We have just finished a set of lessons on Ephesians 1 where we saw Paul open his letter to the Ephesian church with the grandest of scopes. He wrote with strokes of splendor telling us of being seated with Christ, bearing an allotment in forever. He used big language while painting the breadth of God’s eternal vision, and his power to make it happen. Life, as chapter 1 unfolded, was decorated with sparkles as big as the imagination could conceive. It encompassed the councils of God before the creation of the world projecting all the way to time’s fulfillment. He touched on destiny, the abundance of grace, the victory of Christ and the power of God. Paul filled the beginning of this letter with heady stuff.
Those vistas painted, Paul could not afford to foster pride in the new believers. Lest the Ephesian church get ahead of themselves, he shifted the focus of his writing from way off in forever to the little segment of time surrounding their salvation. In order to temper the strength of the fledgling church, he splashed a little water on the flames of excitement he had been fanning. Paul slowed down and drew their thoughts to their origins rewinding all the way from forever back to their past.
In the landmark dystopian work 1984 George Orwell wrote of the Party rewriting history and vaporizing those who expressed any inkling of dissent. They falsified the present by realigning the past. Not so with Paul. Not so with God. Pride of place threatening to rise from grandiosity Paul took the Ephesian church down memory lane, and so Ephesians 2 begins.
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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 2:1-3–ESV)
Dead?
The New International Version introduces chapter 2 with three words: “As for you.” Those words rattle the thoughts making them fall from the snowy peaks of eternal life to the dust and pebbles of the here and now. Before the reader can put up a hand protesting the shift from a pleasant reverie they find themselves tumbling over death, trespasses, and sins. Down from the heights they fall as these three verses clang their not-so-pretty tune. That tune was unpleasant but very necessary.
This Gentile community had a new life in Christ, but it was just that: in Christ. When Apollos began evangelizing in Ephesus the people who heard him preach were lost, dead. Their bodies may have been alive, but their spiritual core knew none of that life. Why not? They had trespassed God’s commandments. Sin, rebellion against God’s ways, was their mode of operation. Their existence was a living violation of the things of God, and daily they stored up wrath against themselves. That is what happens when people walk in ungodliness.
In Psalm 11, David wrote, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,” and concluded with, “the way of the wicked will perish.” Paul wrote that the members of the Ephesian church had walked in the counsel of the wicked. Importantly, he used the past tense for they had left that dark kingdom. He may be tamping down enthusiasm to prevent pride, but he is not changing the story.
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