so, one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men through one act of righteousness. Whereas through the one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, the many were made righteous. The law came in that their transgression might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
That as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And then in Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three. And you are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that’s now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
Let us pray. Our Father, we pray now that you would open our minds to understand your word, Would you grant us the illumination of your Holy Spirit so that we might know and be able to believe what is being taught in your word. We pray particularly for that quickening of the spirit and making alive of the spirit. for otherwise we are dead in our trespasses and sins. Bless us, we pray. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul writes to the saints in Ephesus, and he speaks of the great blessings that is theirs as Christians. God had, before the foundation of the world, foreordained them as sons through Jesus Christ. And he had poured on them the riches of his grace so that they abounded in every good thing. In the last part of chapter one of Ephesians, Paul says in verses 15 and 16, For this reason, because I’ve heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you. Remembering you in your, in my prayers. And then we have laid out before us what Paul prays for when he prays for the Ephesians.
What is it? that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.
Now there’s more, but I want you, I want you to think of this prayer of Paul as we look this morning at the second chapter versus one through three. Paul and this prayer is asking that the Lord would enlighten the eyes of their heart. And he’s praying further board that the Ephesians might know and understand just what God has done for them. He’s desires that they should know certain things.
And I want to stress the fact that Paul prays that his readers might know his incomparable great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his whole mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised them from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.
You see what we’re to look at this morning in the first three verses of chapter two is a description of a totally hopeless situation. We all find ourselves in apart from God’s power. apart from that power demonstrated in the resurrection and ascension of our Lord. So we need then to pray Paul’s prayer for ourselves that we might have those eyes of our understanding enlightened to understand what is our true nature, what is our nature, our condition as being dead people, dead men in sin and trespasses, Unless, of course, God works his mighty power in resurrection power. Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, as we read, you were dead in trespasses and sins, 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, 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.
The ESV year is more faithful in its translation than some other versions. The King James starts out by saying, you have the quickened who were dead and the old American standard Bible says, And you did he make alive when you were dead. But the words hath he quickened, or did he make alive, are in italics in both versions, which is indication that they’re not there in the original. They are correct.
Paul is going to get to the fact that these people have been made alive in Christ, certainly, and if you go on in verse four, you’ll find that. but in the verses that we have before us today, he’s speaking of those who were dead. The fact he speaks to the Ephesians in the past tense as dead gives us a glimpse of hope, but at first Paul wants to set forth a very important and much denied truth that all men by nature are dead. You, he says, were dead in your trespasses and sins. Now the question we have to ask then is who are the you? Well, in verse 11 and 12, he says, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. which is made by the flesh by hands, remember that you were at one time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope without God in the world. Evidently, in Ephesus, most of the church was made up of Gentile converts, people who were born as were not Jews, but were Gentiles, were we could call heathens.
They were not members of the covenant community. They had no birthright with God’s people. They couldn’t claim citizenship in Israel. They had not received the sign and the seal of circumcision. And that meant that they were not included in the covenant community. These people were without hope. and without God in the world. They were far away from God. They were, if you will, lost ones.
Now in our text, Paul describes the you that he’s writing to and he says, you are dead or dead in your trespasses and sins. What are trespasses? It’s the outward breaking of the law. You see a sign that says, do not trespass. It means stay out of the area that’s so designated.
If you enter that area, you’ve gone over the law line, you have broken the law and you deserve to be punished. What does Paul mean by sins? It’s a much broader term in which the law is broken, not simply by an outward act, but It is broken by our own very nature. Paul says that his readers were dead in transgressions and sins when they followed the course of this world and of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
These people were rebels. They were worldly people. The original says they walked according to the age of this world. You know how we talk of people being part of a certain age, a certain way of thinking, a certain way of acting. Well, these people were not only men of their age, but they could be characterized as people of this present evil age.
They were part of a fallen world. To use the terminology of Romans chapter 12 verse two, they were conformed to this world. They followed the way of thinking of the thinking of the world and their ruler was, as the NIV has it, the ruler of the kingdom of the air. They were under the dominion of darkness as Paul describes the situation in Colossians chapter one verse 13.
These people were slaves. under the rule of Satan. These were those who have perhaps worshiped at the famous temple of Diana in Ephesus and who had engaged in some of the orgies that were carried on there. These were people caught up in the debauchery of the Roman Empire. You might think of them as modern day devil worshipers in Africa or spiritual worshipers, spirit worshipers in Asia.
A while back I was watching a PBS program about a United States aircraft carrier. Such an aircraft carrier is a small city. It’s got thousands of people on it. And I was struck when they talked about the various religions on board. And they said that they even had a Wicca group or a coven of witches meeting regularly on the aircraft carrier.
Now, of course, it doesn’t have to be those who outly worship the power of the prince of the air that we are talking about. But it could be, it doesn’t have to be just witches and covens. that he’s, that Paul’s talking about. He’s talking also of course about the typical man of the world of today, of modern USA.
It could very well be your next door neighbor. All of these are living dead, dead in trespasses and sins. But wait a minute. The shocker comes when Paul says, what Paul has to say in verse three, he says, 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, just or like the rest of mankind. Paul says we are all in the same boat. All of us were dead men. That includes Paul. Think of that.
Paul could describe himself in Philippians chapter three verses five through six as circumcised in the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew, the Hebrew, with regarding to law, a Pharisee as to zeal, persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
He was a citizen of Israel. He wasn’t a foreigner to the covenant of the promise, the covenants of the promise. He had received the covenant sign and seal of circumcision. He was a Pharisee and not a publican and center. No one had better credentials than Paul to claim he was a son of God.
And yet Paul in our text says that he was as dead and as lost as were the Ephesians before they became Christians. Before regeneration and conversion, everyone, Paul included, gratified the cravings of our simple nature and followed its desires and thoughts. Let me quote from the old American Standard Bible.
We also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And King James says we all had our conversation in times past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. This Paul, this is what Paul says characterizes our conduct, all of our conduct, the conduct of every one of us. What are these lusts of the flesh which characterize ourselves?
Paul actually uses the word flesh in this verse twice, with different meanings. Flesh in the Bible can have various meanings. It can mean just the covering, of your bones, the meat that is on your bones. It’s used in the Bible often with ethical connotations.
One such usage is fairly general, and it means that which stands opposed to the spirit. And by that, I mean spirit with a capital S, namely the Holy Spirit. So you read, for instance, in Galatians chapter five, verse 17, the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Flesh then is everything that is opposed to the working of the Holy Spirit.
It is our sinful nature, the total man in his sinful and unregenerate state. I think that’s why the NIV has translated this as the living in the lust of the flesh, or the idea of living in the lust of the flesh as gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature. Flesh can also be used in a more restrictive sense. That’s the way that it’s used when Paul spells out what he means by living in the lust of our flesh, namely the doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Here he’s speaking, he’s using flesh to speak of our animal or physical nature. Perhaps that’s why the ESV translates it as our body.
Paul is thinking of appetites, of desires for food, drink, sleep, sex, and the like. And these All of these things, of course, are not bad in themselves, but they can become obsessions and drives that are sinful. It’s not simply our bodies that can get us into trouble, but our minds, of course, as well.
I referred a bit ago to Galatians 5.17 to show that the lust of the flesh is opposed to the spirit. In that same passage, in verse 19 through 21, we read, now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envians, Murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of which I tell you before and have also told you in times past that they who do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
This, Paul says, is the way all of us once lived. This is a very bleak picture. But you may say, okay, we’re in very bad shape. We all sin. We’re all in the same boat, whether those who have grown up in the church knew and learned about the Bible, or whether we didn’t grow up in the church and never had lived a very loose and simple life. Somehow our nature gets the best of us and we fall into sin. We’ve not learned to corral the lust of the flesh.
Maybe though there’s still hope for mankind. Maybe we can learn to correct enough things in the world so that we won’t be tempted so much to sin. If we could just educate people the right way or legislate in such a way as to remove temptation or find some process of social action where we can improve man’s lot so dramatically that he doesn’t have to sin, things would be better. But Paul doesn’t let his readers or himself off so easily.
He says in verse three, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Paul saying here that it’s not just that man came into the world and then get off the right track and fall into sin. There’s something more fundamental being said here. He’s saying by nature, we’re objects of God’s wrath. That is justice. That is just as soon as we begin to be, to exist.
We are under God’s condemnation as sinners. As such, we’re dead men from the beginning. Or another way of putting it, we are all born stillborn. The picture for all mankind is bleak, as bleak as can be imagined. We don’t come into the world in a state of innocence. And after that, we sin and come under the wrath of God. We come into the world under God’s condemnation, under the punishment of an eternal death penalty. And why that is so is spelled out in the passage we read from Romans chapter five.
In verse 12, we read, sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And then this way, death came to all men because all sinned. In verse 15, he says, the many died by the trespass of the one man. In verse 17, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man. And in verse 18, we read further, as a result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. What’s Paul talking about in these verses?
He’s talking about the sin of Adam. Adam, who represented all mankind, sinned, and we sinned in him. The Lord God commanded the man, Adam, in the guard, saying, you are free to eat of any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, When you eat of it, you will surely die. Adam, as we know, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and as a consequence, he died, but we all died with him. That’s why Paul says in our text, like the rest, we were by nature objects. We are by nature objects of wrath.
When I was a teenager growing up in Calvary Church in Glenside, Pennsylvania, Mr. Atwell was the pastor. And he would sometimes call upon people when he was preaching, call upon particularly community members or those that were in his community class to answer a catechism question. I’m very happy to sit in your Sunday school and see Sunday by Sunday that you are going through the catechism. I’m not going to ask you to answer the catechism questions, but I am going to read them to you because I think they do summarize things very well. In question 15, what was the sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created? The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created was their eating the forbidden fruit.
Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression? A covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind, notice all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generations, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. into what a state did the fall bring mankind. The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery, wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell. The sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. What is the misery of that estate wherein the man fell?
All mankind, once again, all mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever. This is the absolutely deplorable condition of all mankind entering the world.
It is news that the natural man does not want to hear and cannot comprehend. I’m supposed to, as a minister of the gospel, to preach the gospel. And gospel means good news. And there is good news to be proclaimed. But before any of us can fully understand the good news, we must understand the very bad news. If the doctor says you’re sick, maybe very sick, you’re still at least alive. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a cure to be found for you.
But if the doctor pronounces you dead, Then all hope is gone. There’s no cure. Paul in our text, like a doctor, pronounces all men in their natural state as dead. From a human standpoint, the situation of all man is utterly hopeless. It’s worse than having a terminal disease, for in our natural state, we are already dead.
Now I purposely chose just the first three verses of Ephesians chapter two this morning, and not a larger portion of the text. I want you to know and to understand the true desperate situation of the natural man. I want you to understand it includes you and me. All mankind are not just sick, but in their natural state, they’re dead. It’s essential we Not only hear this, but we understand it. We must be frank. We must be honest with ourselves and with others about our condition. But while I want to stress this awful condition of the natural man, I must close with words of hope.
As I said at the beginning, there’s a glimmer of hope found even in these first three verses because Paul is writing to those who were dead. In the following verses, he’s going on to talk about God, who is rich in mercy, and how out of his great love for us, even though we are dead in trespasses and sins, he has done something truly remarkable.
He’s made us alive together with Christ. I would remind you of what Paul said in his prayer in chapter one, of God’s incomparable power for us who believe. and how that power and strength was exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. God, in raising Christ from the dead, has defeated the prince of the power of the air. He’s defeated death and hell. He has raised Christ to eternal life and glory. And the good news is that through faith we are united with Christ. And thus we’re raised from the dead and we’re seated with him in the heavenly places.
For Paul says, 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. And raise us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of your doing, it is the gift of God. not the result of works so that no one may boast.
I speak to you today, not as dead people, but those who are alive in Christ. That is, if you believe in him, if you trust in him alone for your salvation. Another way of putting this is saying that I can speak to you today as resurrected people made alive together with Christ. You were dead, but you have been made alive in him.
If you are united with him by faith and further bore, I would encourage you to boldly preach the gospel here in Swickly. and in the surrounding area. I know it’s like preaching in a cemetery to the dead. That’s part of the foolishness of the gospel message. That’s the foolishness of preaching.
But it’s also the power of God, and God can give new life to dead people. He gives new life in regeneration. He gives new life through the work of the Holy Spirit. God and only God can make dead man alive. He did it for Paul. He did it for the Ephesians of old. He can make you alive. He can make others in this place alive as well. He can take the preaching of his word and he can take that foolish message, at least as the world sees it, and he can use it to liven people, to make them alive and bring them to faith in Jesus Christ.
And our task is to earnestly pray that God would do his mighty work in raising people from their state of death to new life in Christ, in Christ our Lord, and that he would build the church, he would build this church and other churches, he would build it of living stones into a spiritual temple fit for his praise.
Let us pray. Our Father, we would with Paul pray that the eyes of our heart might be enlightened. that we might know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe. We pray, our Father, that we might know of that greatness that our God has displayed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the one who he raised from the dead and seated with Him at the right hand in the heavenly places. We pray, our Father, that we might be raised then from the dead. We might know that. We might understand that. And that we might rejoice together in being seated with Christ in the heavenly places. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. Let us turn to hymn number 500, I’m sorry, 415.
On Thy grace I rest my plea. Plenteous in compassion Thou, Bought out my transgressions now. Wash me, make me pure within, And so cleanse me from my sin. I confess my judgment just, speechless by thy mercy. Thou desirest truth within. Thou alone my Savior art. Teach Thy wisdom to my heart. Make me pure Thy grace bestow.
Are she whiter than the snow? Broken, tumbled to the dust by thy wrath. Let thy contrite heart rejoice, and in gladness hear thy voice. From thy sins, O God, thy face, love and love in boundless praise. Gracious God, my heart renewed, Make my spirit bright and true. Let my spirit dwell in thee. Thy salvation’s glory, Lord, steadfast make my willing heart. shall learn from thee, and return, O God, to thee. Oh.
Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.
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