Written by Pastor Mark Driskill
September 15, 2011

Read Ephesians 2:1-3

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”
I think one reason we don’t have much appreciation for the grace of God in our culture is the simple fact that we don’t honestly believe we need it. We as a church and a culture have fallen for a terrible lie. The lie that is dragging so many into eternal darkness is this: “People are okay without Christ.” We can’t imagine the suggestion that we may actually need God’s mercy. After all we recycle! We eat healthy! We adopt pets! How could we be in a crisis with God?

This delusion of being okay causes us to reserve the need for repentance to the “Real Sinners” i.e. terrorists, serial killers, Facebook hackers and people who don’t forward religious messages to all their friends. The rest of us are okay with God, at least as far as we are concerned. For the most part we are a culture that feels pretty good about our place in heaven. Sadly this lie is only enhanced by the prevalence of feel good preachments that ooze from rose colored pulpits. Such ecclesiastical brown nosing has too many of us believing that none of us are lost, rather we are just a little off track in our perspective and need a slight tweak of the conscience now and then to help us stay at the top of our game… and what a deadly game it is.

The idea that we are okay in and of ourselves has nothing to do with what the Bible actually says about the situation. In today’s passage we read quite a different assessment of what it means to be without Christ. What believer has not read with great joy Paul’s words in verse 8? “For by grace you are saved through faith and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”  The only problem is we fail to read the verses leading up to that which show us why grace is so amazing. In the first few verses of the chapter we see an assessment of the human situation that lies in stark contrast to the common perception today.

How does God look at a person who is existing without Christ?

1. Walking around dead. Ephesians 2:1-2 tell us that apart from Christ we are literally walking around dead on the earth. We have no life at all.
2. Under demonic influence. “Following the prince of the power of the air.” means that without Christ we are following Satan himself. He may be leading us to lead a tranquil and nice life, but it is still a life in which we are in control rather than God. Even those who call themselves spiritual but are not submitted to Christ may look very nice on the outside but behind their alternative spirituality is a heart that wants to control its own destiny.
3. Addicted to selfish desires. Ephesians 2:3 describes a lost person as one who is “carrying out the desires of the body and mind.” In other words to be lost means that you are trapped in self determination, a thing highly applauded in our culture but not in God’s heaven. We forget that we were not created for ourselves but for God. So when we choose a god-less lifestyle of self determination we are in polite rebellion against God. This leads to the next problem.
4. Headed for wrath. The culture may want you to think yourself a child of God but without Christ you are a child of wrath. Although created in God’s image and deeply loved by him, your good deeds and nice personality cannot undo the fact that you have sinned against a righteous God who cannot look the other way and make an exception when it comes to dealing with sin. He is holy and his sense of justice is infinitely higher than you can imagine. He must punish sin, all sin even the one’s you feel good about. The Bible tells us that we all must give an account for the life we have lived and only the life forgiven by the grace of Jesus will be saved.

Paul encourages the believer to remember that at one time we were all in this condition until the grace and love of God came to us through Jesus Christ and saved us. When you look at humanity through the lens of popular culture grace and mercy seem like a moot point. But when you see from God’s perspective grace becomes truly amazing. More about that tomorrow.

Pastor Mark Driskill
Web Minister of Begotten By the Word web ministry
See our website at http://ourchurch.com/member/b/bbtw
and
www.facebook.com (to group “begotten by the word”)
Begotten By the Word is a ministry of Helping Hands Christian resources-Evangelism Outreach
www.hhcr05.org
(Feel free to copy in any way that will bring glory to God and further his kingdom.)