The Walking Dead

Ephesians 2:1-3

Me

“So there I was, 5 years old, on the streets, dealing drugs to survive…”

That’s not true… but wouldn’t that be a great testimony? A great story. In youth group I remember hearing these kinds of stories and kind of being jealous. “I wish I had grown up poor and homeless so I could tell a great story…” Obviously, I was confused and naïve… but we hear these stories of conversion, and the Bible is full of great stories of conversion from the pits of despair and darkness to SALVATION and angels weeping and restoration and its beautiful.

And I think, I was five years old, answering every altar call just in case. Baptized in my friends hot tub when I was 11. Where was the death to life bit?

We

We hear about extra-ordinary stories, but maybe our stories seem a little… ordinary. Normal. In our American culture, still heavily influenced by Christianity, what is more normal than going to church, believing in Jesus, and being a good person?

We aren’t the rebels of the early church, the underground revolutionaries. We are normal, nice, church-going suburbanites.

What is counter-cultural about my life? What is interesting about my story?

Today, we talk about sin. We talk about Satan. We talk about the walking dead.

The Walking Dead

Ephesians 2:1-3

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.

Dead in Sin

Let’s start off with everyone’s favorite word to hear in church: sin. Sin and trespasses! We get both! Two for the price of one.

Trespasses – to deviate or slip aside. Sin – to miss the mark. By including both Paul includes everything we might think to mean by sin or stupid.

And we were, describing a state or way of living before the transformation that is coming, we were walking around in that sin and stupid: all thoughts, words and deeds “ensphered” by sin.

We will return to this, but it says we were dead and walking. The walking dead.

Then comes 3 causes or influences, means or modes by which we were walking dead. Why were we like that? Walking dead, walking in sin and trespasses, it sounds dramatic and awful… why were we like that?

By Nature, Children of wrath

Let’s start with strike 3.

Third, we were like that by our very nature. Inherent within us, born within us, as children we were like this. We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Children – implies innate-ness, inheritors of that which went before.

Wrath is God’s holy hatred of sin; “His essential antagonism to everything evil.”

We sin. Of course we sin and trespass: it is in our nature from the very start. Sin is the most natural thing in the world.

The Course of this World

Now, you may have heard at various times the “Nature vs. Nurture” argument. Are we destined for certain things genetically or are we shaped by our environment.

Well our nature is destined for sin, but we are also being nurtured by our environment. We read the phrase “following the course of this world.”

Course/Age – zeitgeist “the spirit of the age”

The world existing in that particular span of time.

Cosmos. Human-history-long alienation of the human race from God.

So the spirit of the age may change in tone or specifics over time, but following it always looks like walking in sin and trespasses: the walking dead. That is to say: Everyone is Doing It. Everyone is sinning, and that’s true, isn’t it? We will return to this later because this “spirit of the age” thing is fascinating to me.

Our nature leads us to walk in sin and stupid. Our nurture, our the “course of the cosmos” leads us to walk in sin and stupid.

And if that weren’t enough…

The Prince of the Power of the Air

Could it be… Satan?

This is an odd phrase: Prince of the power of the Air. There are two words for atmosphere in Greek, one being the high atmosphere, this one means the sphere where humans live, the air between earth and sky.

We have a whole mythology built up around Satan and the Powers of Darkness that doesn’t come from the Bible. The idea that they are crawling up out of hell, the idea that they are subterranean monstrous creatures, the idea that Satan is a guy in giant rubber suit with goat hooves and ram horns.

There is very little information on “The Adversary” in Scripture (perhaps as if we aren’t supposed to obsess over him), but the picture here is of a power, a spiritual person of authority, who rules over the area in which we live.

That is to say, if it weren’t enough that our nature destines us to sin and our nurture, the spirit of our age teaches us to sin, there is a powerful spiritual being in authority over us actively working to teach us sin. Strike three!

There is a spirit world, there is a spiritual reality, which is to say there are beings of power and intelligence in our universe that have no physical form but are able to influence and exert power over human beings. That is terrifying, we live in hostile territory, for the Prince of the Power of the Air still, temporarily, holds dominion. It’s not good!

The Sons of Disobedience

And he is so effective that you can see people drawn into their sin even more than they would be otherwise, becoming sons of disobedience.

Sons of disobedience – Hebrew idiom for someone who has that quality.

This does not mean all those who are disobedient are possessed by the devil, only that that spirit of rebellion is active and so effective in their lives that their primary quality is “disobedience.”

We all lived

Then it says that we all used to live that way.

Here is the hard part. When I use the picture of sin and disobedience that is usually in my mind, the dramatic “before” story, I have a hard time seeing this as me.

Literally – had our conversation. We ordered our lives, our behaviors in this way.

Was I really dominated by “the Prince of the Power of the Air” as a young child? Was I that bad a “son of disobedience” or a “child of wrath” by nature? Was I being led astray by the “spirit of the age?”

I was raised in a good Christian home, so surely I was insulated from all that, protected from all that, and mostly not sinful!

Desires of body and mind

Let’s change our picture of sin and trespasses. Let’s read verse 3 again, Paul gives us a very simple, practical picture of how sin actually operates.

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.

That sounds bad. It sounds dramatic. We have been trained to hear “passions of our flesh” and think of sexual immorality. We hear “the desires of the body and the mind” and we think of stealing and murder, coveting and THEIVING!

And there is a good reason for that, we are used to contrasting the “desires of the flesh” with the “desires of the Spirit” and discerning what comes from what.

But consider the human on its own, you before Christ, every pre-Christian in the world. How many natures do they have, did you have?

One nature… and by nature, children of wrath. One set of passions: passions of the flesh. One set of desires in body and mind… their desires.

Just Doing My Thing

So we see this in this huge spiritual perspective: Satan and evil nature and evil culture. Let’s take a super practical look at it and see if starts to look more familiar.

Consider the human being, no Jesus, no Spirit within them, they have one earthly fallen nature.

And I am a guidance counselor.

What are your passions? What are your dreams? Yes, follow your passions. Discover your dreams and then DO IT!” In the words of Shia Lebouf “Don’t let your dreams be dreams, DO IT!”

What does your body desire? What does your mind want? Just do it. Be happy, be fulfilled, be all that you can be!

Let’s put a little limit on it, do whatever makes you happy as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else. Whatever that is, just be happy.

You do you, I’ll do me.

That is the Spirit of our Age. That is our Zeitgeist.

“Sin” is the most natural, normal thing in the world.

Sin and trespasses. We have sorted out categories and learned to discern, but without Christ, sin is any and all fulfillment of self. Without another nature, without another set of desires to choose, literally everything someone does is sin and trespass! It doesn’t all look bad, it doesn’t all sound bad, it could look incredibly moral and wonderful, it could be beautiful and sacrificial, this is HUGE CLAIM.

God sees someone who appears to be the most moral, selfless person in the world, who is serving others and helping the poor and needy and doing great deeds. He looks at their heart, and he sees them responding to the desires of their heart and mind, following their passions… the passions of their flesh which is the only nature they have.

He sees the Walking Dead.

We Were Dead

If you define sin so broadly that everyone is always sinning… who then can be saved?

Precisely the question everyone who encountered Jesus would ask? But… if that’s sin, if that is me, if my “good enough” isn’t good enough… what hope is there?

The most moral people of his day, the Pharisees? Walking dead.

Looking at the very stuff of humanity… our nature, our natural animal desires, gratifying those desires, hearing my flesh and responding. So I eat and I sleep, I procreate, I maximize pleasure however I can. That is life. And everything around me says it is so, says that is good. The “course of this world”, the “spirit of the age” says to “follow my dreams”, “do what makes me feel good” as long as I leave space for others to do their thing.

You do you, I’ll do me. That is the cry of our world, the spirit of this age.

We were dead in that, we were abandoned in that, and a good part of our self and life is still heavily influenced by that. Most of that still sounds great to us!

Follow your dreams, find your passion and live it!

This is tough, but discipleship means you follow Jesus… not your dreams unless you’re sure that is where he is leading you. Discipleship means you get a new set of passions as your heart reflects the heart of God, but in the meantime it works and feels like denying your passions, YOUR WHOLE LIFE, in order to follow him.

This is hard. And if we see sin broadly as “obeying the desires of my mind and body,” just doing what I want to do… what is the big deal?

Why Does God hate Sin

The Spirit of our Age has taught you and I too. And I hear “you do you, I’ll do me” and it still sounds good, it sounds pretty moral. If someone isn’t hurting or harming someone else, let them express and find their personal freedom and joy and happiness. It sounds great.

Why does God hate sin? Why does he see it as death? Why does he say those who are “following their dreams and passion” are walking around dead in their sin and trespasses?

We don’t have the ability to see the heart and the radical consequences of all sin… but consider the road to destruction of some sins we know.

A Mom who has raised her son, watched him graduate high-school with top honors, full of potential. On his graduation day she gave him the speech “I just want you to be happy, to follow your dreams, your passions and fill life with joy!” Off he goes…

And he finds joy and happiness and passion. In fact, he discovers that you can even bypass the work and tedium by directly stimulating the areas of the brain that “feel” joy and happiness and fulfillment by injection.

And Mom, watching from afar, first suspects something is wrong, then knows something is wrong, but is helpless as she watches her son, full of life and potential, pour his life down the drain chasing after his dreams and passion. If it’s all about pleasure and personal happiness, I don’t think you can beat the chemical shortcuts, honestly: heroine and meth…

We tend to think of a long life with hard work and maybe children, fun on the weekends and a great hobby, we think that’s a better life.

But God compares that short 80 something years with the ACTUAL life He has intended and planned, created and saved us for… and he is watching His children pour their lives down the drain.

He is watching them satisfying themselves, temporarily dosing themselves with dopamine as a result of meeting the desires of their mind and body until they die. And he calls it sin, he calls it trespass, He calls it death.

Sin is the most natural thing in the world. Everyone is doing it. It is what you do naturally. It is what you have been taught to do. And to make it worse, there are spiritual forces further encouraging you to sin.

We Live Among the Walking Dead

And that is where you were, it is where your neighbors are, it is where our world is…

Our world is full of the walking dead. We put sin in a little box over here and fool ourselves into thinking people are mostly okay. BUT THEY’RE NOT! Nobody is okay. They are dead and they are going to die!

Isn’t this a happy sermon?

We think we don’t have a testimony. What is counter cultural about your story?

You were dead. You were walking… but you were dead. Spiritually dead and only a few breaths from physically dead. And if that is what sin is, if that is how bad it is, if our nature and nurture and nasty princes of airs all conspire against us… what hope is there?

Today, we simply need to realize that the situation is worse than we thought, worse than we realize, worse than we suspected? We are mostly blind to it because we too are influenced by the spirit of our age, not to mention the Spirit of the Air around us.

You Were Dead… but God…

There is this. Two beautiful words that introduce hope. That radically change the story. I’m not even going to preach on them. Today was all about sin, death and Satan. Because that is the bitter, sad story of our world, of our friends, of our family, it was our story. It may be your story now.

But…

But…

Ephesians 2:4a

But God…

And you know there is hope coming, there is good news coming, there is a cure for the walking dead…