I want to begin this morning by saying that this message is the first part of the discussion of verses 1-10. However, this morning we will only cover verses 1 & 2. This will leave us in the down side of the message. But take heart because its end will be encouraging. The only down side is that you will have to wait two or three weeks for its conclusion.
There have been many stories about people creating a being that comes to life. The stories usually focus around an inventor and his robot or some Frankenstein like cadaver. The inventor hopes to create someone or something that would come to life, get to know and serve him. In a sense this is what the apostle Paul is describing in this passage. This is why I entitled the message “Wanted: Dead to Alive (not Dead or Alive). We have a Creator who made us. But from our creation, because of our sin nature, we were simply dead. We could not interact with our Creator. We could not know Him. So He took us and made us alive. And with that we were given a responsibility that goes with our new condition of living. And this responsibility was to serve our Creator. The key idea of this passage is that we must look forward to accomplishing the good works that God has prepared us to do because of the great transformation that He has brought about in making us alive from the dead.
I. Our Previous Condition – Separated (vv. 1-3)
In the first three verses of chapter two Paul outlines for us our previous condition. Our previous condition that Paul describes for us is separated. The idea that Paul is seeking to get across to us is that we were separated from God. We will see this most clearly as we look at the two characteristics of our previous condition.
A. Dead in our sin
The first characteristic of our previous condition that Paul notes is that we were dead in our sin. Paul mentions this in verse 1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Now the term dead refers to the separation that occurs because of our sin. In physical death the spirit is separated from the body and the spirit cannot return to the body. In spiritual death an individual is separated from God and they are not able to have contact with him. Some see death referring to the cessation of consciousness. They would believe that death causes someone to stop being conscious. However, the Scripture makes it clear that there continues to be a consciousness of an individual in physical death. Jesus noted that both Lazarus and the rich man were conscious after their physical death. Their spirits were simply whisked away from their bodies. Also Jesus, speaking about Abraham, though having been dead some 2000 years, said that he saw Jesus’ day and rejoiced. Clearly Abraham was conscious though separated from his body. Physical death does not result in unconsciousness but only separation. In the same way the spiritual death that someone experiences and the final judgment of separation (eternal death) does not result in unconsciousness or annihilation but only separation from God and the torment that this separation causes.
Others believe that when the Bible speaks of death it describes inability. They look at a “dead” body and say, “He can’t do anything. He can’t move nor can he speak. He doesn’t eat. He has no ability.” But death is described as separation in Scripture not as inability. The reason that the shell of a body can’t eat or speak or move is that its spirit has left it. The person is no longer there. He or she is separated from it. So when Paul is saying that we were dead in our sin he is not saying that we have no ability. He is saying that we have been separated from God by our trespasses and sins. The inability that we do have is that we cannot bridge that gap of separation. And on this we will look more fully in a moment.
But let’s look at this idea from Scripture closer. First, from Paul’s own writings we see this concept of being separated from God before we were saved. In the very next paragraph Paul notes that our previous condition results in separation from God. Verses 12 & 13 say, “Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded (or alienated) from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without (lit. apart from) God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” We had been alienated. We were without God in the world. But now we have been brought near. And in Ephesians 4:18 Paul says that we were excluded from the life of God. Our death is in that we were separated from God. In the parallel found in Colossians 1:21-22, Paul likewise says that we were “formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death.” Paul says that though we were alienated yet now we have been brought near. We have been reconciled in our separation from God through Christ’s separation from the Father. He was separated so that we might be brought near.
In the Old Testament, God describes death as separation in Ezekiel 37. There God brings Ezekiel to a valley full of bones. God tells Ezekiel to speak to the bones to come to life and they become a very great army. In verses 11-14 God describes what this vision of dry bones means. In verse 11 God says, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Ezekiel is describing their condition. Their separation from God is illustrated by their deadness. “We are completely cut off,” the nation says. But in verse 14, God says, “I will put my Spirit within you and you will come to life.” Here they are being brought to life by the joining of God’s Spirit with them. They are no longer cut off from God but now joined to Him.
And in Isaiah 59, the prophet mentions that, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.” This death caused by our sin is the separation from God. It is our absence of spiritual life. We are cut off from God.
But here is the heart of the matter: We were in a hopeless condition (and you still are in that today if you are here without Christ) because we could not change our situation. The truth is that as a dead person could not bring about his own resurrection neither could we. There is nothing to bridge the gap. There is no way for you to get back to God. In this spiritual deadness that exists, if you have not received Christ as your Savior, your trespasses and sins have separated you from God. A great wall has been built up between you. You cannot scale the wall; you cannot dig under the wall. You cannot break through the wall. You are helpless and you are hopeless.
B. Walking in our sin
The second characteristic of our previous condition that Paul notes is that we are walking in our sin. Not only were we dead in our sin, not only were we separated from God by them but we were walking in our sin. Our sins had separated us from God and we were not content to move away from them. We continued to live in them. We wallowed in them. In two ways Paul describes the path that we took in walking in our sin.
1. The pattern we followed
The first way that Paul describes the path that we took in walking in our sin is the pattern we followed. Verse 2 marks the pattern we followed. Here Paul notes, “In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Paul says that you walked in this pattern. The term, “to walk,” is a metaphor for the way we live. Walking is a good metaphor because it describes someone who is going somewhere. And in this way Paul says we were going somewhere. We were traveling according to a roadmap, a pattern, that we followed.
Here is the pattern that we have followed. There were two groups from which we took our pattern that we followed
a. The world system
The first group from which we took our pattern that we followed was the world system. We notice this from the words, “according to.” We walked according to the course of this world. It could be translated, “we walked according to the ruling principle of this world.” We were walking along the pattern set out for us by the ruling principle of this world system. There is a bent to this world and the bent is anti-God and pro-self. This world system, and you can see it vaunting itself more and more, is seeking the elimination of God, the abolition of truth, the deification of man, the justification of sin and the elevation of death.
The world system is eliminating God. In our country even the mention of God is being removed. County seals are having the Ten Commandments and crosses eradicated from them. The ACLU is on a litigatory rampage in seeking to sue whoever shows public signs of devotion to God. Can you imagine what our currency will look like in a few years? It will read “In _______ we trust” because they will sue to have the name God rubbed off every bill.
The world system is abolishing truth. When Jesus said, “Everyone on the side of truth hears my voice,” Pilate retorted, “What is truth?” The mantra today is, “Whatever you think is true is true for you but not necessarily for me.” You are allowed to say that you are looking for truth but if you declare that you have found the truth then you are branded as a public enemy. Friends, this kind of relativism kills. It is meant to bring doubt. It is meant to deceive because it comes from the Father of lies. Someone saying, “There is no absolute truth” is making an absolute statement.
2 + 2 must equal four. It cannot equal five. The NASA engineers crashed spacecraft on Mars because they input the wrong numbers into their computers. What they believed was true, wasn’t. And believing the lie that all religions lead to God (even though what they teach may be contradictory) will cause a similar kind of deadly accident. Though this won’t be an accident of spaceships crashing but of the perishing of eternal souls into eternal torment.
How is the world system accomplishing this? One way is the propagation of media that bypasses the intellect (the truth discerner) and wrenches the emotions. What God had intended as the means by which all things should be tested is bypassed. When Paul says that we are to destroy every lofty idea raised up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ he meant that we are to pass every idea through the grid of our mind built up by the Word of God. But this is being bypassed through the visual stimulation of video that communicates to our hearts without saying a word. Some time ago I was reading about the means the Television industry is using to draw the hearts of the nation to a philosophy that embraces evil. Their means is to use single case dramas that portray an ethical dilemma in a light that could only cause the viewer to conclude that their take was the right one. The examples they used were rare or non-existent cases that put into the minds of people that opposition to their case was wrong. Take an example of a woman who, late in her pregnancy was developing complications. Her doctors declare that she must lose the child or lose her life. They seek some kind of declaration from a court to allow her to kill the child (a.k.a. “terminate the condition”). The court, in not granting this declaration, is the cause for this woman’s death. Of course, the facts concerning this kind of case are never broached. It is never noted that this kind of situation is extremely rare. That in fact killing the child need not be an option because there are other ways to protect the mother and baby. And the most important key is that what the Word of God says on the issue is never brought out, unless of course there is the portrayal of some foaming at the mouth, hate filled individual swinging a Bible and holding a sign saying something like, “You will be damned for your murder you idiots.” This is part of the world system that seeks to abolish the truth of God’s Word so that it can raise up its own amorality not based on truth.
The world is running from the truth because they are running from God. In reality the truth is the most loving thing there is. If I withhold the truth from you that your house is on fire and you need to escape I would be most unloving. You would be insane to say that this message of truth is not for you and that you want to stay in the fire because your friends are here. However, ignoring the truth will lead to your ruin. I do admit that sometimes the way people present the truth doesn’t necessarily adorn the message of truth with the beauty that it deserves. And we must be careful in our presentation of truth. But God’s Word is truth and we must recognize and receive it as such. And we must not allow the world system to abolish the truth from our lives.
The world system eliminates God and it abolishes truth. Also the world system is deifying man. Man is being raised up to the level of God. But this should not surprise us. This has been set into motion from the beginning when Satan said to Adam and Eve, “You shall be as gods.” This ruling principle of the world system has taken shape in the form of man seeking to be autonomous from God’s law. God has established laws of right and wrong. He has given us certain unalienable rights but the world system seeks to expand those rights beyond what God has given to it. We, under the world system are taking for ourselves whatever we see fit. We want to be the ones in charge and are seeking to take from God what is rightfully His.
Also the world system seeks to justify sin. From sexual immorality to casual lying the world system is seeking to justify all sorts of sin. And it is seeking to eradicate anyone who would seek to stop this by whatever way possible. Don’t think that this is something new. Augustine, the Christian Theologian, said almost 1600 years ago that people wanted the laws to allow people to do whatever they wanted in private without regard to its lewdness. He quoted them as having said, “[Let anyone] who pleases, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate.” And he closed his discussion of this with the words of those who wanted such laws to be passed. This is what he noted they said, “If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be silenced, banished, put an end to.” Those who wish to justify sin today are calling for the passing of hate crimes so that any who would speak out on the side of what is good and true would be branded as enemies to the public good.
The world system seeks to eliminate God, abolish truth, deify man justify sin and finally it elevates death. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom speaks and says, “Those who hate me love death.” Our culture that has rejected and wisdom has elevated death. There is the love of death throughout society. There is the murder of children that takes place under the innocuous title of choice. And on the other end of the spectrum there, is the murder of adults likewise couched in as ludicrous a term as euthanasia (meaning “good death”). We have many who are walking around dressed in black with corpse-like, white painted faces. Death becomes the ultimate escape for those who have no fear of God, for the fear of the Lord, as Proverbs says, is the beginning of wisdom.
What Paul says to us today is that we were actively walking in the ways of this world system. Now we may not have followed in all its ways. We may not have fully plunged the depth of wickedness. But we were just as dead as those who plunge completely into the course of this world. And the longer we walked, the further we went. And the truth is that before you can come to receive life from God you must understand that you are dead.
b. The world ruler
The second group (or individual) from which we took our pattern that we followed was the world ruler. We took our cues from the world system. But behind that world system was a ruler. Not only does Paul say it was according to the world system, but the second part of verse 2 reads, “according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”
The world ruler is Satan. Every dominion must have a ruler. And if they will not be led by God they will be led by Satan. Someone may say that they want to be free from authority. But that is never the case. Either you are subject to God or Satan. There are no free agents in life.
Satan is described here are the prince of the authority of the air. If the world system is an atmosphere in which people live then truly Satan is the authority behind that environment in which this wickedness takes place.
Whether you were aware of it or not you lived under the authority of Satan who directed the world system. Satan is so cunning even to allow people to think that they are worshipping God when they are not. There are many millions of people who, not worshipping God according to the Scripture, are following their own way to death under the leadership of the prince of the power of the air.
The reason is that Satan is always trying to steal worship away from the true God. And if he can cause people to think they are worshipping God when they are not he has attained his goal even if people appear that they are religious or appear to worship God.
Satan caused the Israelites to do this very thing right after they left Egypt. They had won this great victory by following Moses through the Red Sea. And then as they come to Mount Sinai and Moses goes up to receive the Ten Commandments, the people become impatient as Moses spends 40 days with God on the mountain. Then the people tell Aaron, make a god whom we can worship, as for this Moses we do not know what has become of him. So Aaron forms this golden calf and says, “Tomorrow we will have a feast unto Yahweh (the Lord).” But they were not worshipping the Lord. They called this idol, “The Lord.” If anyone would have asked them what did you do today they would have said, “We had a great time worshipping the Lord.” But they were deceived. How do we know? Instead of following God’s Word, which said, “Do not make any graven images, do not venerate anyone else but me,” they worshipped a piece of gold. And by doing so they ignorantly worshipped Satan whom they called the Lord. What does Moses say they were doing as they worshipped the Lord in the desert? In Deuteronomy 32 he said, “They sacrificed to demons who were not God.” They did not follow the Word of God in their worship and so they worshipped Satan (unknowingly).
But we also see that they were not worshipping God because the fruit of the lives evidently portrayed false worship. The Scripture says of their “feast unto the Lord,” that they sat down to eat and rose up to play. Their worship was characterized by sexual immorality. The fruit of their worship was sin. They were not acting holy and righteously and blamelessly. They were acting corruptly.
So he will even deceive people into thinking that they are worshipping God when they are worshipping demons. How can we be sure that we are worshipping God and not Satan? By the Word of God! If you are not seeking God in His Word then you can be deceived. If you are looking to someone for guidance and counsel apart from God’s Word you will be deceived. Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly nor stand in the way of the sinner nor sit in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates day and night.
And there will be ministers of Satan who appear as ministers of light. In 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, the apostle Paul says, “No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.” Why do appearances of Mary and others occur that cause people worship them? Why are people falling down before a window at a local hospital in MA that they say has a likeness of Mary? Because Satan is seeking to draw people away from the worship of God by deception. Where in all of Scripture does it that this kind of behavior is acceptable? It says that it will take place because people will be deceived. Paul mentions, in 2 Thessalonians, that Satan is going to deceive those in the tribulation by signs and false wonders. Should it be thought incredible that this would happen now? And Paul goes on to say why people are open to such deception. He says, “[they perish] because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.”
We see that Satan rules by deception. If the truth was known about him no one would be under his rule. He must deceive to rule. Jesus said that there is no truth in him. He is a liar and the father of lies. His kingdom is a bunch of lies. And those who follow him, wittingly or unwittingly, are being deceived by him. Some even think they follow God and yet are under Satan’s rule.
Satan has set up the world system that is opposed to God. He is its commander and chief. The world system takes all kinds of forms. It takes forms that appear religious and forms that appear corrupt. And the whole world is born under this system. This is the pattern that we followed. We don’t have time to look into the reason we followed this morning. We will look at it next week.
But if you are here today and have never recognized that you were under this world system and this world ruler, if you are here today and never understood that you are dead and separated from God then neither have you understood how you need to be freed from this. For until you understand just how depraved we are you will not understand your need to be rescued out from it.
If you have never come to Christ then you are dead in your sins. You are separated from God. There is a barrier (called sin) that is keeping God from receiving you. And if you die physically in this condition (cut off from God) you will suffer forever in torment. There will be no opportunity to rectify it at that time. Let me encourage you today to come during our invitation time and let someone open the Scripture to you and show you how you can be rescued from this condition. We will see God’s solution to this terrible situation in the coming weeks, as we discuss the rest of this passage, but if you realize your need to be rescued come today and be saved from your sin.
Let me bring encouragement to you today who have already been rescued from this death (which I believe are the majority of you here). Let me encourage you by thinking on Paul’s statement throughout this coming week, “you were dead.” Paul says that we have been set free from this law of sin and death. And I hope as you meditate on that phrase you will remember how hopeless and helpless you were. And by thinking on this it will bring rejoicing to your heart because God has pulled you from the depths from which you could never have escaped unless God had called you unto Himself. We were hopeless, we were helpless but now we are free.