Get Out of the Graveyard

We’ve been talking about our spiritual possessions in Christ. The Apostle Paul now turns to a complementary truth: our spiritual position in Christ.

First he explains what God has done for all sinners in general; then he explains what God did for the Gentiles in particular. The sinner who trusts Christ has been raised and seated on the throne (Eph. 2:1–10), and believing Jews and Gentiles have been reconciled and set into the temple (Eph. 2:11–22).

What a miracle of God’s grace! We are taken out of the great graveyard of sin and placed into the throne room of glory.

Maybe the easiest way for us to approach this long paragraph is to see in it four specific works. We’ll look at the first one this morning.

Let’s read...

Ephesians 2:1–3 NKJV

1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 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, 3 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.

Here Paul gives a complete picture of the terrible spiritual condition of the person without Christ. He lists out their characteristics. First...

Without Christ We’re Dead

Ephesians 2:1 NKJV

1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

Obviously, this means spiritually dead; that is, without Christ we’re unable to understand and appreciate spiritual things.

He possesses no spiritual life, and he can do nothing of himself to please God.

Just as a person physically dead does not respond to physical stimuli, so a person spiritually dead is unable to respond to spiritual things.

A corpse doesn’t hear the conversation going on in the funeral parlor. He has no appetite for food or drink; he feels no pain; he is dead. Just so with the inner man of the unsaved person. His spiritual faculties are not functioning, and they cannot function until God gives him life.

The cause of this spiritual death is “trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). In the Bible, death basically means “separation,” not only physically, as the spirit separated from the body (James 2:26), but also spiritually, as the spirit separated from God (Isa. 59:2).

The unbeliever is not sick; he is dead! He does not need resuscitation; he needs resurrection.

All lost sinners are dead, and the only difference between one sinner and another is the state of decay. The lost derelict on skid row may be more decayed outwardly than the unsaved society leader, but both are dead in sin—and one corpse cannot be more dead than another!

This means that our world is one vast graveyard, filled with people who are dead while they live (1 Tim. 5:6).

Next...

Our Death Began with Disobedience

Ephesians 2:2–3 NKJV

2 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, 3 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.

This was the beginning of man’s spiritual death—his disobedience to the will of God. God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Satan said, “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), and because they believed this lie, the first man and woman sinned and experienced immediate spiritual death and ultimate physical death.

Since that time, mankind has lived in disobedience to God. There are three forces that encourage man in his disobedience—the world, the devil, and the flesh.

1. The world, or world-system, puts pressure on each person to try to get him to conform (Rom. 12:2). Jesus Christ was not “of this world” and neither are His people (John 8:23; 17:14). But the unsaved person, either consciously or unconsciously, is controlled by the values and attitudes of this world.

2. The devil is “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” This does not mean that Satan is personally at work in the life of each unbeliever, since Satan as a created being is limited in space. Unlike God, who is omnipresent, Satan cannot be in all places at one time.

But because of his demonic associates (Eph. 6:11–12), and his power over the world system (John 12:31), Satan influences the lives of all unbelievers, and also seeks to influence believers. He wants to make people “children of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2; 5:6). He himself was disobedient to God, so he wants others to disobey Him too.

One of Satan’s chief tools for getting people to disobey God is lies. He is a liar (John 8:44), and it was his lie at the beginning of human history, “Ye shall not surely die,” that plunged the human race into sin. The unsaved multitudes in today’s world system disobey God because they believe the lies of Satan. When a person believes and practices a lie, he becomes a child of disobedience.

3. The flesh is the third force that encourages the unbeliever to disobey God. By the flesh Paul does not mean the body, because of itself, the body is not sinful.

The flesh refers to that fallen nature that we were born with, that wants to control the body and the mind and make us disobey God. Why does a sinner behave like a sinner? Because he has the nature of a sinner (Pss. 51:5; 58:3). This sinful nature the Bible calls “the flesh.”

Is it any wonder that the unsaved person is disobedient to God? He is controlled by the world, the flesh, and the devil, the three great enemies of God! And he cannot change his own nature or, of himself, overcome the world and the devil. He needs outside help, and that help can come only from God.

Without Christ We are Depraved

Ephesians 2:3 NKJV

3 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 lost sinner lives to please the “desires of the flesh and the wishes of the mind” (literal translation).

His actions are sinful because his appetites are sinful.

If you look up the definition of the word depraved, it means, “morally corrupt, wicked.”

When you apply the word depraved to the unsaved person, you are not saying that he only does evil, or that he is incapable of doing good.

You are simply saying that he is incapable of doing anything to merit salvation or meet the high standards of God’s holiness.

Jesus said that lost sinners do good to each other (Luke 6:33), and to their children (Luke 11:13), but they cannot do anything spiritually good to please God. The natives on Malta who kindly assisted Paul and his friends after the shipwreck certainly did good works, but they still needed to be saved (Acts 28:1–2).

Without Christ We’re Doomed

Ephesians 2:3 NKJV

3 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.

By nature, children of wrath! By deed, children of disobedience!

The unsaved person is condemned already (John 3:18). The sentence has been passed, but God in His mercy is staying the execution of the sentence (2 Peter 3:8–10).

[Gospel]

Man cannot save himself, but God in His grace steps in to make salvation possible. “But God!”—what a difference those two words make! This leads to the second work we’re going to look at next week.