Dead Men Walking

Ephesians 2:1-10

There was a heartbreaking statement made by Anne Frank, “I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Sadly, she would lose her life, and all that she held dear, to demonstrate not the truth of these puerile beliefs but the darkness of the human heart.

Paul spares us any sentiment in his description of the human condition here in Ephesians 2. He doesn’t swoon over the loftiness of the human spirit. On the same token, Paul’s description is not a cold cynicism or embittered disenchantment because of life’s disappointments and loss. Paul states plainly and forthrightly the rather bleak reality of our natural, sinful state apart from God’s grace: “you were dead in trespasses and sins.” The prophet Jeremiah states this reality in such stark terms as well, “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure; who can understand it” (Jer. 17:9). We are made in God’s image, but are fallen; in our natural condition we are dead men walking. In its litany for the burial of the dead, the Book of Common Prayer puts it rather famously, “in the midst of life we are in death.”

I am always fascinated by how we manage to skirt the reality of sin. It is as plain as the nose on our face. Sin and its consequences are everywhere: crime, poverty, disease, corruption, deception, pain, anguish. Pick up today’s newspaper and you will find a register of humanity’s awful, sinful situation from a local to a global scale. Each morning you look in the mirror and behold the deadly effects of sin – every day renders us a bit older, fatter, and greyer; drawing us closer to our inevitable demise. Yet, we are constantly denying and obscuring the plain reality of the sin around us and the sin within us. This denial in itself is part of the sinful condition. It is a sort of pride, a stubborn unwillingness to recognize our need and inability. We are prone to the same proud hope in self which plagued the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:17, “not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

There is a sort of sinful trifecta at work in our depravity outlined in Ephesians 2. Paul says that by nature we followed the “course of this world,” the “prince of the power of the world,” and lived in “the passions of our flesh.” The war on sin is fought on three fronts: the world, the devil, and the flesh. Interestingly, throughout the New Testament we find that the world is a system of ideas, desires, and agendas opposed and hostile to the kingdom of God and the work of the Spirit. This is the city of man: the empires built through human endeavor as a legacy to man apart from God’s power and grace. The world calls us to bow the knee to money, power, human influence, personal autonomy and self service. However imposing and powerful it might seem from our narrow creaturely perspective; this system is fleeting and vain, already under the judgment of God and will one day be destroyed (John 12:31).

Paul says that in our former “walk” we followed the “prince of the power of the air.” Paul calls this prince or ruler (Jesus refers to Satan as the ruler – archon- of the world in John 12:31) the “god of this age” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. We discover that there is a real and actual being in the universe who has set up a kingdom in opposition to God. Peter says that he is a devil (diabolos- accuser, adversary) who prowls about like a lion, seeking those he might devour. Paul’s description of Satan’s domain is interesting, and could mean a variety of things. He has dominion in the “power of the air” which could be translated atmosphere or even foggy atmosphere. Some have taken Paul to mean that Satan is the ruler of the shadowy and dark realm of powers and principalities who are at war with the Sovereign God of the universe. Some take “the power of the air” here to mean that he is the ruler of a passing and empty dominion, however powerful it might seem at any given moment. Certainly we must understand that there is a real enemy, a powerful adversary who wages war against God and his people. He seeks to deceive and devour, enticing humans into his control through the temptations of the world and the desires of our flesh. But his power is limited and restrained by God, and his kingdom is passing away and without any lasting influence.

Lest we remove ourselves from any culpability in this equation, Paul states clearly that we are part of the problem. We are by nature sinners through the trespass of Adam (Romans 5:12, 17). We were born sinners and “children of wrath.” Yet we also actively walked in these sinful desires, we lived in them, gratifying and pursuing our own self interests and fleshly concerns. In our flesh we aligned ourselves with the world and the prince of this world, against God’s rule and design.

This second chapter of Ephesians contains the familiar and glorious witness to the grace of God, “by grace you have been saved through faith” (2:8). Many of us have memorized this verse from childhood. Before Paul exalts the grace of God he uncovers the depths of our sin. The gospel of grace shines forth only in the context of depravity and the darkness of the human heart. We were dead in sin. There is nothing good and righteous in a corpse. We were lifeless, lost and without hope in the world (2:12).

There is another trifecta in this passage - the richness of God’s mercy, the greatness of God’s love and the immeasurable riches of his grace toward us in Christ Jesus (vv.4, 7). Verse 5 begins with a wonderful little word, the conjunction even (Greek- kai). It is one thing for a well man to praise God for a gift, or a sick man to praise God for healing. It is quite another for a dead man to praise God for life itself. It was not in our goodness that God reached down with his grace, it was even while we were dead in transgressions. It was not that God saw any innate potential in our hearts, it was even while we were dead. Our righteous deeds were filthy rags, our hearts were bloodless stones. Even there God’s rich mercy, his great love, his immeasurable grace breathed life.