Short Summaries of

Sermons on Ephesians

by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith

Dead in Sin

(Eph. 2:1)

The apostle Paul says the Ephesians "were dead in trespasses and sins." Obviously, Paul is using the word "death" with a meaning different from what is usual. What did he mean when he said that the Ephesians were dead? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider the Bible's teaching about both life and death.

Life in the Garden

As with most other doctrines, to understand the meaning of meaning of life and death in the Bible, we must turn to the early chapters of Genesis. Life for man was life in the Garden of Eden. After God created Adam, He made the Garden for Adam to live in (Gen. 2:7-8). Adam apparently watched as God formed the Garden that was to be his future home. The most important fact about the Garden was that God Himself dwelt there with Adam and Eve. Eve was created only after Adam was given his commission (Gen. 2:15-17) and learned from naming the animals that he needed a wife (2:18-20). Not until the creation of Eve is everything pronounced good (Gen. 2:18; 1:31).

At the end of the sixth day of creation man enjoys life in the full sense of the word. His experience of life was immature, but it was perfect. Adam had a right relationship with God, a right relationship with Eve, a right relationship with the created world around him, and a right relationship with himself. Life in the Bible is not to be primarily understood in metaphysical or biological terms, but covenantal. We cannot fully understand life in any of its dimensions, but understanding it in terms of our covenantal relationship with God, man, and the world is basic to all else.

Fellowship with God in the Garden, a perfect loving relationship with his wife, peace with all of God's creatures and internal harmony are the conditions into which Adam was created. Furthermore, as God's image, Adam and Eve had knowledge and a God given commission, a work to accomplish for God's glory. This is what it means for man to truly have life. If had Adam not sinned, he would not have experienced sickness or pains from aging, nor would he have died. His work would have been without "thistles and thorns" or "sweat." Adam and Eve would have worshiped and served God with joy, and rejoiced in loving fellowship with one another.

But Adam sinned. And all of this was lost.

Death Out of the Garden

God warned Adam, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Adam died in five different ways. First, he began to die physically the day that he sinned. His body became susceptible to disease and the pains of aging. His work, which was given to him as a blessing, from this point was cursed. Though work was and is still a blessing, it is a blessing that is mixed with pain and suffering. Childbearing for the woman is the same. Before the fall there would have been no pain and no danger in childbirth. After the fall that which was given to woman as the greatest blessing was turned into an agonizing and hazardous blessing.

Second, he died through a substitute. Actual physical death was postponed by the grace of God. God furnished a substitute for Adam and Eve so that they could live long enough to bear children and labor for His kingdom. The animals that were killed for Adam's and Eve's clothing provided a constant reminder of God's grace and the just penalty for their sins. The ceremonial death of the animals saved Adam and Eve from full physical death.

Third, Adam died also in the sense that his relationship with Eve was ruined by sin. When God questioned Adam about his sin, Adam blamed his sin on Eve in words that express hatred and blame toward God and his wife: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat" (Gen. 3:13). Eve's first act after she sinned was to invite her husband to eat with her. Given by God to Adam to be his helper, she joined him in sin. That man's relationship with man was ruined by the fall is seen even more clearly and emphatically in the first children of the race. Cain, the first-born son of man, whom Eve hoped would be a Savior, became a murderer. God created man to love Him and to love one another, but the fall ruined both.

Fourth, man's relationship with the creation too was ruined. This is seen in that animals live by killing one another and that man, rather than being a caring lord over the creation to till the world and make it productive, often becomes a destroyer of the earth God gave him. The curse on the ground is seen in the growth of wilderness and desert land, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. Man, vice-regent of God and lord of the world, who should have enjoyed the creation, must now struggle with it to gain his livelihood: "cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen. 3:17b-19).

The fifth aspect of death is the internal psychological disintegration that reflects man's broken relationship with God. The psychological dimension of death includes the fact that no man can understand or know himself, not because he is complex, though this is also true, but because: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9). Man's heart is so full of lust and corruption that no man can see himself as he is.

Above all else, he cannot see his fundamental life motive. Freud attempted to define man's fundamental nature in terms of subconscious drives. B. F. Skinner thinks that man is a machine with neither freedom or dignity. Other humanistic philosophies present variations on these themes, but none of them understand the heart of the matter. Earnest Becker comes close when he says that the denial of death is man's fundamental life motive, but, of course, he does not see the denial of death as an attempt to escape the judgment of God. Even defined correctly, however, the denial of death is simply an aspect of a deeper reality--sinful man's radical antipathy toward God. Sinful man is a hater of God. But God is life. Sinful man, therefore, loves death: "all they that hate Me love death" (Pro. 8:36b).

This love of death is manifest in man's obsession to be a god to himself. Just as Hitler devoted himself passionately to a vain and suicidal attempt to take over the world, so every individual man consecrates himself to a project of self-deification--different in scale from Hitler, but not in the fundamental motive. Hatred of God manifested as the attempt to replace His law with one's own will and decision is the love of death.

Final Death

All of this is to say that life and death are covenantal realities. Death is a covenantal curse. The final death is the end toward which the living dead unconsciously hasten. Dead in trespasses and sin, separated from God by lust and folly, the dead hate the life God offers them. Better damnation and hell than life on God's terms, for the one thing they cannot stand is God Himself.

When sinful men are damned, they truly become themselves. All restraint of their sin is taken away and their hearts rage without limit. They are fully conscious of their hatred of God, other men, and themselves. Their lust for vengeance against the whole world burns hotter for all eternity. And from this death there is no salvation.

Final Life

But there is salvation now for the living dead who turn away from their own sin and lust and trust in the grace of God. Covenantal death that is not sealed in eternal death can be overcome by the grace of God in Christ. We can be redeemed from our sin. When we believe in Christ, we are restored to our original nature as man who loves God, one who's project is to honor Him, now and forever.