You Were Dead
January 12
Read Ephesians 2:1-3
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Reflect
Before you were in Christ, how did you live? Who did you listen to? What influenced your behavior?
There are a lot of dead men walking around in the world right now. No, not physically dead but spiritually dead. Before I was a believer in Jesus Christ, I was just as dead. And so were you.
Paul says that we were dead in our sins. Remember, in the Garden of Eden that God told Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed Him, they would surely die. They did disobey, and mankind has been dead ever since-separated from God and not capable of closing the gap ourselves. After all, dead people cannot do anything at all.
Paul explained that before we followed Christ, we followed the world, we followed Satan, and we followed our flesh. The world influenced us, and we yielded to its pressure to conform. Satan and his demons sought to sway us mainly by lying to us. And the passions of our flesh controlled us. Any desire that our mind conceived and our body craved, we acted on it. No matter how sinful. We were born sinful human beings with a sinful nature. We lived in sin. We could not please God, no matter what we did.
We were “children of wrath.” We were doomed to eternal judgement. Condemned. We could not save ourselves. We were completely lost.
Friends, in order for us to fully appreciate what God has done in our lives, we need to fully understand how utterly sinful, disobedient, and dead we were before we knew Him. We were powerless to save ourselves. We were not even aware that we needed it. We were far from God. Thanks be to God that our story doesn’t end there! Those of us who are in Christ are alive in Him! Hallelujah!
Pray
God, I know that before I knew You, I was spiritually dead. Utterly lost and completely incapable of saving myself. I confess my sinful and disobedient ways. And thank You for Your work on my behalf to bring me back to life through Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen!
~ Pastor Nat Crawford
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