EPHESIANS 2:1

In the first few verses of Ephesians chapter two Paul is reminding the believers of what they used to be before they came to know Jesus. If it had not been for God, they would still be in this condition. The same is true of you and me. It is good to remember where you came from so that you can appreciate what has been done for you. One of the many benefits of having been saved by Jesus is that the guilt is gone. All of the sins of the past can be forgotten. God has forgotten them. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Because of Christ, He will remember them no more. And though we should never feel guilty again, we should not forget from whence we came. If you ever forget, come back to Ephesians 2:1-3 and read these verses. They say, “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.”

One of the things to notice about this passage is that the Apostle Paul includes himself in this description of what believers used to be before Jesus touched them. Everyone should include themselves in such a description. Remember that Paul said he was the chief of sinners: the least of all saints. He did not just say that: he believed it. If you believe that this description is true about yourself, then you will say such things also. I am always surprised when I hear Christian leaders introduce guest speakers with such glowing praise about all the things that these individuals have accomplished in their lives. I do not doubt that good things have been accomplished, but it seems to me that Jesus deserves the praise. That is the way it will be in heaven. We are all just sinners saved by grace. If it had not been for Christ, those speakers would be right here in Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 1-3. I came to know an elderly Christian lady once, a dear sweet follower of Christ, who had been a missionary to Africa for many years in the early 1900s before returning and living in her retirement home in Virginia. Before she died, she told me that at her funeral she was going to ask that the Fanny Crosby hymn be sung, “To God be the glory.”

The Bible says in Ephesians 2:1, “And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Before we are saved through faith in Christ, we are dead. Someone who is dead, is incapable of doing anything on this earth in service to God or Christ. If you go down to a cemetery, you will not find one dead person doing anything to serve God. Not one of them is reading their Bible, not one of them is handing out a tract, not one of them is using their finances for the furtherance of the gospel: not on this earth anyway, because they are dead. That is why an unsaved person cannot understand the scripture: they are dead: spiritually speaking they are dead.

Notice what it says about this spiritual death: “dead in trespasses and sins.” There is a close connection between this spiritual death and “trespasses and sins.” For one thing, trespasses and sins cause death. In the day that you sinneth, you shall surely die. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. For the wages of sin is death. Those who are spiritually dead are recognized as being “in trespasses and sins.” But believers should not be recognized in that way. “Be ye holy for I am holy, saith the Lord.” “Dead in trespasses in sins” should be a description of your past life, not your present one.

What is interesting about the next two verses is that it speaks of three great enemies of the human race. Why do humans do wrong so easily and so often? There are three reasons given in these two verses. They are given in this order: the world, the devil, and the flesh. The first reason given is the world. It says in the first part of Ephesians 2:2, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world.” The emphasis here is on the power of the world to pull along with it those who have no strength or capacity to resist: kind of like a great flood in which everything in its path is swept away. It has to do with the wide road that leads to destruction that Jesus spoke about, where many have gone in. It speaks of the entertainments, activities, pleasures, enjoyments, and pursuits of the world as they travel along separated from God and centered upon man and the pride of man. This is where peer pressure comes from. It is the human environment in which we find ourselves and the pull that it has upon us and the effect that it has upon us without us even knowing it. At least that is true before we are saved. Why does a dead fish float downstream? Because it is dead, and it has absolutely no life to be able to swim against the current? No wonder the Lord tells believers, “Love not the world.” The world’s system of humanism and other foolish philosophies destroys souls and is one of the great forces that keeps them from coming to Christ. Why did you do the things that you did before you came to Christ? One of the reasons was the bad influence of what was going on around you in the part of the world in which you lived. This is one of the difficulties of raising children. As a parent you can improve the environment of your children, but you cannot make it perfect. Unless they turn to Christ, they will be doomed in some way and at some time to pick up the ideas of the world.

It says in the second part of Ephesians 2:2, “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Of course, this is talking about the devil: Satan, the adversary of the human race. It says two things about the devil that emphasize his advantage over unsaved people. Notice that we say here “his advantage over the unsaved.” Once you are saved, the devil no longer has this advantage. Once you are saved, you are removed from the power of the devil. It says here that the devil is “the prince of the power of the air.” In speaking of the air, it is probably speaking of the atmosphere that surrounds the earth, and thus speaks of the fact that the devil’s power is primarily concentrated here on the earth and around the world. By the way the devil’s power is not concentrated in Iraq or Iran or North Korea. He is right at home in America also. The devil is a prince and he has power. He has so much power in this world that elsewhere he is called “the God of this world.” When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the devil offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world. That was not an empty offer. The devil had the power to deliver what he offered. The point that this passage is making is that the devil has far too much power for any human being to be a match for him.

Evidently the devil hates all human beings and wants to destroy them because all human beings were created in the image of God and because God loves all human beings. When Jesus saved us, He delivered us from the power of the devil. Without Jesus we had no hope, no power, no chance. The devil has power, but he does not have all power. This passage says that he is a prince and that he has power, but that is all that it says. He has more power than man, but much less power than God. He does not have almighty power. Great words are not used to describe his power the way that they were used to describe the power of God and of Christ. Concerning the power of God, it said in Ephesians 1:19, “And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.”

If you are saved, you used to be under the power of the devil, but you no longer are. Now you are kept by the power of God, and Christ is much more powerful than the devil. Notice that it says in Ephesians 2:2 about the devil that he “now worketh in the children of disobedience.” He does not work in the children of God. He cannot because the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ work in the children of God. We have been delivered from the power of the devil. Yes, the devil can tempt you, but if you resist the devil as a child of God, the devil will flee from you because he has no power as long as you walk in fellowship with Christ. When your knees are bowed in prayer, the devil’s knees are shaking in fear.

Why is it and how is it that the devil no longer has power over the saved? One Bible verse that explains that very well is Revelation 12:11. It says speaking of the devil and how believers overcome him, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” Three important things to gaining the victory over the devil. The first is the blood of the Lamb. The reason that the devil can no longer gain a victory over you is because Jesus is your Savior. Jesus died for your sins and shed His blood on the cross of Calvary. The devil was all about causing you to sin so that you would be ruined by your sins, and so that you would be forever separated from God because of your sins. Once you enter into faith in Christ, you are delivered from your sins. Your victory over the devil is based first of all upon what Jesus did for you, not what you have done. Even when you fail, the work of Christ standeth sure. Nothing can take away its healing cure. The devil has been defeated, not by you, but by Christ.

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony.” One of the things that is dear to the heart of Jesus is lost souls coming to be saved. “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...” “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” “There is more joy in heaven over one soul that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.” What is God’s method for reaching the lost souls of our community? He wants to use the testimony that you and I have. The devil knows that, and if the devil cannot destroy your soul then he wants to destroy your testimony. He wants to shut you up so that you say nothing about Jesus and if you do say anything that you do it without effect and without the power of a good testimony. Some Christians have been shut up by the devil. They have been side-tracked so that they no longer are a testimony and they no longer give a word for Jesus as they go here and there in their life. Remember that the second way to overcome the devil is by your word of testimony. No matter what happens, go out and give a word of testimony and then you will be winning, because he did not stop you.

The devil has some power in this world, and he will do things to get at you. We know what he did to Job. I do not know what you will have to suffer if you continue to walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus. It may be something significant. “The servant is not better than his Lord.” But if you put into effect in your heart the third of these things listed here in Revelation 12:11, no matter what the devil does against you, you will come through the fire as gold refined. “Though he slay me, yet will I serve Him.” That must be your view of things. No matter what happens and no matter what goes wrong, you will accept it. Because you do not love your life, by faith you can stand in the midst of a raging storm, and even if everything dear to you is taken away by that storm, and even if your own life is at jeopardy, you can in your dying breath say, “Thank you, Jesus, that this is your will. I have asked for your will to be done, and your will was to allow everything to be taken from me. Therefore, here with my dying breath I say, May the name of Christ be glorified. Jesus, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Believers in Christ are quite capable of having the victory over the devil. Revelation 12:11 tells them how to do it. It says, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” But those who are not believers have no chance whatsoever to gain a victory over the devil. They are enslaved as captives by the prince of the power of the air. They are also slaves to their own desires and to their own lusts. The unsaved have no power against the world, the devil, or the flesh. Ephesians 2:3 says, “Among whom we also 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.”

The flesh speaks not only of the base sins of immorality. The flesh speaks of everything that a human can be as he lives on this earth without God. The flesh is the human life centered on man and separated from God. Each human has inherited from Adam a sin nature. They sin because they are sinners. No one has to teach them to sin. Sinning comes naturally to every human. Humans are enslaved to their sins. Instead of naming individual sins here such as adultery or thievery or lying or pride or gossip, the core of the problem that each of us had is given here before Christ changed our lives. The problem is called here, “the lusts of our flesh.” The word lusts refers to strong desires. The desires are so strong that those who are not in Christ have no chance of conquering them.

Just to make sure that no one thinks that this is speaking only of the baser sins of adultery or something like that, the Bible says in this verse, “fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” Even the things that you think about could be great sins: the things that you would do if you could are also sins and God knows about those too. Take a look at the two words used here: the “lusts” of the flesh and the “desires” of the flesh. The phrase “the lusts of the flesh” refers to how strong those desires are. The phrase “the desires of the flesh” refers to the fact that those who are not in Christ give themselves willingly and wholeheartedly to those desires. They cannot use as an excuse that their flesh was weak, and they cannot use as an excuse that they are only human. If you sinned with the sin of pride or any other sin, it was because you willingly sinned. That is why the unsaved are guilty before God. They willingly went along with the lusts of their flesh. That is why the end of verse two calls the unsaved “the children of disobedience.” That is the terrible state of a human being without Christ. That is the state that you and I were also in until Jesus found us and delivered us from ourselves and our own evil selfishness.

This passage calls all unbelievers the children of disobedience in Ephesians 2:2, and it calls them in verse 3 “the children of wrath.” Of course, Paul includes himself and all others believers in this description and so he says at the beginning of verse 3, “among whom also we all.” And so we see that Paul speaks of the flesh and then in the same verse speaks of “the children of wrath.” In what way do humans show forth the characteristics of wrath and in what way is that related to their flesh? If you understand the true nature of the problem, then maybe it will be easier to see the solution. The wrath of man does not accomplish the will of God. Remember the flesh refers to human selfishness. When you want something more than you should want it, then is when you get angry. When you want something to turn out a certain way, and it does not turn out that way, then is when you get angry. Your anger is traced to your selfishness, which is a part of your sinful flesh. Stop being so selfish, and you will stop being so angry. As the scripture says, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”

What slaves we all were. We were in a hopeless state. What could possibly make the difference for us? Ephesians 2:4 makes that very clear. It says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he love us.” Perhaps you are still enslaved to the world, the devil, and the flesh. Come to Jesus and find salvation.

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