First, the Bad News

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1)

          A friend of mine in North Carolina is the picture of health and happiness. She is enjoying life to the fullest these days; she recently became a mother-in-law for the first time, and everyone is expecting (hoping?) that she will become a grandma in the next year.

          In some respects, she’s not much different from other healthy folks. Many of us are thankful we have our health and can live fruitful lives on God’s earth.

          But few of us appreciate our health as much as my friend does. That’s because she is a breast-cancer survivor. She knows, in a vivid way that eludes many of us, the preciousness of health and life.

          As Christians, you and I say repeatedly that God’s grace to us in Jesus is amazing. We are thankful the Lord has adopted us into His family, and very likely we are sincere in our thanksgiving for salvation in Christ.

          This morning, though, we’re going to enhance our appreciation for the “Good News” by first contemplating the “Bad News.” In chapter 2, verses 1-3, of his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul delivers to you and me a three-fold diagnosis of who we once were before God saved us in Christ: in times past, we were dead to God, disobedient to God and doomed before God.

          It could not have been easy for my friend to receive her diagnosis years ago: “You have breast cancer.” Similarly, it will not be easy for you to contemplate honestly who you once were, and where you once were headed, apart from Jesus.

          But until you are willing to appreciate your former state before your conversion to Christ, you will rob yourself of appreciating the riches of God’s grace in Christ.

          Paul first diagnoses you as being dead in sins before God made you alive in Christ.

          In order to magnify the power of God, which Paul discusses in chapter one, he teaches that you and I – now made alive in Jesus – once were spiritually dead. To be sure, you were alive physically before you knew Christ, as Paul will explain in a moment. Spiritually, though, you and I were stillborn when we came into this world.

          This spiritual deadness is the result, you will remember, of Adam and Eve’s first transgression in the Garden of Eden. The Lord entrusted Paradise to Adam and Eve, but with one commandment: they were to respect His sovereignty by not eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they ate of this tree, they would literally “die the death” – not merely physically, but also spiritually in their relation to Him. So, Paul writes to the Romans, when our representative Adam died, all of us died in him. This death is the wages of his transgression and ours in him.

          In fact, sin characterizes your very nature from birth. David well understood this reality – that inward sin caused him to commit outward acts of rebellion – when he confessed in Psalm 51 that he was shapen in his mother’s womb in iniquity.

          Dead people, of course, cannot do anything for themselves. The problem for all of us humans is that the one, true God created us to serve and to worship Him. He desires “truth in the inward parts,” and He demands that His glory be magnified in His creation. Here is the inescapable problem for you: as a spiritual cadaver, you could not offer God your heart. You were helpless to love and to serve Him as He rightly demanded.

          It should be stated, though, that you were religious. Solomon in Ecclesiastes says the Lord has “set eternity on our hearts,” so that you and I naturally ask big-picture questions about life and find objects to worship in response to our need to worship someone or something. In Romans 1, Paul says we sinful humans are nonetheless chronically religious.

          But do not confuse religiosity with true belief in Christ.

          Instead of humbling ourselves before the triune Majesty and giving God our hearts and lives, you and I suppress the truth of God – seen so evidently in the creation – in unrighteousness. We instead worship our own handcrafted idols. And our immoral lives naturally reflect our paganism.

          To the world, you and I once might have appeared religious. We might have seemed alive in our curiosity about eternal questions.

          Because of Adam’s sin passed to us, and our own sin and guilt, though, you and I were dead – totally unable to respond – to the one, true God. To appreciate your life in Christ, first you must appreciate your former deadness to Christ.

          The second aspect of Paul’s diagnosis is that you and I once were disobedient to God.

          It seems oxymoronic, but it is true: before we knew Jesus as our Redeemer, you and I were among the “walking dead.” We were dead, spiritually, to the Lord God; but we were very much alive in our flesh. We were the “children of disobedience,” which is a Hebrew way of saying you and I were given totally to disobeying God’s revealed will in His Word, and our hearts were stony in our obstinacy toward Him.

          The apostle says before our conversion to Christ, you and I walked and “had our conversation” in the lusts of the flesh. Every step we took, every turn we negotiated, every decision great or small was made in service to the gods of our own choosing. When faced with a choice – for instance, to confess a wrong against someone, or to be honest on our taxes, or to stand up for the mistreated – you and I did not seek God’s glory or His counsel. Instead, we followed what our sinful inclination said was correct. At times we might even have done the “right” thing outwardly, but inwardly we were taking every step based on the promptings of wickedness.

          Observe the sources of authority to which you and I answered before our conversion: the “ways of the world,” the promptings of Satan and the desires of our own sinful natures. Paul says in times past you and I walked according to the course, or manner of living, of this present evil world. Our decisions were not based on the timeless truth of God’s Word but rather on the shifting, and corrupt, opinions of fallen man. Rather than ask what would honor the Lord in a given situation, you and I did what felt right to us: lie about our taxes, lie to our spouse, turn a blind eye to someone in need.

          The apostle also writes that you and I were prompted by the “prince of the power of the air” – another way of referring to the devil, who rules over the demons of this present evil age. This is not to say, as the scholar Peter O’Brien rightly argues, that all non-Christians are demon-possessed; Paul instead is saying that you and I in our unregenerate states followed Eve’s example of trusting Satan’s lies rather than God’s sure Word. Satan’s spirit, defeated by and subjected to Christ, nonetheless works effectually to energize unbelievers unto disobedience to God. You and I once were his captive audience.

          And St. Paul also teaches that you and I obeyed the lustful passions of our minds and of our flesh. The carnal, or pleasure-centered mind, is opposed to the reign of Jesus and knows no limits – yet this mind dictated the choices you and I once made. Sometimes the flesh told you to pursue sexual immorality; other times it told you to lash out relentlessly against someone who hurt you. The most-frightening aspect is that your sinful flesh knows no boundaries apart from the subduing work of Jesus Christ, yet you and I once gave full attention to what this flesh told us to think, say and do.

          Now, you might be thinking, “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t trust Jesus as my Savior. I don’t recall ever committing these heinous sorts of sins. This might apply to others, but not to me.” Look again, though, at Paul’s words: twice he stresses that all of us are included in this fatal diagnosis of sin. “We all” had our conversation in the lusts of the flesh at one time. We were dead and doomed, “like the rest” (of humanity). It does not matter if you are Jew or Gentile, Presbyterian or pagan. Before the Spirit of God gave you a new heart to believe in Christ, whether you were one day or 100 years old, you were hardened in disobedience to God.

          To understand the wonder of God’s grace in Christ, you first must appreciate the former hardness of your heart toward Him.

          Third, Paul issues the consequence of this spiritual diagnosis: because of our deadness and disobedience, you and I were doomed to God’s wrath.

          Paul employs another Hebraism when he says you and I were by nature – inherently – “children of wrath.” This means we were objects of God’s fierce and righteous anger due to us for our rebellion against Him. In the same way, the apostle writes in Romans that the wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of sinful men on earth, because our holy Lord cannot countenance any offense against Himself.

          You and I see the wrath of God being manifest all around us every day. Certainly the Lord has not yet poured out His wrath in full as He will at the Last Day; but the very curse that is on this fallen world is evidence of His anger against sin. When Adam and Eve fell, God pronounced judgment on them, on the earth and on Satan; so every time you prick your hand on a briar, mop sweat from your brow or attend a funeral, you are experiencing a moderated amount of God’s punishment for sin.

          In God’s common grace, unrepentant humans do not experience the full brunt of His wrath this side of Hell. Nonetheless, Hell is all that you and I had to look forward to – until our conversion.

          On Good Friday, the Son cried out to the Father, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” It was at that moment the Lord Jesus Christ descended into Hell for you and me, believers, as he endured the full wrath of God due to us for our sins. Those must be the most-chilling words in all of Scripture.

          But praise be to God: Jesus spoke them, so that you and I would not have to.

          I imagine Ephesians 2:1-3 are not the verses you and I might paint on a colorful backdrop and place on our refrigerator doors. These words – this diagnosis of who you once were – are not pleasing to the palate of the soul.

          For you believers in Christ, the Good News comes immediately after this passage, in verse 4. “But God” – as so many have observed – are the sweetest words we ever could hear.

          First, though, spend some time remembering the bad news – the truth of who you once were apart from Jesus. Then taste and see how delectable those words, “but God,” truly are.