Before Grace

Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV

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 flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Last night, we spoke of the great need for revival in the American Church. Indeed, we spoke of the great need for revival in us as individuals within the American Church. As we said, we need to be revived because we have become disinterested, disconnected, and lethargic concerning the things of God—so much so that, in many respects, we have become spiritually drowsy. We have grown comfortable when we ought to be watchful, indifferent when we ought to be fervent, and distracted when our hearts ought to be fixed upon the things of God. We have, in a very real sense, fallen asleep and need to be awakened.

But that raises an important question: What are we to be awakened to?

What is it that needs to be refreshed within us? What truths have we allowed to become familiar to us without remaining precious to us? What realities do we need to be reminded of with renewed hearts and renewed minds?

Over the next five nights, I want us to journey together through one of the great passages of Scripture concerning our salvation: Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

We will not cover all ten verses tonight. In fact, tonight we will consider only the first three verses. But as we begin this journey through Ephesians 2:1–10, I want us to recognize that there are at least four great realities running throughout this passage—four things to which we desperately need to be awakened, refreshed, and reminded.

First, we need to remember who we were.

Second, we need to remember what Christ did for us.

Third, we need to remember who we are because of what Christ did for us.

And fourth, we need to remember what we are now called to do because of who we are in Christ.

Those four truths will unfold before us over the course of these five nights.

Tonight, we begin with the first: who we were.

Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, of course, begins in chapter 1. And it is there that he begins speaking of the wonderful reality that he himself, the Ephesian believers, and every other believer in every age has experienced. He begins by speaking of the true blessedness of our salvation.

Now, in order for someone to be truly blessed by God means something far greater than what many people may imagine it to mean.

For example, we may go to our individual places of employment this week, labor throughout the week, and on Friday receive a paycheck. In one sense, you would not say that you were “blessed” to receive that paycheck. In fact, you were owedthat paycheck because you had worked for it.

But suppose you did not show up to work at all this week. You did not use vacation time. You did not use any PTO. You did not perform a single hour of labor. And yet, on Friday, your employer placed a full paycheck in your hands.

Would you be blessed then?

Well, perhaps you might feel blessed, but even then, there would still be something missing from the illustration. You already have a prior relationship with your employer. You have been hired by him. You have worked for him before. Regardless of where you might stand with your employer at that particular moment, there was a time when you were in good standing with him, if only because he had decided to hire you.

So, if you show up, work your hours, and earn your paycheck, you are not blessed to receive that paycheck. You are receiving what you have earned.

And even if you do not show up to work, yet your employer gives you a paycheck anyway, there is still a prior relationship between you. There is still some basis for why you received that check.

So, within this illustration, if we are speaking about someone receiving a paycheck from another person, what would it mean to receive something that was truly grace?

Imagine that you and this person whom we have classified as your employer have no prior working relationship whatsoever. You have never worked for him. He has never hired you.

But let's take the illustration even further.

Though you have never worked for him, you know him, and he knows you. But the way that you know him, and the way that he knows you, is by way of opposition—utter and complete opposition.

Let's even say that you have, for no good reason, attacked his character. You have attempted to harm his family. You have sought to destroy his business. You have repeatedly done everything within your power to bring harm upon him.

And the feeling is mutual. He opposes you as much as you oppose him.

Now, suppose that that man gave you a paycheck.

Then you would truly be blessed.

Then you would truly be the recipient of grace.

Why?

Because you have done nothing to earn it. You have done nothing to deserve it. You have not worked for him. You have not earned his favor. You have not even asked him to give it to you.

In fact, you stand in opposition to him.

And yet, despite your opposition, he chooses to give you something good. He gives you the absolute opposite of what you deserve—not because you earned it, not because you merited it, and not because you persuaded him to give it to you, but simply because he chose to give it.

That is grace.

And that is what makes the salvation of the sinner so astonishing.

The blessing of salvation is not that God gives us what we have earned. If He gave us what we had earned, we would receive judgment.

The blessing is that God gives us what we could never earn, what we do not deserve, and what we could never obtain by our own efforts.

And Paul begins Ephesians 2 by reminding us of just how desperately we needed that grace.

Paul begins by saying “you,” and that “you” is not merely a reference to the Ephesian believers. It extends to every believer in every age who has been brought from death to life. Paul says:

“You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.”

Very clearly, we see here that what Paul is describing is not a person who is merely weak, or sick, or struggling, or spiritually disadvantaged. No, Paul says, “you were dead.”

What this means is that apart from Christ, every single person who is now here as a believer was once spiritually dead.

Now, this does not mean that an unbeliever is physically dead, intellectually incapable, emotionally inactive, or incapable of making ordinary choices. A person who is spiritually dead can think, reason, work, love his family, make decisions, pursue ambitions, and even participate in religion.

But spiritually, he is dead toward God.

He does not possess spiritual life. He does not naturally desire God as God ought to be desired. He does not naturally submit to God as his rightful Lord. His heart is alienated from God, and his natural inclination is away from God rather than toward Him.

Paul's language is therefore intentionally severe. A dead man does not merely need to be helped. He needs life.

That is why the gospel is ultimately not a message about self-improvement. I cannot legitimately improve myself spiritually because the problem is deeper than my behavior. I do not merely need to become a better version of myself. I need a new self. I need new life.

No, the gospel is not fundamentally a message about self-improvement. It is a message about resurrection.

And what were we dead in? Paul identifies it as “the trespasses and sins.” These two words emphasize the reality of our rebellion against God.

A trespasscarries the idea of stepping across a boundary or going astray from the proper path. God has established His righteous commands, and mankind has crossed those boundaries.

Sin speaks more broadly of falling short of God's righteous standard. It encompasses our thoughts, desires, words, actions, and attitudes that fail to conform to the holiness of God.

And notice Paul's wording: we were dead in these things.

Sin was not merely something we occasionally committed while otherwise maintaining spiritual life toward God. Sin characterized the sphere in which we lived. It was the realm of our existence apart from Christ.

And it was in these trespasses and sins that we once walked.

Now, you may ask, “You have said that we were spiritually dead, yet now you say that we walked. How can a dead man walk?”

We walkedin these things because, although we were certainly dead toward God, we were very much alive to sin.

We walked in it.

We followed its paths.

We lived according to its patterns.

Spiritual death did not mean inactivity. It meant that our activity was directed away from God. We were alive physically, active intellectually, socially, emotionally, and even religiously—but spiritually, we were dead toward the God who created us.

Indeed, Paul says that we were “following the course of this world.” We were living according to the standards of the world rather than according to the standards of God.

We allowed—and at times even gleefully embraced—what our culture considered normal, desirable, acceptable, and important, while giving little or no consideration to the will of God.

The world said, “This is how you should live!”

The Lord said, “This is how you must live!”

And we happily embraced the former while rejecting the latter.

And in so doing, Paul says that we were “following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

Indeed, unbeknownst to us, we were not merely following a culture or adopting a particular way of life. We were following a real spiritual power, identified here as “the prince of the power of the air.” This, of course, is none other than Satan.

The word “prince”refers to a ruler or one who exercises authority. Paul is therefore presenting Satan as a spiritual ruler who exercises real authority—but authority that is strictly limited and entirely subordinate to the sovereign authority of God.

And that authority is described as being “of the air.” The reference to “the air” here is not simply a reference to the atmosphere surrounding the earth, but to the spiritual realm—the sphere in which these spiritual powers operate.

Paul is therefore recognizing the reality of Satan's spiritual influence and authority, while at the same time making clear that Satan is no sovereign. He is a creature, not the Creator. He is a rebel, not a rival. Whatever authority he exercises is permitted by God and remains completely subject to the sovereign rule of God.

And that means that even when we were walking according to the course of this world and following the prince of the power of the air, we were never outside the sovereign authority of God.

Satan was not sovereign over us.

The world was not sovereign over us.

God was—and is—sovereign.

But that spirit—the Satanic spirit—is at work even now, Paul says, “in the sons of disobedience.”

Indeed, the unsaved man foolishly believes that he is free, that he is autonomous, that he is the master of his own life, without realizing that he is under the influence of a spiritual power that is actively at work in him even now.

It is “now at work”—tempting, deceiving, accusing, and seeking to turn people away from God and toward sin.

And as that influence is exercised upon them, they are described as “sons of disobedience.” They are characterized by disobedience. They are defined by a posture of rebellion against God. Their lives are marked by resistance to the authority and will of God.

And we all were once in that same condition.

Verse 3 makes this unmistakably clear:

“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.”

We were not merely victims of external influences. We ourselves willingly lived according to our sinful desires. Our fallen nature produced desires that were contrary to God, and we followed those desires rather than submitting ourselves to Him.

And notice Paul's emphasis: “we all.”

This is universal.

Jew and Gentile.

Religious and irreligious.

Respectable and immoral.

We all shared the same fundamental condition apart from Christ.

Universally, “we all” were opposed to God.

Universally, “we all” stood justly condemned before God.

Universally, “we all” were children of wrath by nature.

And yet, universally, “we all” who are in Christ today have been blessed by God even though we once stood in precisely that condition.

We were dead, yet God gave us life.

We were rebels, yet God reconciled us to Himself.

We were children of wrath, yet God made us children of grace.

And that brings us back to what Paul has already told us in chapter 1.

Before Paul ever tells us in chapter 2 what we were, he tells us in chapter 1 what God had determined to do for us in Christ.

Listen to the language Paul uses in Ephesians 1:

“He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

“He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”

And then Paul says that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

Now, notice something very important.

Paul does not present these blessings as something we had earned.

He does not say that God looked down through the corridors of human history and found people who were better than others and therefore chose them.

He does not say that God saw something inherently righteous within us and responded to that righteousness.

No.

Paul says that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

Before we had done anything.

Before we had accomplished anything.

Before we had believed anything.

Before we had demonstrated anything worthy of His favor.

Before the foundation of the world.

And that means that when we come to Ephesians 2 and read, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins,” we cannot understand that statement as though God chose us because we were spiritually alive.

He chose us when there was nothing in us that could commend us to Him.

He chose us knowing precisely what we were by nature.

Dead.

Sinful.

Rebellious.

Disobedient.

Children of wrath.

And that is what makes the grace of God so astonishing.

Election does not diminish grace.

Election magnifies grace.

Because if salvation ultimately depended upon something worthy or desirable that God found within us, then we would have some reason to boast.

But Paul removes every ground for boasting.

The sinner cannot say, “God chose me because I was wiser.”

He cannot say, “God chose me because I was more righteous.”

He cannot say, “God chose me because He saw that I would make the right decision while others would not.”

The glory belongs to God.

Paul says in Ephesians 1 that God chose us “according to the purpose of his will.”

And here in Ephesians 2, Paul tells us what we were when that grace came to us.

We were dead.

We were walking in trespasses and sins.

We were following the course of this world.

We were following the prince of the power of the air.

We were living according to the passions and desires of our flesh.

We were, by nature, children of wrath.

That is who we were.

And yet, chapter 1 says, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

Do you see the glory of this?

The foundation of our salvation is not found in something we did for God.

The foundation of our salvation is found in what God purposed to do for us in Christ.

And this is precisely why Paul can move from chapter 1 into chapter 2 without contradiction.

Chapter 1 tells us what God purposed.

Chapter 2 tells us what we were.

And the glorious truth that brings those two chapters together is that God's gracious purpose was accomplished for people who, by nature, were completely unable to rescue themselves.

The people whom Paul says were chosen in chapter 1 are the same people he says were dead in chapter 2.

The people whom Paul says were predestined for adoption in chapter 1 are the same people who were, by nature, children of wrath in chapter 2.

The people whom Paul says have redemption and forgiveness in chapter 1 are the same people whose lives were once characterized by trespasses and sins in chapter 2.

And therefore, when we look back upon our salvation, we have no reason to congratulate ourselves.

We have every reason to worship God.

We cannot look at another person and say, “I was smarter than you.”

We cannot say, “I was better than you.”

We cannot say, “I was more deserving than you.”

We can only say:

“By the grace of God, I am what I am.”

And perhaps that is one of the great things to which we need to be awakened during these nights of revival.

We have become so familiar with the language of salvation that we can speak of grace without being astonished by grace.

We can sing about the cross without trembling at what was accomplished there.

We can speak about election, redemption, forgiveness, adoption, and eternal life as theological concepts without stopping to consider the condition from which God rescued us.

But Paul will not allow us to do that.

Before he tells us the heights to which grace has brought us, he takes us down into the depths from which grace rescued us.

He makes us look honestly at what we were.

We were dead.

We were rebellious.

We were enslaved to the patterns of this fallen world.

We were under the influence of the prince of the power of the air.

We were living according to the desires of our flesh.

We were children of wrath.

And if we understand that rightly, then the question is not, “Why didn't God save more deserving people?”

The question is, “Why did God save any of us?”

And the answer is not found in us.

The answer is found in God.

Amen?