“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 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—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.” (Ephesians 1)
Death is a powerful word.
When death is encountered, all of your senses are engaged. There is an overwhelming stench to death. There is an unmistakable look to death. There is a unique taste to death. There are distinct sounds to death . There is a chilling touch to death.
To some, death is an end; to others, death is the beginning. I know those who live in fear of death and I know those who celebrate death, but I know no one who anticipates the death of their beloved friend or mate. I know no one that longs for death to consume the life of the child they tuck into bed at night.
Whenever I read that first phrase in Ephesians 2, I pause, and think about my life before Christ.
I was dead.
I used to walk down a path seeped with death.
We were dead. Think of the seeming contradiction in that first sentence of Ephesians 2. “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Here Paul is stating that each of us were dead, yet we were able to walk in sin and trespasses. I think of a meth user. Her entire family can look at the sunken eyes, the body wasting away, the clammy skin, the red-shot eyes and mourn the deathly path she walks. The road she travels is killing her. In many ways—she is already dead. Dead to feeling, dead to emotion, dead to reason, dead to the needs of those who rely on her.
As you watch that documentary of the meth user you realize, this is simply a physical example of who you were spiritually. You walked down that road, dead. The sin that you were entrenched in suffocated you. No, you were not the most evil being you could be, but you were not holy, not pure, not able to breathe the goodness of God and drink the living water you so desperately needed to LIVE.
The world is set on a certain course…a course directly opposite of where God is heading. James 4: 4 boldly says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
But when you are following the course of the world, you do not think of yourself as an enemy of God. Part of following the world is deceiving others without hesitation and gladly being deceived yourselves. We allow ourselves to feel justified in our pride, selfishness, desire to control and manipulate, lack of integrity, desire to act on our passions and desires. It is easy to justify when we are following a mass of people who are heading in the same direction as we are. How can we be wrong when everyone else says it is right? Yes, we are adulterous people. Friendship with the world is enmity with God.
I can hear the passion in Paul’s voice as he says, “among whom we all once lived!” We cannot just watch that drug addict wasting away into nothing feeling detached because it is something we would never fall to. No, it is precisely the depravity of this world that eats away at our soul quicker the methamphetamine does to the body of a meth addict. Before we look at these “poor helpless souls” that need our pity, we need to be broken and humbled that this is who we were! We ALL once lived as though we were dead. We were dead because our sins choked our lives, the passions of our flesh consumed us, we carried out the desires of the body and the mind without regard to the consequences to those we loved, and we were by nature children of wrath (our nature was a nature that was in opposition and rebellion to a loving, gracious, and holy God).
We need to be present with the evilness in which we all were consumed. There is a difference between a recovering alcoholic reaching out to another broken alcoholic to show them the path to healing and light and the PhD clinician trying to medicate the alcoholic. Let us not be the second in our approach to mankind. Let us look at the depravity that was rotting away the depths of our hearts and souls and rejoice that we can now live a life of abundance. Let us not be detached from those who are dead, but let us smell, taste, see, hear, and feel the pain that consumes the lives of those who are walking dead in their sins. Let us examine our own relationships, thoughts, motives, beliefs, actions and be sensitive to any sign of death eating away at our souls.
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