1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - 6 and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
This particular text, with which most of us are quite familiar, will be our focus during the next 3 Sundays, as we ask the question, “Why do we need a Saviour?”
Today we will look at the reality which Paul stresses in verse 1, “dead in sins,” and next week we will consider just what it means to be “children of wrath,” as Paul writes in verse 3. For us to fully appreciate our need of a Saviour, we need to understand just how desperately lost we are without salvation in Jesus Christ, so in our final instalment in 2 weeks’ time, we will be looking at the wonderful transition from condemnation to grace and forgiveness, which Paul begins with two crucial words in verse 4: “But God.”
Ephesians 2:1-10 is such an important passage of Scripture, as it describes not only how God has saved us by grace through faith, but what He has saved us from.
Ask anyone if they think they are a good person, and they will almost always reply that they are. In the same breath, most of us would readily admit that we’re not perfect, but generally speaking, the answer we usually hear is, “Yes, I think I’m a good person, and when I die, I believe that God will accept me, and I will go to heaven.”
The Bible though, paints a very different picture. Just the most basic of Bible studies will confirm that things are not as bad as we thought they were. They are much, much worse.
This is why the Gospel is such good news, because through faith in Jesus Christ, we are rescued out of and saved from a fate far worse than we could possibly imagine. This is why in verses 11 to 13, Paul writes, “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands - remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
A key word Paul uses twice in these verses is “remember.” One of the best ways to appreciate just what God has done for us is to remember what we once were and where we would be without a Saviour, both in this world and in eternity.
As we strive to remain faithful to Christ, something which is not easy when we are surrounded by so much temptation and evil in this ever-darkening world, we would do well to take to heart what Paul teaches in verse 12. Remember that once we were cut off from Christ, without any hope of heaven. Remember that before coming to Christ in repentance and faith, we were strangers to the covenants of promise, with no hope and without God in the world.
Paul makes it very clear what we are without a Saviour in verse 1. “You were dead in trespasses and sins.” This is the first reason why we need to be saved, and Paul repeats just how bad our situation without Jesus is in verse 5. “We were dead in our trespasses.”
The New Bible Commentary says of Ephesians 2:1, “Those bound in sin are doomed to death, and so already belong to its realm. The very thing they think of as ‘life’ is but a foretaste of death, because it is without God.”
If you were to ask most Christians why sin is a problem, and why we need a Saviour from our sins, the answer they’d give would be something like, “Sin makes us guilty before God and brings us under condemnation, so we need a Saviour who can forgive our sins and take away our punishment.”
That’s a good answer, but this is not really the point of Ephesians 2 verses 1 and 5, because in these two verses Paul challenges the mistaken belief that we’re not really that bad, and that we just need a Saviour to tidy up a few loose ends. Again, things are not as bad as we thought they were - they are far worse.
The reason we need a Saviour is not just that we have offended God and we need to be forgiven for our naughty little misdemeanours, and we really should try a little harder to be nicer people. The reason we need a Saviour is that we are spiritually dead.
If we are ever to grasp the glory of the Gospel and just what it is that God has done for us, we need to first understand what it means to be dead in our trespasses and sins, because if this means what it looks like it means, we don’t need just any Saviour, but a great Saviour, because we are sinners by our very nature.
The sins we commit are an outward sign of a deep-rooted inner problem.
Paul says something very important in verse 3 which helps us to understand just how serious and how desperate things really are. “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
What this means is that the things we have done to bring the wrath of God upon us, we have done by our nature. We need a Saviour not just because we have sinned, but because we have sinned by our nature, by who we are. We are by nature sinners. Sin comes naturally to us. Anyone who has ever been the parent of toddlers knows this to be true.
At the end of verse 2 Paul says that we are “sons of disobedience.” This means that disobedience is in our spiritual genes. You could say that rebellion runs in the human family, because it is part of our sinful nature.
The fact that we are alive to sin and rebellion means that we are dead to the possibility of being in submission to God. In our natural, sinful state, we are alive to disobedience, and dead to obedience. We are alive to unbelief, and dead to faith.
Because we are spiritually dead, it is impossible for us to do anything for the glory of God. In our fallen state, (a state into which we are born, remember,) we were dead - dead to righteousness, dead to holiness, dead to obedience and dead to faith.
This is our true spiritual state before our salvation, so the sooner we get this idea that we are basically good people but not perfect out of our heads, the better. Nothing could be further from the truth.
John Calvin, in his commentary on Ephesians 2:1 calls our spiritual death “a real and present death.” Paul is not using hyperbole in this passage to emphasise his point. He is not saying that our sin is so bad that it’s almost like being dead. No - he insists that we really are dead in our trespasses and sins.
Apart from salvation through Jesus Christ, we are spiritually dead. Without a Saviour we are completely cut off from God. You can’t be both dead and alive. Spiritual death doesn’t mean that there is a little flicker of life within us. There is nothing but death, and no spiritual life whatsoever. This is why we need not only a Saviour who brings forgiveness for our sins, but we need spiritual life so that our hearts would turn to God so that we can learn how to trust and obey Him. We need spiritual resurrection, not just a few tweaks and improvements here and there.
The study notes in the Reformation Study Bible on this spiritual resurrection say, “It was Jesus who first declared that spiritual rebirth was an absolute necessity for entering the kingdom of God. He declared to Nicodemus in John 3:3, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ The word unless in Jesus’ teaching signals a universally necessary condition for seeing and entering the kingdom of God. Rebirth, then, is an essential part of Christianity; without it, entrance into God’s kingdom is impossible. Regeneration is the theological term used to describe rebirth. It refers to a new generating, a new genesis, a new beginning. It is more than ‘turning over a new leaf.’ It marks the beginning of a new life in a radically renewed person. Peter speaks of believers having ‘been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.’” The only cure for death is life.
This principle is taught in verse 10, where Paul writes, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Paul uses the word ‘created.’ This reminds us that the state we were in before we had a Saviour was so bad that we needed God not only to forgive us but also to create us. It takes a supernatural work of God, a miracle which only He can perform, to give us the new resurrection life, and make us new creations to give us the spiritual life we so badly need. Being dead in our trespasses and sins meant that we had no spiritual life, so God created it within us.
Jesus said in John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Through the gift of faith to believe in Jesus Christ, we are raised to spiritual life from spiritual death.
Our true condition before being raised to spiritual life challenges so much of what we have been led to believe about ourselves. Every single thought, whatever feelings we felt or whatever deeds we did - in fact, everything about us - were not the thoughts and feelings and deeds of the Spirit but of the flesh. Nothing that we thought or felt or did was spiritual, because we were dead spiritually. Everything we thought and felt and did came from what we were by nature, and by nature we were children of wrath, dead in our trespasses and sins.
This has serious implications for us, because if this is true, since we had no spiritual life within us but only death, everything we did before coming to salvation was sin. Sin is falling short of the glory of God, and no-one who is spiritually dead can do anything for the glory of God. Before coming to Christ, all we did was sin.
A common objection at this point is, what about so many non-Christians who do good deeds? The problem with this question is that we are measuring goodness by human standards. Of course there are some real scoundrels out there, but there are also many others who really do the most wonderful things for others.
We’re not denying that, but again, this is only when we use our low, sin-tainted moral standards to measure what is good and what is bad. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” The NIV translation says “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
Romans 14:23 says, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” These verses may challenge us, but this is the word of God. We can’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible we prefer to ignore or disagree with, and Isaiah 64:6 and Romans 14:23 are just two examples which proclaim a very uncomfortable truth: All that any of us can do without a Saviour is sin, and the reason is that by nature we are spiritually dead.
The only way to measure our so-called good deeds is to use a moral standard outside of ourselves. God defines what is good and evil, not us. This is why even our most righteous acts, if done by a spiritually dead person - someone who is not saved by Jesus Christ - even those acts are sinful.
Until such time as we are spiritually resurrected by Jesus Christ, nothing we do is spiritual. This is why before coming to faith, all of our good deeds, no matter how wonderful and noble they may be by human standards, are like filthy rags in the eyes of a Holy God.
I know this concept challenges and even offends us, but this is what the Bible teaches. Paul explains the difference between the saved and unsaved in Romans 8:5-10 where he writes, “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
The mind of the flesh cannot submit to God. What this means is that until the Saviour comes and makes us alive by His Spirit, we are “in the flesh,” as Paul writes in verse 9, which, as he writes in verse 7, is “hostile to God.”
In fact, so hostile is the sinful flesh towards God, that it cannot submit to God, and is therefore incapable of pleasing God. Verse 6 teaches that the mind of the flesh is death. Spiritual death is the result of being without the Spirit of God, so in the flesh we are completely unable to submit to God or to please Him.
Once we understand this truth, it helps us to see the total ineffectiveness of what we might consider to be good deeds done in the flesh. Outside of Jesus Christ, everything we do is insubordination against God and displeasing to Him.
There are other passages of Scripture which clearly teach the condition of spiritual death, and they all point us to our desperate need of a Saviour.
1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Without a Saviour to move us from death to life, our values and our standards are so perverted, that when we hear the truth of the Gospel, we will think it is foolishness.
How often, as a Christian, do you hear someone say, “You don’t believe all that do you?” When they say that, they are merely confirming the truth of 1 Corinthians 2:14, because our sinful understanding of what is right and wrong before being made spiritually alive makes it impossible for us to grasp the truth for ourselves and see our need of salvation.
Salvation is a work of God from beginning to end. I’ve mentioned this in the past, but there is no truth in this popular teaching you often hear: If there are 100 steps between you and God, He will take 99 of them, and He is just waiting for you to take that one, final, single step towards Him. The reason there is no truth in this idea is very simple. Dead men can’t walk.
Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” In her book “How Do I Get to Heaven? Traveling the Romans Road,” Pamela McQuade wrote, “The truth is that if we were left to our own desires, caught in our own sin, we would never come to Him at all.”
Paul reinforces the truth of spiritual death in Romans 3 where he writes, “All, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” (Romans 3:9-18)
The 18th century theologian John Gill wrote of this passage, “The apostle reassumes his former assertion, and supports it, that a carnal circumcised Jew is no better than a carnal uncircumcised Gentile. They are both under the power and guilt of sin; and as a further evidence of it, he produces in Romans 3, several passages out of the book of Psalms, and out of the prophecies of Isaiah, which fully express the sad corruption of human nature.”
Without a Saviour we are ruled by sin, which is precisely why we need the grace and mercy of God to save us. In our natural, fallen state, we have no inclination or desire to seek God. The reformed understanding of this state of the human heart is what is known as total depravity, the logical conclusion of which, is that none of our deeds are good, because they are all tainted by sin.
Without a Saviour, our hearts are so hardened by sin that they can only lead us in one direction: further spiritual ignorance and further alienation from God. This hardness is the death Paul was talking about in Ephesians 2:1 and 5.
Let’s have a look at what Jesus had to say with regards to spiritual death. In Matthew 23 He gives a lengthy and withering rebuke to the religious elite, and in verses 27 and 28 He said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
This is another example of outward righteousness by those who are spiritually dead - in this case the religious scribes and Pharisees. Jesus accuses them of being clean and religious on the outside, while on the inside there is only death.
The temptation here is to look down our noses, so to speak, at the Pharisees who fully deserved this rebuke, but there is a warning we need to see too.
The reason that we do not submit to God in our natural, sinful state, is because we don’t want to. Jesus warns in verse 27 that our lives can appear to be righteous on the outside, but we are still dead on the inside. This is our default setting as sinners, and without the mercy of God and the atoning death of Jesus on our behalf, there is nothing we can do about it.
We need a Saviour not to make our good deeds a little better. We need a Saviour not to make us better people than we already are.
No - we need a Saviour because we are spiritually dead and utterly helpless without Him, no matter how good we may look on the outside.
These are hard truths, and they really do challenge us, but we cannot afford to avoid the truth of what the Word of God tells us about who we really are outside of salvation in Christ. Next week we’ll be looking at what it means to be children of wrath as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:3. This will further reinforce our need for a Saviour, but I would be remiss in my duty if I were to not remind us of the good news of the Gospel.
Yes, our situation is bad. It is desperately bad, and far worse than we have been fooled into thinking it is, which is why the offer of forgiveness through Jesus Christ is such good news.
If you have repented of your sin, and have turned to Christ and been saved by Him, take courage, because you are His for all of eternity. Romans 6:17-18 says, “Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
Before coming to Christ, you were a slave to sin, but now, because of His mercy and His sacrifice on the cross for you, He has brought you from death to life, and now you are a slave to righteousness. John MacArthur explains these verses by writing, “New believers have an innate and compelling desire to know and obey God’s Word.”
If you are still dead in your trespasses and sins, know that God loves you enough to send His only Son to be your Saviour.
Less than a week ago we celebrated Christmas, the glorious truth that God Himself came into this world, and the reason He came was to save you from spiritual death and its awful, eternal consequences. There is hope.
Jesus Himself said in John 5:24-25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
Finally, from the very last chapter of the Bible, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. ‘I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.’ The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” (Revelation 22:14-17)
Turn to Jesus Christ, and He will save you. He is the Saviour you need.