September 15 2025

Monday September 15

“Dead in Trespasses and Sins”

Ephesians 2:1-3

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.

Today we're continuing in the book of Ephesians 2. The verses in this chapter talk about living Jesus Christ. Remember we said in chapter one we talk about knowing Jesus Christ. Before we can live for Christ, we need to have our eyes of our understanding open to the knowledge of God. We need to know who He is. We need to know our position in Christ. We need to know the riches of the inheritance that we have in Jesus Christ. We need to know what it means to have the hope of His calling in our life. We have a purpose. God has a plan for our lives. We need to know these things. We also need to know what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe? We need to know these things.

We need to know Jesus Christ! Like Paul said, “That I might know Him”. After we begin to know and understand our position in Christ then we can begin to live Jesus Christ. And that is what we will be studying in Ephesians 2. In chapter one, Paul has described our spiritual possessions in Christ. Now he speaks in chapter two about 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 (Ephesian 2:1-10), and believing Jews and Gentiles have been reconciled and set into the temple (Ephesians 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.

Today we will begin to look at these first three verse of Ephesians 2: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust 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 us a full-length picture of the terrible spiritual condition of the unsaved person. Note his characteristics:

First thing Paul wants us to understand is sin’s work against us! Paul gives the spiritual condition of the unsaved person. First, he notes that we are dead in trespasses and sin. Of course this means we're spiritually dead. We're unable to understand and appreciate spiritual things. We have no spiritual life whatsoever. We can talk about God. We can talk about the Bible. We can even have it memorized. But the truth is there is no spiritual life in us aside from the fact that when we get saved the Holy Spirit, the life of God Himself comes to live within us. But before then, we are dead in trespasses and sins. We can do nothing to please God.

We're like a dead man. 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 does not 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" (Ephesians 2:1). "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 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 (Isaiah 59:2).

My friend, the unbeliever is not sick. He is dead. He doesn't need resuscitation. He needs a 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). We need to understand that's our position before our salvation. And sin works against us and we're dead in these trespasses and sins.

Oh, how we ought to rejoice in the fact that one day we met Jesus Christ if you're a believer. And if you do not understand spiritual things, there's a reason for it. We never really appreciate our health until we have experienced a terrible sickness. And we will never appreciate and be grateful for our life in Jesus Christ until we realize how dead we were in our trespasses and sins!

God bless!