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10

The Results of Sin

(Eph. 2:1‑3)

 

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins:

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

 

We now take a deeper look at the opening verses of Ephesians 2. It is absolutely vital that we understand what we were before we can really understand and appreciate what we are. We must fully realize what we were before Christ came into our lives before we can truly appreciate the “But God” in verse 4. Our salvation is a wondrous miracle, and that fact becomes even more dramatic when we realize how sinful we were.

 

The opening verses of Ephesians 2 are, in fact, three of the most pivotal verses concerning the depravity of man’s nature in all of Scripture. With the exception of Romans 1, these verses make man’s desperate need of upon God’s than any other portion of Scripture.

 

As we saw in the last chapter, it is absolutely essential to understand that one of the major reasons, if not THE major reason, for any wrong conception of salvation is an inadequate conception of sin. We continue that thought by observing no less than five results of sin, which in-turn fall into three categories: one Positional result, three Practical results, and one Permanent result.

 

I. The Positional Result of Sin (v. 1)

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins:

 

As we recall in our last chapter, we suffer from trepasses and sins. Now we see that we are actually dead in our “deli­berate deviations” and our “continuous missing the mark of God’s glory.”

 

Before dealing with this in detail, we need to look at a technicality in translation. We notice that the words hath He quickened are in italics in our Authorized Version. The verse literally reads, And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

 

The reason for this, of course, is that the words are not in the original language but were inserted by the translators for grammatical reasons. The beginning of Paul’s statement here in verse 1 begins with the object of the sentence, you who were dead. However, the verb of the sen­tence, hath He quickened, does not appear until verse 5. So, because of this great distance between object and verb, the translators inserted the verb in verse 1 to make the sentence read better in English.

 

Some expositors see no problem with this, which we agree with from a grammatical standpoint; it’s needed in English to make the sentence read properly.1 Others, however, point out that in the Greek, this actually detracts from Paul’s point. 2 It is easy to view it this way: Paul left out anything that was positive to show fully man’s terrible condition. Verses 1‑3 are one continuous thought that shows man’s sinfulness. The positive truth (God’s salvation) is presented only after this terrible picture.

 

Another point that the original language brings out is that verses 1-10, like verse 3-14 of chapter 1, are all one long, grand sentence. Once again Paul is carried away with the subject on which he writes. First he shows man’s plight (1-3) then shows God’s provision 4-10).

 

This brings us to the main Truth of this passage, which Paul states plainly: we were dead in trespasses and sins. The obvious reality about death is that it is the opposite of life. But what’s interesting about life is that the Bible says life is only found is Jesus Christ. As we’ll see, without Christ man is not actually alive in the spiritual sense.

 

The Greek for dead here is nekros, which literally speaks of a dead body, a corpse, as in James 2:26, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works [as an evidence] is dead also.”

 

As another Greek word (thanatos) indicates, perhaps the best way to describe death is by the word separation. As J. Sidlow Baxter puts it, “The fundamental idea in death is not cessation, but separation.”3 There are three types of death spoken of in the New Testament:

 

·        Physical – separation of life (or, the soul) from the body (I Cor. 15:21‑22).

·        Spiritual ‑ separation of the spirit from God (Eph. 2:1; 4:18; 1 Jn. 5:12).

·        Eternal ‑ separation of man from God’s presence forever (II Thes. 1:9; Rev. 21:8).

What is in view here in verse 1, therefore, is man as a spiritual corpse; his spir­it as separated from God. 4 In other words, life for the unbe­liever is a living death; even though he is physically alive, walking and breathing, he is dead while he lives. This is not a figure a speech. Paul doesn’t mean they “looked dead” or were “in danger of death” or “standing on the precipice of death,” or “looking death in the eye,” but were really dead. As Scottish commentator John Eadie put it, it’s a case of “death walking.” 5

 

While silly movies such as “Night of the Living Dead” speculate about the dead coming back to life and terrorizing the living, when it comes to the spiritual realm, men without Christ truly are spiritual “zombies,” the walking dead who don’t know they are dead. They go through all the motions of life, but they are not truly alive. As Eadie again puts it, “In this sleep of death, there is a strange somnambulism [i.e., sleep walking].” In other words, just as a sleepwalker can actually perform certain tasks without consciousness, so the spiritually dead man goes about his tasks without being alive at all.

 

So important is this truth that Eadie goes on to point out that the “epithet” dead in trespasses and sins implies three things.

 

First, it implies previous life, since to die one had to first be alive. When was man alive? In Adam, of course. But when Adam sinned, the entire race died spiritually. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22). The distinct before and after Christ is clear and dramatic.

 

Second, it implies insensibility. Man is unaffected by anything spiritual. He feels nothing. He shrugs his shoulders at even the thought of the blessings of holiness or the threat of hell.

 

Third, and most significant of all, it implies inability. One of the basic controversies today about salvation is the Biblical doctrine of man’s inability. As mentioned in our study of election back in Chapter 3, the real controversy is not in the doctrine of election, though many people think it is, rather the real controversy is over the doctrine of depravity that makes election necessary. Most people simply do not (or will not) comprehend (or recognize) the depth of man’s depravity. They simply do not take the words of Scripture literally. Some argue that man has a certain “spark of divinity” or “glimmer of goodness” that if properly motivated will produce salvation. But the Word of God is clear: man’s will has been so affected by sin that he has lost all will or ability to any spiritual good. Why? Because he is dead. As Eadie illustrates, “The corpse cannot raise himself from the tomb and come back to the scenes and society of the living world.”

 

Or we can illustrate it another way. Can a drowning man who has taken water into his lungs help himself? Can he sit up and say, “Oh, I’m not completely helpless. I have water in my lungs, but I’ll be all right in a minute.” Of course not. He is totally helpless, totally unable to give himself CPR. Likewise, the spiritually dead man can do nothing to resuscitate himself spiritually. He can do nothing righteous, nothing good, nothing to please God.

 

“Wait a moment,” some object, “people do good things all the time: they obey the laws of the land, they do good for their fellow man, and so forth.” This is absolutely true, but none of that is spiritual good, rather it is physical good or moral good. Men today are certainly capable of moral action, but morality is something learned, something taught by parents, society, or simply our own experience. A man might say to himself, “I’m going to obey the law because I don’t want to go to jail.” Or he might say, “I’m going to help my neighbor because I would appreciate his help if the situation were reversed; after all, I believe in the Golden Rule.” Such morality is learned; it is taught by parent to child or advocated by society.

 

But this is not what Paul is dealing with here. He is speaking of something spiritual, something we are by nature. We are dead to spiritual things, dead to God, dead to true righteousness. As Isaiah 64:6 declares, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (that is, a menstrual cloth). Man’s works, or even his so-called “morality,” are nothing before God.

 

We can further illustrate by thinking of a cadaver. Medical students can do anything to a cadaver that they want to and that cadaver does not respond in any way. It is dead to any physical stimulus. Likewise, apart from Christ we were “spiritual cadavers.” We could not respond to any spiritual stimulus. We were not “sick in a fever,” 6 “incapacitated,” or even “hopelessly crippled” by sin. We were dead.

 

In his commentary, theologian Gordon Clark tells of a Bible professor he once knew who explained to his students that “man was spiritually sick, that Christ had provided the remedy in the corner drug store, and that we must drag ourselves there, take the medicine, and so regain our health.” 7 But this, as Clark rightly points out, is totally unscriptural. How can a dead man drag himself anywhere or drink anything? Scripture everywhere declares that man is dead in sin and is, therefore, unable to respond in any way whatsoever. Paul declared to the Colossians that they were once dead in their sins (Col. 2:13). Likewise to the Romans he said, “For the wages of sin is death,” not just an illness or handicap.

 

Another commentator recounts an analogy that has been used many times to describe man’s problem. At first it appears valid:

 

Fallen man is so overcome by the power of sin, that he is like a person on his deathbed, who has no physical power left to save himself. If he is going to be healed he can’t possibly do it through his own strength. The only way he can be made well would be if the physician gave him the medicine that is necessary to restore him. But the man is so desperately ill that he doesn’t even have the power to reach out and take the medicine for himself. So the nurse approaches his bed, opens the bottle of medicine, pours it into a spoon, and then moves it over the dying man’s lips. But he must, by his own power, his own will and his own initiative, open his mouth to receive the medicine. 8

 

But if we take Scripture for exactly what It says, this analogy is false. A dead man isn’t on his deathbed—he’s already dead. He not only can’t reach for the medicine, he can’t even open his mouth to receive it if someone else administers it. Taken to its final implication, in fact, that analogy says that the man must do something for himself to be saved. But that violates the whole concept of grace, which says that God alone has done it all. Does man believe? Yes, but as we will see in verses 4-10, God even gives us the ability to believe, something we could never have done, or even been inclined to do, without His intervention. Why? Because we were dead, not just critically ill, not just gasping our last breath, not just uttering that final death rattle, but dead.

 

Still another analogy, which I’ve heard at evangelistic crusades, goes like this. Picture a drowning man. He’s struggling to stay afloat. He’s already gone down twice and is now going down for the third time, with only his desperately seeking hand still above the surface. His only hope is for someone to throw him a life preserver. This is exactly what God does, but even if the preserver hits the man’s hand, that’s not enough. The man must close his hand around it and capture his salvation.

 

That’s certainly dramatic and plays very well in the evangelist’s emotional appeal, but it’s also false. Is the lost person drowning? No! He’s dead. He’s as entombed at the bottom of the sea as are the over 1,100 men still on board the USS Arizona at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. His only hope is for God to reach down, pull his corpse to the surface, and breathe life into him.

 

Pastor and commentator Ray Stedman recounts how this truth was brought home to a friend of his. Stedman’s friend was given an after-hours tour of a funeral home by a mortician friend, who took him into a room where several bodies were laid out on slabs. The mortician pulled back a sheet to reveal one of the bodies and said to his guest, “Tell him about Jesus.” Needless to say, it was something the man never forgot, for that is exactly what the lost man is, dead and absolutely incapable of responding. 9

 

Our Lord Himself made this clear when He said to the Jews:

 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live . . . Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life . . . I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (Jn. 5:25, 40: 10:10).

 

Our Lord made it clear that He had come to save a dead race and that true life was to be found only in Him. But our Lord really cut to the heart of the matter when He declared,

 

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day” and “therefore . . . no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father” (Jn. 6:44, 65).

 

That statement addresses the practical issue, namely, that because he is spiritually dead, man never runs toward God, rather in his state of “walking death,” he always runs away. A common statement in our day is that a certain person is “seeking God” or “looking for the Truth,” but such statements are ridiculous. Man does not by his nature seek God. I have heard this statement by many people, but invariably when confronted with the Truth of the Gospel, when told that they are sinners and must repent and receive Christ and Savior and Lord, they reply, “Oh, no, that is not what I mean. I am looking for something else.”

 

A common belief is that man’s will is “free,” that is, totally free in the sense that he can choose good from evil in the same way that Adam was free to choose. The term “free will” has become, in the words of that great Puritan John Owen, an “idol.” 10 The term is really a symbol of man’s arrogance in thinking that He can, in and of himself, choose God when man’s entire history proves that he always chooses sin.

 

It’s very instructive to note that the first thing that the Word of God reveals about the term “free will” is that it appears in the New Testament only in the context of stewardship. In II Corinthians 8:1-4, for example, Paul praises the believers in Macedonia because they were “freely willing” to give liberally to the work of the ministry even though they were poor. Second, “free will” never appears in the context of coming to Christ in faith. In fact, the Scripture’s entire emphasis regarding the will is its bondage, not its freedom. Consider Romans 3:11-18:

 

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way [have turned aside], they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.

 

This is not “Paul’s harsh Theology,” as some argue, rather he is actually quoting or paraphrasing several Old Testament passages (Ps. 5:9; 10:7; 14:1-3; 36:1; 140:3; Is. 59:7-8) and is indicting the Jews, demonstrating even their guilt before God, and that this guilt is thus true of us all.

 

That passage clearly shows that man runs from God, in no way seeks God, and does nothing to please God. Adam was the only man who had “free will.” He was not sinful and was, in fact, innocent with no knowledge of sin. He was totally free to choose to obey or disobey God, to sin or not to sin, and what did he do? He sinned! And it was at that moment that Adam ran and hid from God, and his descendant have been running and hiding ever since. True “freedom of the will” was lost at that moment. Many today teach, “Oh, man can do good, we can choose good.” Really? Adam didn’t. Even in his innocence, he sinned. If Adam sinned in innocence, how then can we who have a fallen nature do anything but sin? How could we ever choose good over evil?

 

As one writer so ably puts it, the only way a man’s will is “free” is “in the sense that it is not controlled by any force outside of himself. As a bird with a broken wing is ‘free’ to fly but not able, so the natural man is free to come to God but not able. How can he repent of sin when he loves it? How can he come to God when he hates Him?” 11 Indeed, nothing outside ourselves enslaves us, rather our own will enslaves us.

 

To illustrate how man rebels against this Truth, some years ago I mentioned the cadaver illustration mentioned earlier in a taped message on this subject. A friend of mine lent his copy of that tape to a young Church of Christ fellow, who after hearing the illustration, later said to my friend, “I didn’t like his illustration about a dead man.” My friend rightly replied, “It’s not his illustration; it’s the Apostle Paul’s illustration. That’s what the Bible says.” But the young man still totally rejected this Truth. Man simply cannot and will not tolerate the Truth that he is dead in sin and totally unable to save himself or even contribute to has salvation. Every false religion, in fact, including liberal Christianity, is based upon the rejection of that Truth. 12 As Richard Sibbes, one of the most significant of the great Puritan preachers, wrote:

 

All the clothes and flowers you put on a dead body cannot make it but a stinking carcass; so all the moral virtues, and all the honours in this world, put upon a man out of Christ, it makes him not a spiritual living soul; he is but a loathsome carrion, a dead carcass, in the sight of God. 13

 

To go one step deeper, Paul says that man is dead IN sin. The literal thought in the Greek is “we are dead within the sphere or realm of sin.” 14 What this means is that we are not dead because we commit sin but because we are in sin. To put it another way: we are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners.

 

For example, we are not liars because we lie; rather, we lie because we are liars by nature. We are quick to say that the serial killer, the prostitute, the dope‑dealer, the terrorist, and many others are sinners, but we too were sinners and were just as dead as any of those. Our Lord stated this Truth in Matthew 12:35: “an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.” And again He declares in 15:18-19: “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Yes, one sinner might be in a more advanced stage of decay than another, as were the over 43,000 corpses on the Gettysburg battlefield, but every sinner is already dead.

The great 18th Century evangelistic preacher George Whitefield held this strong view of man’s depravity, unlike the weaker view of the Wesleys of his day. Whitefield likened man’s state as that of Lazarus himself. What we might today call “an invitation,” but not one you’re likely to hear nowadays, went like this:

 

Come, ye dead, Christless, unconverted sinners, come and see the place where they laid the body of the deceased Lazarus; Behold him laid out, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, locked up and stinking in a dark cave, with a great stone placed on the top of it. View him again and again; go neared to him; be not afraid; smell him. Ah! How he stinketh . . . Was he bound hand and foot with grave-clothes? So art thou bound hand and foot with thy corruptions: and as a stone was laid on the sepulcher, so is there a stone of unbelief upon thy stupid heart. Perhaps thou has lain in this state, not only four days, but many years, stinking in God’s nostrils. And, what is still more effecting, thou art as unable to raise thyself out of this loathsome, dead state, to a life of righteousness and true holiness, as ever Lazarus was to raise himself from the cave in which he lay so long. Thou mayest try the power of thy own boasted free-will, and the force and energy of moral persuasion and rational arguments (which, without all doubt, have their proper place in religion); but all thy efforts, exerted with never so much vigor, will prove fruitless and abortive, till that same Jesus, who said, “Take away the stone,” and cried, “Lazarus, come forth,” also quicken you. 15

 

As I read that statement several times, I thought that no one is likely to hear that in today’s “feel good Gospel.” “Preachers” are boosting people’s self-esteem, telling them that they are “basically good,” and thereby denying the true Gospel. Oh, what a terrible plight man is in without Christ! As commentator William Kelly observes:

 

What a blow to all the thoughts of man—to the notion that he is in a state of probation—that he is in a mere sickly state of soul; and if you only soothe and comfort and educate him, after all he is not so bad! . . . On the contrary, what the Holy Ghost insists upon is the real death and equal ruin of all. In Romans it is said that we were “without strength,” but here we were “dead.”

 

Again, what a difference that is to what is being sold today as the Gospel. We have today a redefined Gospel, which Paul tells us in Galatians 1:6-7 is not a gospel (“good news”) at all. He later says (vs. 8-9) that if anyone preaches another Gospel, “let him be accursed” (ananthama, “under God’s curse,” “devoted to destruction,” or “set aside for judgment”). What does this say for much of so-called evangelical Christianity and the “mega-churches” today that refuse to preach about sin? Many are “user-friendly” and “seeker sensitive,” so the last thing they can do is preach about the depravity of man. That “puts people off,” “offends their sensibilities,” “puts them on the defensive,” “makes them uncomfortable.” But if we do not preach about sin and salvation from sin, we are condemned. A Theology that does not view man as “dead in trespasses and sins” is not a Biblical Theology. It is, in fact, false teaching. I am frightened for those who are not preaching the True Gospel; they are teaching a different Gospel, and God will judge them for it.

 

This leads us to the second category.

 

II. The Practical Results of Sin (vs. 2‑3a)

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh,

 

What does this positional result mean in practice? How does sin effect us in our daily living? There are three practical results, which are merely manifestations of the positional.

 

We Were Dominated By the World (v. 2a)

 

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world,

 

The word walked is peripateō (peri, around, about; pateō, to walk) and conveys the idea “to walk about” or “to walk concerning.” So, the picture is walking in the sphere of influence of trespasses and sins. Since we were dead in the sphere of sin, we walked in the sphere of sin; since we are dead in that philosophy, we act according to that philosophy.

 

Further, this influence followed the course of this world. The words according to are kata which literally means “down” and shows the idea of “domination.” So, in our sin we were dominated by the world. Depending on a given context, world (kosmos) can mean several things (earth, human race, etc.). But usually the word speaks of the “world system” or the “world order,” that is, the values, pleasures, inclinations, philosophies, goals, drives, purposes, attitudes, and actions of society. This system is totally man-centered and is quite vivid in the humanistic and relativistic society of today. Ponder this contrast: Jesus’ words were, “Not My will but Thine be done;” man’s words are, “Not thy will, but Mine be done.” As Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “They think as the world thinks. They take their opinions ready-made from their favourite newspaper. Their very appearance is controlled by the world and its changing fashion.” 16

 

There is a graphic illustration of this attitude in the little rodent we call the lemming, which is related to the vole and meadow mouse. Measuring three to five inches in length and weighing only a few ounces, it lives in open grasslands and northern tundras, where it burrows to make underground nests. The legend that lemmings deliberately join in a death march to the sea, where they drown, is actually untrue. What actually happens is that when their population begins to exceed the food supply, they migrate in massive numbers, at which time they swim across streams and rivers but are at times oblivious to the fact that a particular body of water is too wide and as a result drown by the thousands. Men are the same as they march on oblivious to the destruction that is ahead. They think they can do anything, accomplish, and conqueror anything, oblivious to fact that the water is too wide.

 

This domination of the world over man is seen in every area of life today. The popular phrase, “I am my own person,” is foolish and false, because every person is dominated by the world. For example, most people today just “follow the trends,” the trends of dress, hair style, morality, and count­less other things. Most people think that these trends are isolated, that they are all unrelated and are without any mean­ing. But, on the contrary, they are not isolated; they are all part of an underlying philosophy—worldliness. Legalism teaches that worldliness is what we do or don’t do, such as playing cards, going to a movie theatre, or women wearing pants. Worldliness is not something we do, rather it is something that we believe. Outward behavior will certainly be an outworking of this, but worldliness is an attitude, a mind set, a philosophy. All men and women, even Christians, are in one way or another dominated by the world. Why? Because we are human, we are sinful. Only the Spirit of God can give victory over this domination. How tragic it is when Christians are dominated by the world. Our text says this should not be. This was true in times past, but it should not be true now.

 

We Were Dominated By Satan (v. 2b)

 

according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

 

This is a shocking reali­zation; man is actually dominated by Satan. Just as Jesus said to the Pharisees, ”You are of your father the devil” (Jn. 8:44), likewise every lost person belongs to Satan (I Jn. 3:8‑10).

 

There is an important contrast to see here. As we have seen, man is the center of the world system in which we live; man has been made the focal point. But who is the head of the system?—Satan. Satan is crafty. He didn’t want to set him­self up as the center, for many “moral” people would never have wanted to be “Satan worshipers.” So Satan lifted man up to be the focal point. That is what happened in the Garden of Eden. When Adam sinned, man became the focus, each man became “his own island,” as the old expression goes. But all the while, Satan remained the head of the system, controlling the direction the system went. II Corinthians 4:4 declares, “. . . the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the Gospel.” This does not mean that every person is “demon possessed,” but it does mean that every person is under Satan’s influence. Why? Because lost men live in Satan’s kingdom, in his world system; lost men also share his sinful nature and inclination to evil.

 

As Paul makes clear, Satan is the prince of the power of the air. Prince is archon, which means “a ruler, a commander, or a chief.” The word comes from the verb archo, “to be first.” The word power is exousia, which means “authority.” Finally, air (aer) is the word that refers to the lower, dense, more impure atmosphere. This is distin­guished from the Greek aither (“ether” in English), which refers to the purer air of the upper atmosphere. In fact, the ancient Greeks viewed this lower atmosphere (aer) as the home of the spirits. 17

 

Putting all this together, we clearly see that Satan is “the first authority of all the demon world.” The earth is the domain of these demons, and they prey upon humanity. Man is, therefore, dominated by that power.

 

Further still, men have become the sons of disobedience. Sons (huios) is actually a Hebrew idiom. In Hebrew thought a person who is inclined to a particular characteristic is cal­led a “son” of that characteristic. So, a “son of disobedi­ence” has the character of being disobedient; that is, he is by nature disobedient and will, therefore, be disobedient. Each one of us are disobedient by nature. No one has to teach a child to be disobedient. Indeed, a child does quite well at that from a very early age. Why? Because that child is dis­obedient by nature. As we saw earlier, man’s will is not truly free at all; rather it is in bondage because he is a son, a descendant, of disobedience.

 

All this is a frightening picture indeed! We do what we do because we are what we are—sinners. But there is one other practical result.

 

We Were Dominated By the Flesh (v. 3a)

 

Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh,

 

The Greek word translated conversation (asastrepho) literally mean “to be­have one’s self” or “to order one’s behavior.” So, the unbe­liever (every single one, as the words we all make clear) orders his behavior according to the lusts of his own flesh. Lust (epithumia) means “a strong desire” and can have either a good or bad connotation depending on the context in which it is used. Flesh (sarx) is used three ways in Paul’s writings:

 

·        Physical or that which pertains to the body (37 times; e.g., Eph. 5:29)

·        General term for humanity (25 times; e.g., Eph. 6:12)

·        Inherent evil in the human nature (27 times; e.g., Eph. 2:3) 18

What is therefore in view in our text is man’s inherent evil. The flesh refers to man’s selfish propensity, his evil inclination, his tendency toward self‑gratification and self-satisfaction. This doesn’t mean every person is twisted and per­verted in every area of life, for in man’s eyes there are many who are moral and up‑standing citizens. But it does mean that in one way or another every man’s goal is to gratify, or at least satisfy, himself. This is precisely what Paul is talking about in Romans 7, where he says that the flesh was “another law in [his] members warring against the law of [his] mind” (v. 23). He laments that the things he wanted to do he didn’t do and the very things he didn’t want to do were the things that he did do (v. 19). He then asks, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 25). This war is the war of the flesh, the sin that still remains in us (v. 18).

 

Consider, for example, the little girl who was disciplined by her mother for kicking her brother in the shins and then pulling his hair. “Sally,” said her mother, “why did you let the Devil make you kick your little brother and pull his hair?” To which she answered, “The Devil made me kick him, but pulling his hair was my idea!” 19 Indeed, the Devil is our enemy, and is the world, but by far our greatest enemy is our own flesh.

 

Further, the word lusts is negative in the context. “Strong desire” is not evil in itself, but it becomes evil when natural desire is satisfied outside of God’s order. For example, eat­ing is a natural desire, but gluttony is sin; rest is a natural desire, but laziness is sin; sexual love within marriage is natural, but immorality is sin. The desire is not the problem, rather the way we satisfy that desire.

 

How then does man live? He is dominated by the flesh! “Natural desires” are given by God, but man lives outside God’s order. Our text tells us that even our minds, that is, our thought processes, have been affected by sin. I’m always reminded here of the days before the Flood. Man was so deep in sin that not only were his actions evil, but “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).

 

This is also vividly presented in Romans chapter 1. Read that chapter and notice verse 28: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” “Reprobate” is adokimon, which literally means “not standing the test.” It pictures the mind in which Divine standards of right and wrong are ignored. Once again may we observe, man thinks the way he thinks because he is what he is—sinful, depraved, and wicked to the core. As the king laments in Shakespeare’s King Richard III:

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

            And every tale condemns me for a villain. 20

 

Our flesh is, indeed, our greatest foe. This leads to one other result of sin.

 

III. The Permanent Result of Sin (v. 3b)

 . . . and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

 

In a sense, all the results we have seen are permanent in the lost person. But these results can be reversed by sal­vation in Christ. There is one result, however, that is perma­nent in the sense that it is eternal. That permanent result of sin is that the lost man is UNDER THE WRATH OF GOD. Here is Paul’s final picture of man’s depravity and is a vitally important Truth to grasp.

 

The word children (teknon) comes from the verb tikto, which means “to bring forth, bear, or give birth to.” Even more important is the word were, for it is in the Imperfect Tense, continuous action in the past or a continuous state of being. In other words, the action happens in the past but the result goes on forever. Therefore, right from birth our nature was depraved and continued in that state of depravity. Nature translates the Greek phusis, which speaks of “what is innate, implanted in one by nature.” 21 Sin doesn’t have to be learned; we sin because it’s part of our character. We’re blind not by disease but by own makeup. We are slaves to sin not because sin conquered us but by our very disposition. 22 As Shakespeare’s Cassius said to Brutus, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 23 We can’t blame anything or anyone else but ourselves for our sin.

 

The story is told of a small group of Greek philosophers who were talking together some 500 years before Christ when the question arose, “What is the briefest possible definition of a man?” It was Plato who answered, “Man is a two-legged animal.” One of the men walked outside, came back with a rooster, held it up, and said, “Behold, Plato’s man!” But it was a wiser man who then exclaimed, “I have it! Man is a religious animal.” 24 He was right! Men talk of religion but then act like animals. Then again, sometimes to call men animals is insulting to animals.

 

To illustrate, the following was not written by some “ranting and raving Calvinist,” rather by the Minnesota Crime Commission:

 

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother’s attention, his play­mate’s toys, his uncle’s watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He’s dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just cer­tain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up to be a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.

 

Indeed, that precious new‑born baby is a beautiful sight, but that little bundle of joy is also a wicked creature. It’s a good thing babies are cute, because there is nothing else redeeming about them. Yes, he or she is under the grace of God until the age of accountability but is depraved nonetheless. No one has to teach that baby to lie, to steal, to throw tantrums, to disobey, or anything else negative; he does all those and more by nature.

Theologian and commentator Charles Hodge put the matter very practically:

 

As it is absolutely impossible for a man to believe, when the dice are thrown sixes successively a thousand times, that the dice are not loaded, so is it a thousand times more impossible to believe, when every human being of all nations and generations, without a single exception, begins to sin the instant he enters moral agency, that his will is not biased by a previous effectual tendency in his nature to sin. 25

 

In other words we sin because it comes naturally. I remember to this day a pastor whose expository preaching I sat under as a young adult. When preaching on sin he would say, “A lot of you say, ‘Hey, man, I’m just having a little fun. I’m just doin’ what comes naturally,’ but that is precisely the problem. Doing what comes naturally is sin.”

 

And now because of this depravity, all of us were under God’s wrath before Christ came into our lives. To speak of God’s wrath is unthinkable in most circles today. It simply is not politically correct or even prudent for ministry. We should never speak of such a thing, it is argued, rather we should speak of love, mercy, and forgiveness and just talk about Jesus can do for you. 26

 

But while Scripture says much about love, mercy, and forgiveness, It also says much about God’s wrath. As God declared right before commanding Noah to build a lifeboat, “My spirit shall not always strive with man” (Gen. 6:3). God is not “infinitely merciful” as many teach today. There will come a time when He will pour out His wrath upon those who reject Him. Our Lord Himself made this very clear. While people love to quote John 3:16, they ignore or overlook 3:36: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Instead of opening our “evangelistic campaigns” with such platitudes as “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” we should begin as does Paul in Romans 1:18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [i.e., suppress] the truth in unrighteousness.” Paul writes a chapter later that God’s wrath is His “righteous judgment” (2:5). We see this principle, in fact, throughout the Word of God. 27

 

As one writer astutely observes, it’s interesting that men accept the wrath of God when it comes to gravity and therefore tall buildings, but rebel at His wrath when it comes to moral behavior. Man thinks he should be allowed to break God’s laws with impunity. But just as there is a consequence of breaking the physical law of gravity by jumping off a building, there is likewise a consequence to breaking God’s “moral law of gravity.” Promiscuous sex, a lifetime of gluttony, an abuse of alcohol or drugs will kill you just as dead as a ten-story plunge. 28

 

The Greek behind wrath is orgē, which is the word most often used in the New Testament for wrath. Another type of wrath is thumos, which denotes “wrath as an outburst of a vengeful mind.” 29 Orgē, however, is more considered, more thought out, more justified. As one Greek authority puts it, “thumos denotes the wrath that boils up, orgē the wrath that breaks forth . . . orgē appears as the attitude which is particularly appropriate for a judge.” 30 We usually picture wrath as uncontrolled, red-faced fury or someone lashing out in anger and then getting over it. But that is not the case with God. It can be defined thusly: God’s wrath is His sovereignty considered just punishment that is motivated from His holiness and hatred of sin. 31 God could have destroy­ed Adam the moment he sinned and been perfectly just in doing so. Likewise, He could send every single one of us to hell and be totally just in doing so. Why? Because we are all sinners! This is one reason people have trouble with election. “It’s not fair,” they say, “that God chooses one and not another.” No, it’s not fair, it’s grace. While God could destroy every one of us and been perfectly just in doing so, He chose to be gracious.

 

So, while God is holy by nature, we are sinful by nature. God gave His laws down through history, and just as consistently man has broken every one because he is a “[child] of disobedience. Isn’t it incredible how men ignore this Truth? If you told a billionaire that he was about to be wiped out totally, or told a man who felt fine that he would soon die of a terminal illness, or woke up a family and told them their house was on fire, every one of them would react accordingly. But tell people of the wrath of God, and they laugh, as did the Sodomites when Lot told them of what was coming. 32

 

Paul’s final words on this subject underscore once again the universality of the plight of sin. Even as others literally reads, “as also are the rest of mankind.” 33 In other words, Jews and Gentiles alike, all mankind is in a desperate state of sinfulness.

 

All this is a terrible picture, a picture at which none of us wish to gaze. But, Dear Christian, we MUST look at this picture! It does us no good to look at verses 4‑10 unless we first look at and fully comprehend verses 1‑3. We can never appreciate God’s grace until we realize our depravity.

 

Commentator Albert Barnes writes this summation:

 

No truth, perhaps, is more frequently stated in the Bible; none is more fearful and awful in its character. What a declaration, that we “are by nature the children of wrath!” Who should not inquire what it means? Who should not make an effort to escape from the wrath to come, and become a child of glory and an heir of life?

 

While the sin issue is frequently dealt with in Scripture, it is avoided in our day at all cost. It’s just not stylish to preach about sin; it’s not prudent. But sin is, indeed, the issue. Salvation is not some vague experience that “makes life better,” rather it is repentance from sin that saves the soul from God’s eternal wrath.

 

And we praise God that we can now go on to verse 4, and the verses that follow, to discover exactly how God has provided salvation for our depraved race. Thank God for what we will see next, those glorious words, “But God!”

 

1 As Barnes writes: “The words ‘hath he quickened,’ or made to live, are supplied, but not improperly, by our translators. The object of the apostle is to show the great power which God had evinced towards the people, Eph 1:19 and to show that this was put forth in connexion with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and his exaltation to the right hand of God in heaven.”

2 See Hendrickson, pp. 110-111.

3 Baxter (p. 170). In this instance, the Preacher’s Outline and Study Bible also has a good comment: “Death never means extinction, annihilation, non-existence, or inactivity. Death simply means that a person is separated, either separated from his body or from God or from both.” Brown mentions that the OT concept of death understood that “death brings with it separation from Yahweh, the source of life (Ps. 6:5; 30:9; 88:5,10ff; Is. 38:11)” (Vol. I, p. 433).

4 As Calvin put it: “[Paul] does not mean simply that they were in danger of death; but he declares that it was a real and present death under which they labored. As spiritual death is nothing else than the alienation of the soul from God, we are all born as dead men, and we live as dead men, until we are made partakers of the life of Christ-agreeably to the words of our Lord, ‘The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live’ [Jn. 5:25].” Commentaries.

5 Eadie, p. 120-121.

6 Bishop Alford; cited in Eadie, p. 119.

7 Clark, p. 57.

8 Sproul, p. 46.

9 Stedman, p. 75.

10 John Owen, A Display of Arminianism (Edmonton: Still Waters Revival Publishers, 1989 reprint), p. 12.

11 Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1932), p. 62.

12 See Lincoln (p. 91-93) for an excellent example of how liberals dilute the Truth of spiritual death. In short, he writes: “ . . . in the OT, particularly in the Psalms, a life in disease, sin, alienation, captivity, or under the rule of one’s enemies was seen as a life in Sheol or in the realm of death . . . They provide a remarkable parallel to the thought of Ephesians with their notion that entrance into the community is a passing from death to life and to participation in the heavenly realm.” He would no doubt also agree with Robert Schuller’s “low self-esteem” theory (see Chapter 9). 

13        Cited in The Biblical Illustrator.

14        “Locative of sphere.” See footnote 6 in Chapter 6.

15        Cited in Boice, p. 50.

16        God’s Way of Reconciliation, p. 21-22.

17        Brown, VoI. I, p. 449; Kittle, p. 25; Thayer, p. 13.

18        These totals do not include the five additional occurrences in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as Pauline authorship is disputed by some (but not by this author).

19        Cited in Hughes.

20 5.3.194.

21        Wuest.

22        Again, Liberal Christianity sidesteps the Truth. “‘By nature,” writes Andrew Lincoln, “should not of course be taken to mean that sinfulness is of the essence of human nature. In Pauline thought sin is always abnormal, a disorder . . .” (p. 99).

23        Julius Caesar, I.2.147-148.

24        Cited in Ironside, p. 103.

25        Cited in The Biblical Illustrator.

26 Words such as the following do not play well in our day, but they are accurate: “We must always come back to what is said in the fifty-first psalm, [v. 5; ‘Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’] namely, that we not only offend God daily in a variety of ways, but also are loathsome to him beforehand, even before we have either done or thought anything, because we were begotten in sin and cursedness. And by that expression ‘children of wrath’ St. Paul means that we are the heirs of death and that God must needs be our enemy, even as soon as we are conceived. However, God is not cruel, nor does he hate what he has himself made. True, and if we had such pureness in us as was in our father Adam, according to the saying that all things God made were good, God would then hate his own workmanship in us. But we must concluded that since he abhors us and is, as it were, armed to take vengeance on us all, we have well deserved it . . .” (Calvin, Sermons on Ephesians, p. 143-144).

27        See also: Matt. 3:7; Lk. 21:23; Rom. 5:9; 9:22; 13:4; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; I Thes. 1:10; Heb. 4:3; Rev. 6:16-17; 14:10; etc.

28 Stedman, p. 81.

29 Zodhiates, p. 1055.

30 Brown, I, p. 107.

31        As Eadie puts it, “Orgē [wrath] is God’s holy anger against sin, which leads Him justly to punish it” (p. 134). Expositor’s Greek Testament is also noteworthy: “This holy displeasure of God with sin is not inconsistent with His love, but is the reaction of that love against the denial of its sovereign rights of responsive love.”

32        Adapted from R. J. McGee in The Biblical Illustrator.

33        Eadie, p. 137 (hos kai hoi loipoi).

 

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