Someone once said that if a preacher or a church does not preach about sin at all, it is mostly a false church. By that criterion, we can label many churches today as false. They hardly preach about sin. Their common excuse is: “We don’t want to focus on the negatives, such as sin, but rather on the positives, such as God’s love and grace.” But if we do not understand the depths of sin, we will never understand the heights of God’s grace. J.C. Ryle said, “Christ is never fully valued until sin is clearly seen.” Moreover, nothing helps believers grow in sanctification more than understanding the dynamics of sin. Remember when we studied John Owen’s The Mortification of Sin? It was a great help in my own personal life. So, we are going to study the dynamics of sin, not only from the Puritans but from the great Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2. Yes—believe it or not—we are starting Ephesians 2 today.
The Power of Contrast
We have been wonderfully blessed by Ephesians 1 with Paul’s praise and petition; now we move to Ephesians 2. In the first three chapters, Paul does not give any practical applications. By the revelation of the Holy Spirit, he simply wants to open our eyes to see the magnitude and the greatness of God’s salvation.
In Chapter 2, Paul continues to show the glory of our salvation using great contrasts. This is a “contrasting” chapter. When you want to show the glory of a white pearl, you always place it against a black cloth for contrast. In the same way, Paul shows the glory of our salvation by contrasting who and where we were with what God has done for us.
This chapter has two broad divisions based on these contrasts:
- Verses 1 to 10: The first contrast. Verse 1 says, “You were dead,” but verse 5 says, “But God… made us alive.” This describes your condition as individuals. You were in a state of death, but God, rich in mercy and love, has quickened you.
- Verses 11 to 22: The second contrast. Verse 12 says you were “separate and far,” but verse 13 says “but now you have been brought near.” This deals with our condition not just as individuals, but as a people—the church of God.
The Text: Ephesians 2:1-3
“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”
The Reality of Our Condition
The phrase “He made alive” was added by the NKJV translators for clarity; it does not appear in the original text until verse 5. Paul begins by plunging into the depths of our sinful depravity and woeful spiritual condition. He writes a long sentence without a main verb until verse 5. It isn’t that Paul does not know the rules of grammar; rather, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wanted the Ephesians to see the awful reality of their sinful state. He wants us to feel the desperate situation we were in.
Greek scholars say that in the original language, this is vivid and graphic. It strikes you again and again until all human pride and self-righteousness melt away. If you are an unbeliever, you will cry out, “Lord, mercy!” If you are a believer, you will cry out in tears, praising the riches of God’s glorious grace.
We must spend time grasping the depth of this first contrast. However, there are proud “modern Pharisees” inside the church who hate to look back at their condition in sin. They ask, “Why, Pastor? Is that not a sad topic to dig through the garbage of our past life? Let’s just talk about God’s grace.”
The Holy Spirit and the Apostle Paul knew we would never praise and glorify God as we should if we did not see the depths of sin from which He saved us. Paul takes us down and down. If you will not go down with Paul, you will not go up in worship with him. If you are not prepared for the shocking sight of what you are by nature, you will never know the bliss and exhilaration of seeing what you are by grace. To the extent that we understand our sinful condition, we will—in direct proportion—understand and appreciate the riches of God’s grace. If we have low views of how bad we were, we will have inadequate views of the glory of salvation.
The Five Steps Down: W.O.R.S.T.
In verses 1 through 3, Paul gives an ugly and naked, yet accurate, description of our condition. The Holy Spirit was sent to convict us of sin; may He open our eyes to the depth of our total depravity. I will take you to this deep dungeon, for only when you descend with me can you rise to the highest heights of heaven.
Imagine five long steps leading down into this shocking dungeon. We will go down in slow motion, one step at a time, using the acronym W.O.R.S.T.
- W: Wholly Dead
- O: Only Worldly
- R: Running after Satan
- S: Slaves to Lust
- T: Totally under Wrath
Before grace reached us, we were wholly dead. This spiritually dead condition was visible in our lifestyle: we were worldly, running after Satan, and slaves to lust. Heaven’s verdict on us was that we were “children of wrath.” This is the true condition of every person by nature before they are saved.
Step One: Wholly Dead
Today, let us take the first step and grasp what it means to be Wholly Dead. Verse 1 tells us two things: our condition and its cause. Our condition was death; the cause was “trespasses and sins.”
Scripture uses many analogies to describe the sinner: lost sheep, slaves to sin, enemies of God, corrupt trees, or the blind and sick. But to show the depth of God’s grace, Paul says you were dead. We were not just sick or weak; we were dead.
When someone dies physically, two things happen:
- No reaction to stimuli: A living person hears, sees, touches, and breathes. A dead person is radically severed from all interaction with the world. You could tell a dead man he won a 100-crore lottery, and there would be zero reaction. All interaction is over.
- No hope of restoration: There is a saying: “While there is life, there is hope.” But when death comes, hope dies. Doctors can work on a sick patient, but when death arrives, the last spark of hope is gone.
What is Spiritual Death?
Paul says in verse 2 that you were “walking” while dead. How? He is talking about spiritual death. To understand spiritual death, we must understand spiritual life. The effects of sin are so deep that we often don’t even know what spiritual life looks like. We have to go back to the Garden of Eden. Spiritual life is living for the purpose for which you were created—being sensitive to your Creator and filled with love for Him.
Think of the four “vital signs” of spiritual life (The K.I.O.C. traits):
- Knowledge (Mind): Having an accurate knowledge of God.
- Intimate Communion (Breathing): Living and breathing in fellowship with God.
- Obedience (Pulse): Delightful obedience to God’s commands.
- Conformity (Circulation): Total conformity to God’s character.
This is the life God gave Adam. His greatest delight was to think of God and live in intimate communion with Him. But God warned Adam that on the day he ate of the forbidden tree, he would “surely die.” This did not mean he would become weak or crippled; it meant the quality of life for which he was created would cease. He would be spiritually cut off from God.
When Adam sinned, he died spiritually. The signs were clear:
- Brain Dead: Instead of knowing God, his ideas became twisted. He thought he could hide from an omnipresent God behind a tree.
- Respiratory Failure: Instead of breathing in the atmosphere of God’s presence, he yearned to be where God was not.
- Heart Failure: His heart beat for obedience, but now he felt an aversion to God. When God asked, “Where are you?” he made excuses.
- Circulatory Failure: His character no longer reflected God. He stood there blaming his wife and even God for his own sin. There was no longer an inclination toward God, only an aversion.
Paul describes this in Ephesians 4:18: “Being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God.” Spiritual death is the loss of the only life that is truly life. Physical death is merely the inescapable consequence of spiritual death.
The Cause: Trespasses and Sins
Finally, what is the cause? “Trespasses and sins.” Sin is the root of this death. The wages of sin is death. But why does Paul say we all were dead? When Adam sinned, he did not act as a private person. Romans 5:12 teaches us that through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin; thus, death spread to all men because all sinned.
That is why Paul goes on to say that we were “by nature children of wrath.” We come from our mother’s womb in a state of spiritual death. The cause of this death is original sin, but I believe this verse also speaks to the effect of our death. This spiritual death not only caused us to stop loving God, but it made us start hating Him. We became enemies of God, in active rebellion against Him.
Look at the effect in the word “transgression.” It means presumptuously crossing a boundary that God has set. God says, “This is My law; it is for your good.” What makes a creature of God happily cross that line? It is because he is dead. Furthermore, the effect of our death is seen in all “sins.” This word means to “miss the mark.” We were meant to be like God, but in our dead state, we completely miss the mark. We miss the very purpose for which we were made.
This condition of death is not some theoretical theology designed to scare you into believing the gospel. It is visible in your choices and actions. What makes you transgress God’s boundaries? Why is your mind fully running after the world? Why are the things of God so boring to you? By your thoughts and actions, you are giving irrefutable proof of the truth that you are spiritually dead. These are all the effects of death; our entire way of life before God saved us was one of repeated, perpetual disobedience.
By nature, we were all darkened in our minds and born with perverted views of God. This is why the world is filled with such crooked perspectives. A man will accept any stone, mud, or unbelievable myth as a god. Yet, when we try to teach the truth of the living God, 1 Corinthians 2:14 tells us: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.” Romans 3:10 graphically lists this condition of death, saying: “There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.” How sad! The mind is darkened and the affections are perverted, leaving no desire to seek God. Why? Because man is spiritually dead.
The Silence of the Corpse
Think of the scene: God gives life and breath to all things. He forms every person in the womb and cares for them from birth. He sustains us, providing food, air, and water through His providence. We live, move, and have our being in Him. Every smile, every joy, every relationship, and every movement of our bodies is graciously given by God.
The sky above screams of His glory. Creation to the left and right tells of Him. Everything on earth, from the small ant to the massive elephant, screams of the wisdom of the Creator. Our own bodies and the voice of our conscience tell us to seek Him. Yet, “there is none who seeks after God.”
Like a mother screaming over the body of a dead child, God cries out through creation and providence, but man lies there like a corpse. He has hours of heart and mind for his mobile phone, Instagram, movies, and celebrities. He can sit and weep over a fictional drama, his heart melting for an actor’s performance—yet he does not feel a single spark of love or gratitude for his Creator and Provider.
Providence may even give him “electric shock treatment” in the ICU, but the body remains dead. There is not one loving response to billions of stimuli. What do we say of a creature sustained by God, eating God’s food and breathing God’s air, who never has one feeling for God? There is no response to the very environment that sustains him. Whatever else you may choose to call it, God calls that condition death.
On top of this, the carnal mind is at enmity with God. Romans 3 continues: “There is none righteous, no not one… they have all turned aside.” There is no delightful obedience. Life is no longer conformed to God’s character. Man was made for a high life—to know God, commune with Him, and reflect His likeness. Now, that same creature hates God.
Even when the Creator comes graciously through the Gospel, offering His own Son to save us—a grace that angels desire to look into—men, women, and children sit and can’t wait for the sermon to end. Why? Because they are wholly dead. All the stimuli of the true knowledge of God, which ought to inflame the heart and ravish the mind, only cause us to yawn and wait for the final “Amen.”
God is all-glorious and beautiful. Obeying Him is the most blessed life. His Ten Commandments are rules of love. When He says, “Keep the Sabbath,” or “Do not covet,” and points out the sins in our lives, everything within us rises in rebellion. Why? Spiritual death. There is no response to the mercies poured upon our heads for eighty years. The world is full of walking dead bodies—in our families, our workplaces, and even in our churches.
The Hopelessness of Death
Death not only cuts off the senses; it is a condition of hopelessness. There was no hope for restoration. Whatever a dead man does is the activity of a dead man. He cannot do anything to wake himself up.
A sick man’s vital powers may be nurtured through medication and care until he is strong again. But my friend, there is nothing to nurture in a dead man. He can meditate, pray, read the Bible a thousand times, fast for forty days, or punish himself for his sins—it is of no use. Life cannot come from within him. He is in a hopeless situation. This is where you and I were found. If a dead man is ever to live, there must be an intrusion from the outside. Life must come from a source totally external to himself.
To understand what it means to be saved, you must grasp your condition as the unsaved. A man can have the best education, be well-cultured, active in religion, and highly moral. He can achieve great things or practice philanthropy like Bill Gates, yet still be dead.
Our confession of faith states: “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.” Notice the precision: it doesn’t say he lost the ability to do any good. A man in a state of death can do much “good” in a worldly sense. But he has wholly lost the ability of will toward any spiritual good that leads to salvation. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves.
When the world screams with false teachers saying, “You are so worthy, God wants to bless your potential, just be confident,” the Apostle Paul comes and says, “The Gospel begins here: you are dead.“
Lessons from Church History
The church has often gone wrong by deviating from this biblical view of man’s condition. In the 4th century, a man named Pelagius taught that every person is born as their own “Adam,” without the effects of original sin. He claimed man has the full ability to choose good and could be saved by his own strength.
God raised up Augustine to counteract this heresy. Augustine accurately taught the biblical truth of God’s sovereignty in salvation. He defended the need for divine grace in the entire process—from the first quickening of life to final preservation. It was grace, grace, and only grace. His primary argument was based on Ephesians 2:1.
While the church rejected Pelagianism, the Devil introduced a more attractive form: Semi-Pelagianism. This has infected the church throughout history and is the “super-hit” of modern evangelicalism. It teaches that man is not dead, but merely sick. He isn’t fully blind; he just has poor vision. He isn’t fully deaf; he just can’t hear well. The idea is that if man uses the small faculties he still has and takes the first step toward God, then God’s grace will come to meet him and make up the difference. “You take the first step, and God will do the rest.”
This was made popular by men like Charles Finney. I used to be a devotee of Finney; I read everything he wrote. But when I came to the truth, I realized how wrong he was. He taught that man has no inward corruption or bias toward evil, but sins simply through an independent act of the will. Today, India and the rest of the world are filled with this “half-man, half-god” theology. But Ephesians 2:1 shatters that teaching completely.
Modern Errors and True Ministry
Most para-church ministries and modern churches run on this Semi-Pelagian theology. Notice how their preaching emphasizes “man’s doing.” This is “decisional salvation,” based on the idea that man has the autonomous power to decide for Christ. They say, “It is completely up to you right now,” or “Make the choice for Jesus.” This leads to high-pressure altar calls and a focus on human potential rather than sovereign grace. They use the language of self-help: “Activate the God-given potential within you.”
They think they can “win India for Jesus” through psychological gimmicks. They tell people Jesus will solve all their problems and wipe away their tears, but they never tell them they are dead. They avoid the topic of sin to keep their statistics high. If they don’t meet their “soul goals,” the funds won’t come in, and they can’t pay their thousands of workers. They try to manipulate the Holy Spirit. This is why Christianity is in such a pathetic state. May we never fall into this trap.
True ministry must be built on this foundation:
- If souls are dead, the sinner is unable to save himself. Salvation must be totally of God.
- If salvation does not come from human gimmicks or drama, then God alone can save through the “foolishness” of the preached Word. Any “salvation experience” that happens where the Word of God is not preached should be viewed with suspicion.
- Any group gathered without the preaching of God’s Word is not a living church, but a gathering of the dead.
Application
To the Believers: How do you see yourself and others? Has God given you life? I am not asking if you are a church member or if you can quote twenty verses. I am asking: Has He made you alive? If your understanding of your past condition is less than what Ephesians 2:1 reveals, that is the reason for the “cracks” in your Christian life.
If you don’t understand the depth of your deadness, you will never understand the depth of grace. This leads to a lack of gratitude, worship, and awe. It leads to Pharisaical pride and the judging of others, because you think your own “decision” contributed to your salvation. If you want to fix these cracks, go back and grasp your true condition in sin.
Examine yourselves. Test your vitals using the K.I.O.C. signs:
- Knowledge: Are you growing in the right knowledge of God?
- Communion: Do you yearn to commune with Him, or are prayer and the Bible a burden?
- Obedience: Is there a delightful obedience to His law?
- Conformity: Is your character being conformed to His? If these signs are missing, you are not experiencing life.
To those without Christ: How do you view your unsaved neighbors or children? If you view them only as “sick,” you do not see them rightly. You must see them as dead. This will transform your prayer life. If they are dead, you will not scold them into salvation or try to “tickle” them into health with clever gimmicks. You will cry out to the God who alone can impart life.
I am preaching to dead people this morning, and I know it. Why do I do it? Because I know there is a God who uses the “foolishness” of the cross to give life. You may be breathing and doing as you please, but if you lack those four vital signs, you are dead. You have wrong thoughts of God, you hide your sins thinking He does not see, and you find the things of God to be a burden. You are decaying and being prepared for hell.
Beg God to give you life. If He opens your eyes to see your decaying condition and gives you one glimpse of the beauty of the Son of God, your heart will run to Him. That is what faith is. Jesus said in John 5, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me… is passed from death unto life.”
True spiritual life begins with the right knowledge of God. The Holy Spirit will open your mind to know who God and Jesus Christ are. He will show you the glory of His work and bring you lovingly to embrace Jesus as your only hope. If that has not happened, you are still dead. And if God does not give you life, this spiritual death will become an unending second death—eternal alienation from God.
Full fury will be poured out on the “children of wrath.” But that day has not yet come. Today is the day of salvation. God’s grace has sovereignly brought this message to you today while billions have never heard it. Plead with Him. Say, “Lord, it is true! My life has been a monument to spiritual death. Give me life, that I may know You, commune with You, and obey You forever.”
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.