Children of Wrath
Why We Need a Savior, Part 2
Ephesians 2:1-3
July 8, 2007
If you were here last week, you will notice that the message and the Scripture for this week are exactly the same as last week. No, I didn’t take the week off! And, it’s not because you took the week off either. This is the second part of the examination of a crucial topic. Do you know why you need a Savior? Could you confidently tell an inquiring neighbor or friend or relative why they need a Savior? I hope after this morning that you will feel more confident and knowledgeable if you’re ever asked why you believe we all need a Savior, why Jesus died and rose again on the third day to save us from our sin.
This message, in a way, is a before and after picture of each of us: before we came to Christ and after we came to Christ.
Let’s begin by reading today’s Scripture passage. Please turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter two and we’ll read verse 1 through 3.
“And although you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly lived according to this world's present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience, among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest... “
“She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." Matthew 1:21
We are talking about our need for a Savior. There are three reasons mentioned in Ephesians 2:1–3. We need a Savior according to verse 1 because we are dead in sin. We need a Savior according to verse 2 because we are captive to an alien power. And we need a Savior according to verse 3 because we are children of wrath.
If it helps your memory, we could say there are three "S's":
1. we were sick unto death with sin;
2. we were sabotaged by Satan;
3. and we were sentenced to hell.
Therefore we are in desperate need of a great Savior.
The first thing I want to stress today is that these three things are not what you will find out about yourself in the newspaper or TIME or NEWSWEEK. They are not part of our cultural assumptions about mankind. Virtually no one, outside a fairly small group of evangelicals, seriously believes:
1. that without a Savior all people are dead in sin and incapable of any spiritual good; and
2. that without a Savior all people are captured and blinded by an evil, supernatural person named Satan; and
3. that without a Savior all people are under the wrath of God and sentenced to eternal torment in hell.
There are two fundamental reasons why these things are not believed:
1. because they are unflattering to human nature, and
2. because they have to be learned from God not man. And to learn from God we start with the Word of God
If there is going to be any salvation at all, there must be a divine revelation. God must reveal these things to us or we perish. We can't find them out from television or radio or medicine or psychology or art. We learn the truth about ourselves from the Word of God. And once our eyes are opened to the truth that God reveals, then we can see confirmations of it in virtually all the sciences and arts. Without God we are blind. We are like a blind man or woman trying to imagine color, a blind man or woman sitting in darkness trying to imagine light. You get the picture. Unless God removes our blinders we cannot see our need for Him. The enemy of our souls won’t remove those blinders, will he? He wants us to believe Karl Marx who said "Religion is the opiate of the people."
That statement is not simply classic Marxism. It is now classic Canadian materialism. The difference is that Canadian materialism doesn't outlaw religion; it imitates it. That is the real meaning of Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a God substitute. Materialism is the opiate of the people. Materialism is the religion of today.
The true meaning of Christmas—that God sent his Son into the world to save us from our evil hearts of sin (Matthew 1:21), and to destroy the works of the devil in our habits and homes and schools and workplaces (1 John 3:8), and to rescue us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10)—that true meaning of Christmas is unacceptable to the spirit of this world. But the truth of the birth of Jesus is so undeniable that the god of this world behind materialism cannot deny it outright, so he simply imitates it with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and a hundred other trappings to direct the religious impulses of the masses into economically profitable channels.
The only way out of this cultural slavery is to listen to the witness of God about ourselves found in the Bible. Not the witness of Dave Holden, or the editorial page, or the evening news, or McLeans. God has spoken. His word is preserved for us in the Bible. If you let this book reveal your condition, take off the blinders, to be sure, you are an alien and an exile. But that is a small price to pay to be in step with God. I urge you to consider seriously today the truth of Ephesians 2:2—that without a Savior we are captive to an alien prince; and the truth of Ephesians 2:3—that without a Savior we are children of wrath.
We are captive to an alien prince: there are three explanations for this, so let’s look again at verses 1 and 2:
“And although you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly lived according to this world's present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience,”
There are at least three things in this verse we need to understand:
1. there is a being who rules over the authority of the air;
2. this being is a spirit who works in the hearts and lives of people who have no Savior ";
3. the result is that people without a Savior walk, or live, in tune with this evil age.
Let's look at these one at a time.
1. Prince of the Power of the Air
What does it mean to say that there is a prince of the power of the air? Or: a ruler of the authority of the air?
Air Is Everywhere
Air is where we live. Between heaven above and the earth beneath is the realm of air, and that is the habitation of man. Sometimes we say things like, "There's excitement in the air." What we mean is that excitement seems to be gripping everybody. Its influence is so widespread that it must simply be in the air.
That is Paul's point. The influence of the power spoken of in verse 2 is so pervasive, that it can be called the power of the air. Man has to have air to live. The power of the air is therefore a power that can get at man everywhere. The whole inhabited world is the domain of this power.
But what is this authority or power of the air? Ephesians 6:12 says: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.”
Demonic forces are given four different descriptions. Paul says that we contend or struggle with them. That is, they are not far away. They are as close as the air we breathe. Then he calls some of them "world rulers." Their sphere of activity is not just hell or heaven. It is the world, the place where people live. Satan is called the prince of this world. The whole world is his kingdom. God has allowed Satan to have dominion over this world because He’s created us to be citizens of heaven. We are not to be too attached to this world.
When you put all this together, what you have is the ruler or "authority of the air" mentioned in 2:2. In other words demonic powers and authorities rule the world of man.
The Prince of Demonic Forces
And there is a prince or ruler over them all. This no doubt refers to Satan or Beelzebub. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul calls him the "god of this age." Jesus calls him the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). And Satan himself in Luke 4:6 tempts Jesus with world rule by saying, "And he said to him, "To you I will grant this whole realm--and the glory that goes along with it, for to me it has been relinquished, and I can give it to anyone I wish."
The Norm of This World Is Evil
Now what does this mean? It means that the norm of the world in which we live is evil. During the age in which we live, God permits that the world is under the control of Satan.
So Paul says in Galatians 1:3,4: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father,
And in Colossians 1:13 he says that "He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves,"
And John says in 1 John 5:19, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the [power of] the evil one."
So God has indeed begun to save people from the power of darkness. At the cross the decisive death blow was struck against Satan (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14). Always remember, if you are a believer and have the indwelling Holy Spirit, then "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). Nevertheless, the way of the cross is narrow and few there be that find it, and the way of Satan is broad and many there be that find it. By and large the world rejects the Savior. And without a Savior the prince of the power of the air reigns over the sons of disobedience.
That leads to the second part of verse 2. How does Satan exert his rule in the world? At the end of the verse he is called "the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived"—that is, before we had a Savior! So the answer is that Satan exercises his rule by working in the hearts and lives of people without a Savior. He has easy access to their will because he has blinded them and all ability to resist him in faith is dead in sin.
In other words we need a Savior not just because we were dead in sin, but also because Satan stood watch to keep us dead. Remember, the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers.
Moral Corruption and Its Promotion in the World
You can see this all through our culture—the teaming up of individual moral corruption with the promoters and supporters of that corruption which make escape from that corruption harder and harder. For example,
the moral corruption of drug addiction is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by pushers;
the moral corruption of gambling is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by legislators who legalize and institutionalize lotteries and VLTs;
the moral corruption of prostitution is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by pimps;
the moral corruption of habitual sexual fantasizing is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by the exploitation of bodies in advertising and videos and movies and magazines.
How does Satan pull this off? How does he work in the sons of disobedience? Let's look at two other texts that give two answers to this question. One of them we’ve already looked at: 2 Corinthians 4 , and verse 4. Now let’s look at the verse preceding it – verse 3
2 Corinthian 4:3–4
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. As I’ve said before, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the truth, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
In other words the way Satan compounds the hopelessness of people who are dead in sin is to keep them from seeing anything glorious in the gospel of Christ. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18) for two reasons:
1. "The natural man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are supernatural. They are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). So he is blind to the true significance of the gospel because he is spiritually dead in the natural.
2. The other reason the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing is that Satan works around the clock to prevent the Word of God from having any effect on the unbeliever's heart. For example, in the parable of the four soils, he is pictured as a bird that snatches away seed before it can produce life. "When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart" (Matthew 13:19).
We have an enemy. Without a Savior, we were blinded by Self – our sin nature, our own disease of sin AND by the work of Satan. So we were doubly blind and doubly in need of a Savior.
I mentioned earlier that there were two passages that tell us how Satan pulls the wool over our eyes. Now let’s look at the second one. Acts 5:3 says: "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds from the sale of the land?"
Satan works in the sons of disobedience not only by blinding them to the glory of the gospel, but also by filling their hearts with extraordinary desires to do evil. Perhaps the most extraordinary example of Satan’s power to put evil desires into our hearts is what he did in to Judas. Luke 22:3 says that "Satan entered Judas the one called Iscariot . . . he went away and discussed with the chief priests and officers of the temple how he might betray [Jesus]."
Our Hopeless Condition Without a Savior
We were not only dead in sin. We were captive to the father of lies. Jesus said in John 8:44, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires." We were dead to God and enslaved to Satan. There was only one hope, and it was not in ourselves.
Paul put it like this in 2 Timothy 2:25–26—When the ministry of the Word is applied in love to an unbeliever, "He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, correcting opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance and then knowledge of the truth and they will come to their senses and escape the devil's trap where they are held captive by him to do his will."
We were captive too. We were dead to God and fully in support of the wishes of Satan. There was only one hope—a Savior: "God may perhaps grant that we repent and escape . . . "
How Satan Works in the Sons of Disobedience
So the answer to the question how Satan works in the sons of disobedience is, at least partly, that he blinds them to the glory of Christ in the gospel so that all they see is foolishness, and he fills their hearts with overpowering desires to do his will. In this way we were all once held captive to an alien power and in desperate need of a Savior.
3. Following the Course of This World
I have just a fem more comments about Ephesians 2:2. We have seen that there is a ruler over the evil authority of the air. This ruler is Satan. He works in all those who are without a Savior. The result is that we all once walked "following the course of this world." Or literally, we once walked "according to the age of this world."
Walking According to the Age of This World
The "age of this world" refers to the period of time appointed by God for this fallen world. During this age (which Paul calls an "evil age"—Galatians 1:4) the spirit of the times is by and large given into the authority of Satan, as Luke purports in Luke 4:6. So when the text says that we once walked according to this age, it simply means that we were in step with the times. We were not aliens and exiles. We felt right at home with the spirit of the age. Satan ruled the world. Satan ruled us. And so there was harmony, and we fit right in. As far as we were concerned, all was well.
This is the way God sees the world—ruled by an alien prince, blinding the minds of unbelievers, filling them with ungodly desires, holding them captive to do his will, and then causing them to think all is well because they are right in step with the times.
That was the condition of every one of us until we were made alive and rescued from Satan by the Savior.
But there remains one more thing to say concerning our condition without a Savior. At the end of verse 3 Paul says that "we were by nature children of wrath."
Whose Wrath?
Ephesians 5:5–6 puts it like this: “For you can be confident of this one thing: that no person who is immoral, impure, or greedy (such a person is an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let nobody deceive you with empty words, for because of these things God's wrath comes on the sons of disobedience.”
So it is God's wrath that is coming. We were "by nature children of the wrath OF GOD." Which means that we naturally did those things which God hates. By nature we rejected the knowledge of God, and by nature we refused the gospel, we found it foolishness (1 Corinthians 2:14), and by nature we were filled with desires that amounted to idolatry (Colossians 3:5).
Righteous Wrath
And what we learn from Scripture is that God would be unrighteous if he looked with indifference on our sin, because our sin dishonors him so much. Therefore 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9 says, “For from you the message of the Lord has echoed forth not just in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place reports of your faith in God have spread, so that we do not need to say anything. For people everywhere report how you welcomed us and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God “
The Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones died in 1981. He was a great preacher at the Westminster Chapel in London for 40 years. The year before his death when he was 81 years old, Christianity Today asked him, "Do you have any final word for our generation?" He answered simply by quoting 1 Thessalonians 1:10, "Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come."
Jesus is our Savior. Turn to him and be saved—from the sickness of sin, the captivity of Satan, and the sentence of hell. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other name given among men by which you can be saved.