Ephesians 2:1 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.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
2 Timothy 4:10 For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.
James 4:4 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.
1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Isaiah 30:1 “Ah, stubborn children,” declares the LORD, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin;
1 John 5:4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
1 Peter 1:14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
1 John 5:19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
1 John 3:10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil
Though, as Christians, we are now alive, we must never forget where we came from. We were dead in trespasses and sins. There are many kinds of life: vegetable life, animal life, mental life, moral life, and spiritual life. A being might be alive in one sense but dead in another. To be spiritually dead does not mean that we are physically dead, socially dead, or psychologically dead. Yet it is a real death, a “dead death” nonetheless. “The most vital part of man’s personality – the spirit – is dead to the most important factor in life – God.” (Wood) “Not in a moral sense, nor a mental sense, but in a spiritual sense, poor humanity is dead, and so the word of God, again and again, most positively describes it.” (Spurgeon) We err if we think that dead in trespasses and sins says everything about man’s lost condition. It is an err because the Bible uses many different pictures to describe the state of the unsaved man, saying he is: Blind, A slave to sin, A lover of darkness, Sick, Lost, An alien, A stranger, A foreigner, A child of wrath, and Under the power of darkness.
Every single person was born out of and into sin. All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. Everyone ever born has been born into sin. Through birth, we have were born into death and destruction and if God’s righteousness was a line we not only have crossed it, but we continually challenge its boundaries. We are born on the other side of God’s perfect, holy, and righteous standards through our sinful birth. We lived in sin, we embraced it and did not even give it a second thought. We followed after the course of this world and the prince of lies, Satan. We followed after it and sought it and its pleasures, wants, and desires. Granted we were born into sin, inherited from Adam, but Satan adds to this sinful nature the temptations and influences through deception and lies to do even more ungodliness. He influences and convinces us that pride, self-worth, self-centeredness, self-reliance, lust, worldly satisfaction, worldly pleasures, and immoral things are not only right but through them, we will gain purpose and meaning in life. Such is the life of the “dead in their sin” mankind. Those born again must never forget where they came from. Those who are made alive must remember that we were very comfortable in this old life just as a dead person would be comfortable in a coffin. We are alive in Christ and there ought to be a strong urge to escape the confines of the coffin and leave it behind. We used to respond to Satan’s temptations, influence, and guidance. We ought to be growing and maturing in things of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives. We ought to be able to discern the things of God and the lies of Satan.
One of Satan’s lies is that he would have us believe that all are children of God, hell is only reserved for really bad people, and as children of God, all good people go to heaven, confusing what it means to be a child of God. In one sense we are, He is our common creator. Satan will throw clouds of doubt over the need to be born again, the need for Jesus Christ, the coming judgment, heaven, and hell. There ought to be a big difference, a change, a new way of thinking, living, and doing when we are born again. The problem is we are continually tempted to choose the worldly and fleshly over the things of God. We choose to seek what the world has to offer more than desiring to honor and glorify Jesus Christ.
Another of his lies is that there is no God and all there is to life is what we take from it. We live, we die, the end. Believing in either one of these lies has eternal consequences, eternal hell. We are to remember this is not only how we once lived, but this is what we have been saved from through the grace and mercy of God. What manner of person ought we to be in light of this?
