Wake up Dead!

Ephesians 2: 1 - 7

Vs. 1: Everyone of us is born into sin. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Thus we are all sinners and the wages or penalty we must pay for sin is death (Romans 6:23). If the wages of sin is death, and we are all born sinful then the natural conclusion is... we are all dead. The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1. We are dead in our sins and trespasses. Before you or I came to saving faith in Jesus Christ we "walked" in the deadness of our sins, oblivious to our wicked ways. We were in fact mindless dead people walking.

Vs 2 - 3: Before we responded to Jesus' call in our lives we were subject to and walked in the ways of the world. We were in bondage to sin, the world system and we followed the ways of the Prince of the Powers of the air…Satan. Think about that for a moment… (Reflect back on your life before you became a follower of Jesus).  As I think back on my life I remember how I once lived only for myself and my selfish desires. I had no cares about the ways of neither God nor his people. I had no moral boundaries, I had no sense of right or wrong; I only did what I felt was right in my own eyes and did that which brought pleasure to me. Yes, I was essentially dead in my sins. We are reminded here that we ALL once lived according to this way or maybe some of you are still living according to the flesh (which is not living at all).

Vs 4 - 7: If our life story in verse three it would be a sad and hopeless story indeed. There would be no “and he/she lived happily ever after”. Our story would be without purpose. If there is no hope then there is no purpose. However in verses 4 and 5 we encounter one of many big “Buts” found in the Bible. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ.” This is where the story changes for those of us who believe.

Think about this also.... God has an abundance of mercy (not getting what you deserve) because of his love (through Jesus Christ) he has MADE US ALIVE. We who were once dead now have life. God brought to life with Christ’ or ‘he caused us to live again together with Christ’[1]. We are made alive because of Jesus. However we aren’t just given life we are also, “Raised up with him AND seated us with him in the heavenly places in Jesus Christ.” As if being made alive wasn’t enough; God has taken us from death brought us to life and lifted us up and seated us with Christ. We are not just alive we are FULLY ALIVE and this is what I aim to talk about in the next few blogs. When we are fully alive in Christ it affects every aspect of our lives. It changes our relationship with God, who we are as humans, how we live our lives, our marriages and our families.

Did God have to do this? Did He have to give us life? No! He does this simply because he loves us so much that He provided a way to have life through Jesus. This is a display of His abundance in mercy.

Think even more about this; when all of us were dead in our sins without Christ did not change the fact that God in his abundant mercy still gave His life for us. God’s love for us is never ending, Jesus didn’t die on the cross based upon what our response would be to Him, He did it so all humanity could have the opportunity to be fully alive.

[1] Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Vol. 1: Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: Based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition.) (262). New York: United Bible Societies.