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You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.Ephesians 2:1Many church people have bought into a view of sin that goes like this: We all mess up in various ways, and nobody is perfect. But God is gracious and kind. If we are sorry and want to do better, God will forgive us and help us, and it was Jesus who made all this possible. If this is the size and the scale of the problem, Jesus will not seem to you like a very great saviour. But the wrong things we do are only the tip of the iceberg. Once you understand the Bible’s doctrine of sin, it will provide the building blocks to understanding the nature of salvation. The Word of God teaches that, by nature, we are sinners from birth. By nature, we are children of wrath. By nature, we can’t change our position. And, by nature, we are completely hopeless. This is the inside story of human life, according to the Bible. Someone might object, “Wait a minute… I have a question. You say that I’m dead in my sins, but I’ve already taken some steps toward God—I repented, I believed, and I’m following Christ. How did I do all that if I was dead in my sins?” Here is the Bible’s answer: When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ! After Paul lays out the inside story of human life in verses 1 to 3, he says: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us… made us alive together with Christ” (2:4-5). This is what Paul says to all his Christian readers, and this is what he is saying to you, if you’re a believer today. When you think about your own salvation, do you tend to emphasise how good of a person you’ve been or how great of a salvation Jesus earned for you?

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.Ephesians 2:1We must take the Bible seriously here. It doesn’t say, “You were trapped in your sins.” It says, “You were dead in your sins”! If a man falls into a pit, you can throw him a rope. But if he is dead in the pit, the rope is of no use to him. Imagine a full-size mannequin standing next to you. Let’s call him “Manny.” Manny is a good-looking fellow—tall, dark, and handsome. But there’s no life in him. He’s dead. Now, as a good friend, let’s suppose you were to do your best to influence him:“Manny, you need to live a life that honours God! Follow the Ten Commandments! Love God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself!” Manny doesn’t seem very responsive, does he? It doesn’t help to yell at Manny, or to try and encourage his self-esteem. Why? Manny can’t do it. He does not have the capacity. He’s dead. Think about what God is saying here, and He is saying it about us: You were dead in your sins. The Bible doesn’t say that the sinner is weak, it says that the sinner is dead. That means he can’t act, he can’t feel, and he can’t move. He is completely unresponsive to God. No matter how hard a problem, a man will feel good about himself if he thinks that he has the ability to get out of it. Tell him he has a sinful nature, and he’ll tell you that he will fight it. Tell him that he is under the wrath of God, and he’ll tell you that he will live a life that wins the admiration of God. But if you tell him that he is dead, there is nothing he can do about his own position. You have insulted him, and he will not accept your doctrine. Yet, this is precisely the teaching of the Bible. Do you think of yourself as… “trapped” in your sins? “Weak” in your sins? “Dead” in your sins? Other? Why?

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.Ephesians 2:12There are so many barriers, so many reasons that can keep us from God. There are so many reasons to put off the decision. It is only by God’s grace that any of us come to Him. If you have never come, then begin a journey of faith and repentance with Jesus Christ today. Here are two reasons: First, because of your need. Sin puts all of us in a desperate position before God. “We… were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3). This is the position you are in if you have not yet placed your faith in Jesus Christ. How will you endure the wrath of God? Second, because of the extent of God’s great love. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In the gospel, God reaches out to you to invite you to receive all that could be yours in Jesus Christ. How can you resist a love like this? Where else do you think you are going to receive a love like this? Is there a barrier to making a decision about Jesus that is standing in your way? Which of the two reasons above is most helpful/encouraging to you? Ask God to help you remove all the barriers.

Note then the kindness and the severity of God.Romans 11:22No generation has been so often told that God loves us, and no generation has struggled more to experience God’s love. One reason for this is that our ideas about God’s love have become sentimental. We have failed to take God’s wrath seriously, and losing touch with God’s wrath, we’ve lost touch with His love. When you grasp this truth of the Divine wrath, you will begin to see the extent of the Divine love. Your eyes will be opened to what was happening at the cross, and how this was an outpouring of God’s love for you. The Divine wrath shows you what you were saved from, and it tells you what it took to save you. When you see the Divine wrath poured out on the Divine person at the cross—God absorbing the wrath of God—you will know that God loves you. The Son of God endured this to redeem me? That is true love. Grasp this and your soul will begin to sing, “Love so amazing, so divine, deserves my soul, my life, my all.” Maybe you thought that God’s wrath shows how much God hates you. Can you see, through the cross, that it might show how much He loves you? Maybe this truth has caused you to hate God. Could it be that today, through the cross, this truth might bring you to love God?

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.Isaiah 53:5Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). On the cross, He became the sin bearer: “He himself bore our sins in the body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). “He… bore our sins” means that Jesus came under all the consequences that sin brings. On the cross, He absorbed the Divine wrath. He entered into all that hell is, so that those who come to Him should never know what it is like. Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for us, so that we could know the love of God through Him. Have you taken this truth seriously? This is a truth that should make us tremble. If it were not for the grace and mercy of God to us, personally, in Jesus Christ, we all would endure a future in which we were against God and God was against us forever, a future in which we have no place for God and God has no place for us. People who reject Jesus will endure the gnawing of an activated conscience in which they see the full extent of their own sin. They will have clear knowledge that there is a God of love and that they could have been reconciled to Him, but now He is beyond their reach because they chose to live without Him. They will live with unending regret and a loathing of self because of their own wretched choices and the miserable consequences. They will experience an ongoing rebellion against God that keeps foaming up from within, from which there is no deliverance. Like the addict who keeps going back to what he knows is destroying his life, apart from Christ we would all spend an eternity in the company of those who are in rebellion against God, with no one to blame but ourselves. Have you considered what Jesus has saved you from?

We were by nature children of wrath.Ephesians 2:3This does not mean that if we do some bad things, the wrath of God will come on us. We are children of wrath by nature. That means, by nature, we are absorbed with self and drawn to sin. By nature, we want to be our own gods. By nature, we were under the wrath of God. Some people say, “I cannot believe that if a person doesn’t believe the right things about God, he or she will go to hell.” But John tells us, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). John does not say, “If you reject Jesus, God’s wrath comes on you.” He says, “If you reject Jesus, God’s wrath remains on you.” It’s already there. By nature, we are children of wrath. Your reaction to this teaching about the wrath of God will tell you whether you have really embraced the truth we looked at about our sinful nature. The reason that all people are liable to the wrath of God is that God must destroy sin and sin is in us by nature. The new heaven and the new earth will be the home of righteousness, so sin can never enter there. But sin is in us by nature. That’s the problem. So, by nature, we can never enter. If we were to enter, which we cannot, we would defile the place that God is making. We need to be made holy first, and that is why we desperately need Christ. Can you see today why, apart from Jesus, it would be impossible for anyone to get into heaven?

We… were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.Ephesians 2:3One of the greatest problems with evolutionary theory is that if it were true, the world should be a better place by now. If we are getting better, surely by now, war should have ended, children should be safe, and women should be treated with dignity and respect. Surely by now, we should have achieved world peace, and wise government with freedom and justice for all. Why can’t we ever get there? Every new generation says: “The world shouldn’t be like this!” But if world history tells us anything, it is that sin is a problem for which there is no human solution. Sin is a monster, and our only hope of getting better is for this monster to be completely destroyed. In Psalm 55, David cries: “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy! Attend to me, and answer me… Destroy, O Lord, divide their [the wicked] tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it; ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace (55:1-2, 9-11). Notice where Psalm 55 ends: “But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction” (55:23). In an evil world, where might is right, this is the psalmist’s only hope. A God who cannot destroy evil, or who does not have the will to do so, is of no help to us. The good news is that David’s prayer will be answered. God will bring the wicked down into the pit of corruption. God will create a new heaven and a new earth where sin will be no more. This is our hope. Without it, there will never be a world with peace and freedom and prosperity and justice and joy for all—never. What are the top three problems in the world today that you would like God’s wrath(judgement) to bring to an end?

We… were by nature children of wrath.Ephesians 2:3This verse is disturbing, but its meaning is clear—the default position of every human life is that we are under the wrath of God. To help us grasp the importance of this, here is a parable... Imagine a beautiful church with stained-glass windows, hundreds of years old, located in the center of town. Pastor John, a wise, kind, and godly man—the kind of man you can talk to, especially when you know you’re in trouble—has served at this church for over 30 years. One day Ben comes into the church looking for Pastor John. He is troubled and he needs to talk. “How can I help you, Ben?” Ben looks down and mumbles, “Pastor John, how can I be a more generous person? …I don’t have peace about what I’m doing with my money. Maybe I need to give more.” Pastor John senses Ben isn’t getting to the point. “Is there something else you want to tell me?” “I’ve been taking money from other people’s pension funds.” As Pastor John is about to speak, the office door flies open: “Pastor John, Pastor John, there’s a bomb in the basement! You have to get out!” Ben says he wants to be a more generous person. But there’s a bigger problem—he has stolen two million dollars from his company’s pension fund, and he is facing jail time. But the biggest problem is that there is a bomb in the building, and if they don’t get out, all of Pastor’s John’s wisdom and all of Ben’s fear about going to the police will be irrelevant. You may want to become a better person. You may even feel that there is stuff in your life that needs to be sorted out. But towering over these two is a problem of altogether different proportions—we are, by nature, children of wrath. Are you so focused on becoming a better person, or on sorting some things out in your life that you’ve completely missed the biggest problem?

We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.Ephesians 2:3In the 1990s, filmmaker Woody Allen left the woman he had been in a long-term relationship with to be with her adopted daughter. When asked why he would do such a thing, he responded by saying, “The heart wants what it wants.” That is exactly the teaching of Ephesians 2:3. So, all of us have to make a choice, and that choice will derive from what we believe about the state of our hearts. If you believe that your heart is good, you will follow the inclinations of your heart and live on impulse, as Woody Allen did. But if you believe what we are learning from theBible, you will learn to distrust your own heart. When someone says, “Follow your heart,” your antenna will go up and you’ll say, “Follow my heart? My heart is sinful. If I follow my heart, it will lead me into all kinds of sin and folly.” The singer Lady Gaga recorded a platinum song “Born This Way,” with the following lyrics… My mama told me when I was young, “We are all born superstars…” “There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are”, She said, “Cause He made you perfect, babe”, So hold your head up, girl, and you’ll go far”, Listen to me when I say I’m beautiful in my way, ’Cause God makes no mistakes, I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way Don’t hide yourself in regret, Just love yourself, and you’re set, I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way Is it possible that you are believing and teaching others the same thing she is?

Carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.Ephesians 2:3If the fires have burned low in your marriage, expect your sinful nature to produce thoughts about divorce. Something within you will say, “You deserve better than this. There’s another person out there for you.” If you are discouraged in ministry, expect the sinful nature to produce thoughts about quitting. The sinful nature will say, “You deserve better than this. There’s something else you could do.” The sinful nature will always produce these cravings, strong desires, and intense longings. The Christian life is a constant battle against the impulses of sin that remain in our flesh. If you are a Christian, your sin is forgiven, but it has not yet been expelled. You are now involved in a lifelong struggle against the desires of the sinful nature. Thomas Boston, in his book Human Nature in Its Fourfold State describes how the imagination enables the sinner to indulge the cravings of his heart. He wrote the following words in 1729, long before we had cameras, TV, the Internet, or TikTok. [The sinful mind]… supplies the lack of real objects to the corrupt heart, that it may make sinners happy at least in the imaginary enjoyment of their lusts. The corrupt heart feeds itself with imagination-sins. The unclean person is filled with speculative impurities. The covetous man fills his heart with the world, though he cannot get his hands full of it. The malicious person fills his mind with acts of revenge. The envious man…beholds with satisfaction, his neighbour laid low. Every lust finds the corrupt imagination a friend to it in time of need. This the heart does, not only when people are awake—but sometimes even when they are asleep; whereby it comes to pass that those sins are acted in dreams which their hearts pant after when they are awake. Can you identify a recent time when you allowed your imagination to run wild by indulging your cravings?

The desires of the flesh and the mind…Ephesians 2:3The Keto diet is the one where you can eat high fat foods but no carbs. This appeals to some people—a diet in which you can eat steak and bacon. But it doesn’t usually last long, because after a few days your body starts craving bread. What are the desires of the mind? What are the cravings of the flesh? Here are ten examples. You will recognise them immediately. When you succeed, the sinful nature produces pride.When others succeed, the sinful nature produces envy.When you do good, the sinful nature is self-righteous.When you do wrong, the sinful nature goes into denial.When you suffer, the sinful nature indulges in self-pity.When you don’t get what you want, the sinful nature gets irritable, frustrated, and angry.When your work is not recognised, the sinful nature gets resentful.When you are in a conflict, the sinful nature produces self-justification.When you hear about the love of God, the sinful nature produces unbelief.When you hear what the Bible says about sin, the sinful nature responds with evasion. Learn to read your own heart. Learn to detect the voice of your sinful nature. Have you heard this voice recently? When?

We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.Ephesians 2:3The first two words of Ephesians 2:3 are crucial to our understanding of the pervasiveness of sin in all human beings, “We all…” Notice how Paul moves from you in verse 1 to us in verse 3: “You were dead in the trespasses and sins… among whom we all once lived [that is, among the sins mentioned]” (2:1, 3). So, Paul includes himself in the group of sinners he is addressing. Paul was about as religious, conservative, moral, and disciplined as it is possible for a person to be. For years he had thought of himself as righteous. But when he came to know Christ, he discovered how far from righteous he really was. His religion had blinded him to his own sin. But when Christ opened his eyes, he realised for the first time how lost he really was. Have you come to the place of confessing that apart from Jesus Christ there is absolutely no hope whatsoever for you, even at your best? This is what a true Christian believes. And unless you see this fact about yourself, you will never come to Christ for salvation. Jesus says in Matthew 9:13, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” When did you see for the first time that you really are a sinner by nature and practice? Is it clear to you now?

We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.Ephesians 2:3Notice that sin is in the thoughts, it’s in the desires, and it’s in the cravings of the human heart. Sin pervades the mind, the will, and the heart. Our thoughts, desires, and affections are all corrupted by sin. Sin corrupts the whole human personality—what we love, what we want, and what we think. They are all shot through with the impulse of sin. Jesus said, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). The problem of sin runs deeper and wider than we often think. Not only are we sinners because we sin, but we also sin because we are sinners. Most people grasp the first statement. We all do wrong things, at least some of the time. But Ephesians 2 tells us what lies behind our sin. Why do we sin? Where does this come from? The answer is, “We sin because we are sinners.” We are all born with a nature that produces sin. It is a fountain of sin. Like a deep-sea oil well spurting endless gallons of black oil into the ocean, the human mind, heart, and will keep producing sinful cravings, desires, and thoughts. So, the problem of sin is bigger than the crayon on the wall. It’s like mould in the wall—a living thing that grows and spreads and leads us to our own destruction. Sin is in you, and it is in all of us. That is why Jesus said, “From within, out of the heart of man, come… coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21-22). Putting other people down... the endless desire for more… a sense of our own importance. Where do these things come from? The problem is not our environment—that it’s all around us—it’s in us. That’s where our sin comes from. The cravings of the sinful heart produce it. Respond to the statement,“We sin because we are sinners.”

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”Revelation 21:4God cuts back the weed of sin, but the day is coming when He will pull sin up altogether and cast it into the fire. Sin will be no more. And there will be a new heaven and earth, the home of righteousness. Suffering came into the world on the coattails of sin. And when sin is excluded from the planet, suffering will go out on its coattails too. But how could sinners like us ever live in the home of righteousness? John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The hope of the world lies in Jesus Christ, who takes away our sin. Until God destroys sin once and for all, we will continue to live in a world of sin and suffering. A woman in America came rushing up to her pastor after church on the Sunday after 9/11. Very distressed, she asked him, “How can I tell my children that they are safe?” The pastor said to her, “You can’t.” She looked completely stunned. He continued, “The world isn’t safe. We have to live in this world in such a way as to be prepared for the next.” That’s what we need to do as adults, and that’s what we need to teach children too. Are you expecting God to make this world safe for you right now? What are some of the dangers of this kind of expectation of the Christian life?

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside... Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.Romans 3:10–18This is God’s assessment of humanity, and He built restraints into human life to cut back evil and corruption. Here are four of them… God restrains sin through lawIf there were no laws, our streets would not be safe. The law restrains sin. It is a good gift from God. Thank a police officer. Tell him or her that they are a gift of God to this fallen world. God restrains sin through conscienceWe saw earlier that Adam was a law to himself. He did not need law because God wrote it in his heart. Even among those who do not acknowledge God, there is some residue of this. We call it “conscience.” That’s why Paul says in Romans 2:15, “Their conscience also bears witness.” God restrains sin through common graceThis is the kindness of God to all people—the love of a mother for a child, the kindness of a neighbour for an elderly person. Where do these things come from? They are an echo and an evidence that we are made in the image of God. Every act of kindness ought to result in thanksgiving to God, even when it comes from an unbeliever. God restrains sin through judgementSin is like a massive weed that would destroy the world except that God, in His kindness, cuts it back. That is what happened in the flood. When nations become intolerably evil, God either sends revival or He causes them to fall. That is why the Bible says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). Where have you seen God’s restraining work?