Ephesians Study 5: Death to Life

Introduction

Hello again to everyone who is joining me today. My name is Sarah Bradbury, and this is Garden to Glory: The Mystery of God.

You are listening to the fifth installment of our study in the book of Ephesians. As we already read in chapter one, Paul gave praise to God for blessing believers in Jesus.  

Today, as we begin looking at Ephesians 2, we will see Paul emphasizing just how much we needed these spiritual blessings, what an immense change they brought about, and why we owe our thanks to God for them.

So, let’s read through our passage, Ephesians 2:1-10:

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil – the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. 

All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

But God is so rich in mercy, and He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) 

For He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of His grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all He has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.

God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.

What does it mean that we were dead in our sins? This is a confusing statement. When we think about life versus death, we think about whether or not we are still breathing or if our heart is beating. When we first believed in Jesus, our heart was already beating, and breath continued to fill our lungs.

So clearly, Paul cannot be talking here about physical death. In fact, if we were physically dead, disobedience and sin wouldn’t even be an option for us to partake in. Dead people can’t lie, cheat, or steal, for instance! 

No, Paul here means something more than physical death. As he continues in these verses, Paul defines this death as living in sin and following the spirit of the devil. What about living life this way makes it similar to death?

The Difficulty of Keeping Someone Alive

One thing that every new parent realizes very quickly once they have a baby is that it takes an insane amount of work to keep a small human alive!

Even if you avoid the need for an early stay in the NICU with swarms of doctors and nurses in order to keep your premature baby breathing (a function that, thankfully, is automatic for most children), you will still find yourself exhausted by the effort required to maintain your child’s lifestyle of eating, sleeping, and pooping.

Growing and maintaining life is a lot of work! Once that child gets a little older, the type of work changes. Instead of being a mostly passive recipient of our parents’ life-giving efforts, at some point, most of us become active thwarters of our parents’ attempts to keep us alive.

Activities like putting everything in our mouths puts us in danger of illnesses or swallowing something harmful like a battery. Corners and outlets become dangers that need to be covered to keep us from injuring ourselves. 

With more physical independence, the list of dangers grows. We keep our kids from accessing burners or being able to open doors that would allow them to run into the street. We watch and supervise closely when we get near a pool or a lake.

Thankfully, the need for parents to protect kids from these kinds of dangers is usually short-lived (unless you have special needs kids like mine, in which case these concerns continue over the course of their lifetimes).

However, the list of parenting concerns is not limited to things like these. While the world is filled with sinful parents who do not always fulfill the roles they should have in the lives of their children, good parents seek to teach their kids to make positive choices that will help them flourish.

Parents teach their kids things like sharing and caring for their friends and family. They teach them to eat well, doing their best to keep their kids from making sugar their only food group. Moms and dads teach their children to pick up their toys, do their homework, and take an occasional bath: a myriad of skills that are required for them to live productive and fulfilling lives.

It is at this point in my illustration that every parent realizes the skills they are trying to teach their kids for their benefit are things their children naturally fight against.

All of these skills – and many more – are ones that my children will never learn. They will be dependent on someone else for these things their entire lives. However, one thing my kids have in common with all children is their natural resistance to doing the things that will keep them alive and help them flourish.

The same is unfortunately true of us.

Adam and Eve Chose Death

When God told Adam in the garden that eating the fruit of the tree would result in his death, Adam should have listened.

Like a parent who warns their children that they will get hurt if they continue to make whatever stupid choice they are making, God gave Adam the most severe and sincere warning. God told him that the consequences of his actions would be his death, not his flourishing.

God acted in love for humanity by giving them the information they needed to flourish in life instead of dying. However, Satan has the opposite motives of God. Satan is not love; he is hatred. Satan does not champion life; he pursues our death.

In John 8:44, we read:

For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.

This is the choice that Adam and Eve made in the garden. They chose between life and death, truth and lies, and serving God or serving Satan.

Of course, they couldn’t have fully understood and believed the the choice they were making. Like Eve tells God in the garden – and a later New Testament passage confirms – Eve was deceived by Satan. She believed that she was making a choice for her benefit, not her detriment.

So, even in the garden, the choice to sin or to obey came down to a matter of faith – believing in the character of God – or placing that faith in anyone or anything else.

Despite the fact that Eve had been deceived – and because of her lack of faith in God – her choice was sinful, and the results were deadly.

The Father of Lies

Prior to believing in Jesus, you likely didn’t think to yourself, “I’m going to choose to follow Satan.” However, Satan doesn’t need for you to consciously acknowledge him in order to succeed in his plans. 

Satan is the father of lies, and one of his primary tools is to deceive people. All Satan needs to do to enslave you is to convince you that your good is found anywhere else besides Jesus.

In Genesis 3:4-6, we read:

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.

Interestingly enough, when Satan tempted Eve in the garden, he tempted her with wisdom and the promise of being like God. Both of these things are actually positive desires to have.

There are many verses that encourage us to seek after wisdom or to become more like God. Here are just a couple for reference.

Psalm 4:7 tells us:

Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do!
    And whatever else you do, develop good judgment.

And in Ephesians 5:1, we read:

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are His dear children.

The problem then – at least for Eve – wasn’t the end goal she desired. Instead, it was the belief that God was keeping good away from her and that the good things she desired could only be acquired by something outside of God. However, good things can only come to us through God. This is why we need to have faith.

Believing God

Hebrews 11:6 says:

And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.

All humans have inherited a sinful nature from our parents. We see this without fail in children as young as toddlers who believe that they know better than their parents. In the children’s eyes, these parents cruelly force them to do awful things like take naps, brush their teeth, or refrain from screaming in a store.

As kids get older, the consequences of disregarding their parents and thinking they know better can result in injury, death, addiction, teen pregnancy, and all sorts of problems that range from mild to severe.

This same attitude is mirrored by us as we interact with our Heavenly Father.

Before we believed in Jesus, we continually made choices that led to death instead of life. We believed the devil’s lies that we could be happy following our own desires that were inspired by our sinful natures.

Alive, But Dead

Galatians 5:19-21 tells us:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

This list of sins is not an arbitrary catalog of what not to do that is designed to make following God difficult or to prove how righteous we can be if we just try hard enough.

Rather, this list shows us the results of a heart filled with selfish desires for instant gratification at the expense of God and others. It is a destructive lifestyle, and it is death not only for the person living it, but also for the people affected by these choices.

It is not wrong to desire companionship, love, physical intimacy, sensual pleasure, accomplishment, and fun. However, we can only find our lasting satisfaction to these and all good desires through God.

In Psalm 16:2, King David writes:

I said to the Lord, “You are my Master!
    Every good thing I have comes from you.”

Then in verse 11, he adds:

You will show me the way of life,
    granting me the joy of Your presence
    and the pleasures of living with You forever.

When we don’t believe in God’s power or His love for us, we are left with shallow versions of joy and pleasure that harm us and others instead of satisfying us. We choose death instead of life.

As we read in Ephesians 2:1-3:

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil – the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. 

All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

As we contemplate the pathetic state that we are in when we continue to choose sin over God, we may find ourselves wondering about the last sentence of this passage. Why does our self-destructive behavior make God angry at us? Isn’t He supposed to love us?

Making Holes 

I’m going to share with you a story about my oldest son, Alex, in the hopes that we can understand God’s anger and love better.

A couple of years ago, Alex went through a rough time in his life, which meant my husband and I were also having a tough time!

Being mostly non-verbal, Alex has very limited choices for how to express his feelings to others. For a time, Alex made the decision of expressing his frustrations in life by screaming and running straight into the walls of our house.

As he did this, Alex discovered that by sticking out his knee when he made impact, he could leave a nice little souvenir of this frustration in the form of a small hole in the wall.

These holes became more numerous, and I spent a great deal of time and energy trying to patch each one. Yet with every hole I patched, the wall retained a scar that showed the evidence of our brokenness (and my inept handyman skills!).

This process of making holes in the walls became even more enjoyable for Alex once he realized that he could use his hands to pull more drywall off, piece by piece.

Not only this, but Alex discovered that the holes I had previously patched were susceptible to being pulled apart again if he picked at them enough. Suddenly, my sub-par patching skills were no longer enough to keep our house in one piece.

I love my children so much that I can’t possibly explain it in words. I had made it a mission in life to provide them a home that would give them the space to be safe, happy, and loved. It was my intent to set up this house in such a way that it would serve their needs for their entire lives, and that undertaking had been extensive (even prior to Alex’s mission to tear it all down).

There have been many challenging behaviors that Alex and his brother Nathaniel have chosen to participate in. I’m not even sure that pulling the walls apart was the most difficult. However, I remember thinking in that moment, “I’m never going to be able to build a home for you if you insist on pulling it apart with your bare hands!”

I cannot tell you if I was more sad, frustrated, or just defeated in that moment. However, I can tell you that there is a special kind of anger a parent feels when the child they love insists on working against them while they desperately try to work for that child’s good.

The decisions Alex was making were not for his benefit. They were literally destroying all that I was trying to build for him. 

Not only that, but those decisions hurt me, my husband Ben, and our other son Nathaniel. He not only had to interact with parents who were exhausted and frustrated, but Nathaniel also had to be shielded and protected from his inclination to take broken pieces of wall and put them in his mouth.

I know that Alex did not – and still does not – understand the full weight of the choices that he made. Yet, he did know that he was deciding his own route to happiness was better than what I, as his mother, was telling him.

Unfortunately, my son is like his mother in his stubbornness and his tendency to believe he knows better. In fact, every human who has ever lived is the same way!

No One Does Good

Psalm 14:1-3 says:

Only fools say in their hearts,
    “There is no God.”

They are corrupt, and their actions are evil;
    not one of them does good!

The Lord looks down from heaven
    on the entire human race;
He looks to see if anyone is truly wise,
    if anyone seeks God.

But no, all have turned away;
    all have become corrupt.
No one does good,
    not a single one!

We choose sin. We choose death. We choose lies. We choose our way over God’s way, and God hates these things.

Psalm 5:4-6 tells us:

O God, You take no pleasure in wickedness;
    You cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked.

Therefore, the proud may not stand in Your presence,
    for You hate all who do evil.

You will destroy those who tell lies.
    The Lord detests murderers and deceivers.

We have a huge problem here! If every human has rejected God and chosen evil, then none of us can stand in the presence of God. And God has determined to destroy those who do evil.

We’ve already learned that God is the only path for our true flourishing and life. As Paul said in the beginning of Ephesians 2, we were all dead because of our disobedience and sins. Just as dead people have no ability to make themselves alive, we had no ability to draw near to God. Our sinfulness made it impossible for us to do this, and like Paul said at the end of verse three, this sinful nature put us under the anger of God, just like everyone else.

However, the story does not end there for the people of God.

God Still Loves Us

Isaiah 53:3-6 says this about Jesus:

He was despised and rejected –
    a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way.
    He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses He carried;
    it was our sorrows that weighed Him down.

And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God,
    a punishment for His own sins!

But He was pierced for our rebellion,
    crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.
    He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
    We have left God’s paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on Him
    the sins of us all.

The love that I have for my son Alex does not go away when he makes me angry. I will do anything in my power to help him make choices that will lead to his flourishing and not his detriment. Sometimes, this means allowing him to experience some of the consequences of his choices.

Yet other times – like when the house is literally in pieces – the most loving response I can have for him is not to leave him in the rubble of his own making. Rather, it is to take on the brunt of the injury myself in order to spare him from the complete consequences of his own destructive choices.

Alex could not rebuild our house or pay for someone else to do the work. But Ben and I could. So, we did.

To an infinitely greater degree, this is what Jesus has done for us. We were dead in our sins. We had no way to reconcile ourselves to God, but on our behalf, Jesus suffered. He bore the penalty of our sin.

Ephesians 2:1-10 tells us:

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil – the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. 

All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

But God is so rich in mercy, and He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) 

For He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of His grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all He has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.

God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.

The love that our heavenly Father has for us does not disappear when we rebel against Him. Our passage in Ephesians shows us that even while we were subject to God’s anger, He loved us. While we were dead in our sins, God gave us life.

How Should We Now Live?

We are examples of God’s abundant grace and kindness. Not because we deserve it, but because He loved us. Not only does God spare us from the destruction we deserve, but He gives us a new nature through the Holy Spirit. This Spirit that we read about in the first chapter of Ephesians wars against the natural spirit of death that we were born with. The Holy Spirit working in us not only keeps us from death, but also causes us to actively work toward life. 

Or in the words we just read in Ephesians 2: 

He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.

Galatians 5:22-26 describes for us these good things:

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.

So, what are we to do in light of this information?

1. Trust in God’s love.

Beloved child of God, there is no sin or shame that carries more weight than God’s love for you. You cannot “out sin” His grace and mercy for you.

If Jesus Himself left all the pleasures of Heaven to live and die for your sake when all you had to offer was sin in return, then there is no evil we can do that can chase away His love.

We can rest in confidence that because of God’s love for us, He is working all things out for our good. That is true even when it seems that He is just withholding good things from us.

Romans 8:28 says:

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them. 

2. Choose life.

In Galatians 5:16-17, we read:

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. 

This passage in Galatians tells us that the presence of the Holy Spirit in us does not eliminate the sinful nature we were born with, but it does go to war with it.

Rooted in the knowledge of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, we are now empowered to choose life by following the lead of God’s own Spirit that now lives in us. Each day, we make choices about what character our lives will show and what future we will build for ourselves and others. This happens by choosing life or death, truth or lies, and love or selfishness.

Because of our knowledge of God and the empowering of His Spirit, we have the ability to partner with God and build life instead of death. So, choose life.

3. Be humble.

No matter what we do from this point forward, our status as children of God is something that we will never be able to earn. Our inclusion into God’s family will always be based on grace. This means it’s a gift; we can’t take credit for it.

This also means that as Spirit-empowered people, whatever good we accomplish in life is something to be thankful to God for. It is never the basis for pride.

Philippians 2:12b-13 says:

Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.

Since it is God who gives us both the desire and the power to do good things, we have no reason to believe we are better or more worthy than any other person God has created.

To be clear, this does not mean we should look at ourselves as people who have no worth. Rather, we ought to look at our worth as something we have received from God, be thankful for it, and seek to use every positive attribute we have been given for the good of every person God has made.

4. Share the Good News.

Recognizing that God gave us the gift of life while we were dead in sin shows us there is no sin powerful enough to keep us from God’s love. Because we are not more worthy of God’s love than anyone else, we should be eager to share the news of Jesus with everyone.

Show the world that because of Jesus, we can choose life. We can choose love. Why? Because we can choose God!

So, friends, as I leave you today, I will share this blessing from Ephesians 3:20-21:

Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to Him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen. 

To help you meditate on the principles we have discussed today, I have made a short Spotify playlist that you can find here.