The Way We Were (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to Truth for Life. Today we begin a study in Ephesians chapter 2. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian church to remind them of what their life had been like before they came to know Christ. And while it may be uncomfortable to be confronted by the reality and the gravity of our own sinful condition, today Alister explains why that is absolutely necessary. Paul's message is titled The Way We Were.

Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1. 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, 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. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Amen. The verses to which I should like to draw your attention are verses 1, 2, and 3 of Ephesians 2, and as you turn there, we ask God's help. Remember, to you alone we look, so that by the Holy Spirit your Word may accomplish its purposes in each of our lives, to the glory of your Son, in whose name we pray, amen. I was helped in coming back to this passage by recalling a couple of quotes that we had shared with one another in the early part of our studies.

They both came from the person who had once been the professor or the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. His name was John Mackay, and he testified to the fact that as a 14-year-old boy, he had been reading the book of Ephesians, and as he read the book of Ephesians, he said that he had a spiritual awakening. That's how he put it. He said, quotes, Jesus Christ became for me the center of everything. I had been quickened.

I was really alive. So in other words, it's a testimony to the invading power of Christ in his life. He doesn't say, I read the book of Ephesians and it was very interesting, or I read the book of Ephesians and I learned a lot of things. That was true.

No. That's why I was spiritually enlivened. Forty-five years later, delivering lectures at Edinburgh University, he referred again to Ephesians and did so as, quotes, Ephesians is the distilled essence of the Christian religion. It is truth that sings, doctrine set to music. So in other words, it's the kind of thing that ought to get us up on our feet, on our toes rejoicing in the goodness of God. And it was on account of that picture or those metaphors that we then began to refer to Paul's really long sentence in chapter 1 as a symphony of salvation, a salvation grounded in the eternal purposes of God, about which we often sing when we take the lines, loved before the dawn of time, chosen by my Maker, hidden in my Savior. What we're doing there is we're singing about the electing love of God, the fact that before even creation took place, that God loved his own from all of eternity. And the ending of that chapter is on a high note, isn't it?

He put all things under his feet, that is, Jesus, and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him, who fills all in all. So in melodic terms or in musical terms, Ephesians 1 finishes on a high note in a major key. You look at chapter 2, and the opening verses take us immediately to a lower note and to, if you like, a minor key. Because what Paul is now doing is he's going to show them, show us through the letter, that the immensity of the grace of God in salvation is made all the more significant when we recognize, when we are confronted by, our condition before we were saved.

It's very, very important that we see the link here between the end of 1 and the beginning of 2. For example, if you look at verse 19 of chapter 1, where he's talking about the inheritance that is enjoyed by those who are in Christ, and he extols the immeasurable greatness of his power—that is, the power of God—toward us who believe. They had become believers earlier in the chapter. They had heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. They had believed in him and were sealed by the Holy Spirit. It was not that they had been irreligious people and had become religious, but it is, as per Mackay's testimony, that they had been spiritually enlivened. And he says, it is toward us who believe, back in verse 19, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. Now what he's going on to point out is that the same power to which he refers here in verse 19 is the power that has been at work in raising these Ephesian believers from their spiritual death. And these opening verses are uncomfortable verses, because they point out the gravity of our lostness and our condition before Jesus made us alive. You may be here this morning, and even terminology like that is alien to you, in which case as you listen, you will find yourself saying, But I can't identify with that at all.

Well perhaps God will do in you what he did in these Ephesian believers, that as you hear the word of truth, you may actually come to believe. In an old commentary, I found this somewhat archaic observation, but I was stirred by it. The commentator says, It is a resurrection power that turns death into life, and it is a power imbued with love.

Here's the picture. The love which went out towards the slain and buried Jesus, when the father stooped to raise him from the dead, Easter, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts itself with a might no less transcendent that it may raise us from the dust of death to sit with him in the heavenly places. We have the picture very straightforward. The power that raised Jesus out of the deadness of the tomb is the self-same power that raises us from the deadness of our unbelief and seats us with Christ in the heavenly places. In that commentary, which is an old commentary owned by one of our friends Alec Matia, but I think he bought it secondhand as I looked at the notes. As I read that a couple of weeks back now, I said, This is a wonderful quote and a terrific picture. And whoever had had the book before me obviously agreed, because written in pencil in the margin was just one word, glory, with an exclamation point. And then underneath, Only believe, and then underneath, the 9th of November 1925.

And as I sat in my study up the stairs, I said, Isn't it amazing? The promises of God never wear out over time, and the reality of God is as true as it was for whoever had that commentary in 1925. Now, Paul is reminding the Ephesians of the way in which they used to walk.

It was true of them if they'd come from a Gentile background, or if they had come from a Jewish background. All of us, you will notice in verse 3, all of us once lived in this way. This is true of the totality of mankind. I say to you again, this is an uncomfortable section. Because it provides us with a grave, comprehensive, divine diagnosis of the way we were.

If you are in Christ. If you are not in Christ, then it provides you with a diagnosis of the way you are. Which will be even more uncomfortable to think about. Two observations I think are important. Incidentally, if you want a headache for a study, let's just call it the way we were.

Two observations I think are important. Number one, you will not acknowledge this divine diagnosis unless God opens your eyes to see the truth of it. The only way you understand this diagnosis and bow before it is on account of the fact that you have been rescued by Christ, that you have been brought to an awareness of your need of Jesus, that you have understood something of what it means when Paul says in Romans chapter 5 that we have sinned in Adam, in and with him, and that as a result we are both guilty and we are dead. Now, just think about that statement for a moment. You go back into the workday place and say, What is the true condition of man? Why is man the way he is? Why is our world the way it is? Why if we just take our morning newspaper and lay it out after all of this time?

What's the problem with this? Well, the human condition is such that it cannot be fixed by legislation. It cannot be fixed by education. It cannot be fixed by indoctrination. The only way it is fixed is by resurrection, that God in his grace raises us up from the deadness of our lives. And that is what Paul is reminding these Ephesian believers that God has done—religious Jews, some of them, pagan Gentiles, many of them—but both in need of the same remedy. And the divine diagnosis, let's notice again, and clearly covers all of humanity. There are no exceptions, no exemptions, no excuses, and no escape, save the escape that is provided in Jesus.

One out of one dies. In the day that you shall eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall surely die. Every physical death is tied directly to sin, and ultimately, if we die physically remaining spiritually dead, we will die eternally. And eternal death will be separation from God, which the Bible, of course, calls hell.

That's observation number one. Affection number two is this, that this diagnosis here in the first three verses is true for the person who has been brought up in a Christian home and has professed faith even at an early age. In other words, here's the person who hasn't been a hell's angel, who didn't go totally nuts, who hasn't been a junkie, didn't live in a van down by the river, hasn't gone through all of those things.

That person is tempted to say, somehow or another, my salvation is inferior. You got really saved, junkie man, but I was kind of saved anyway to start with. No, you were not.

No, I was not. There are no degrees of dead. You don't say, well, how dead is he?

How dead is she? No, dead is dead. So he's saying, outside of Christ, you're dead men walking. Whether the extent of depravity has laid hold on your life and taken you through all kinds of hell, or whether you have not gone through all of that, it doesn't alter the fact that the diagnosis here in the first three verses is true of all humanity.

So for those of you who are tempted to say, well, you know, I don't have a proper testimony, let me tell you, you have a wonderful testimony, because when you read verses one to three, you realize that your condition was far worse than you ever cared to admit, and that your salvation is far greater than you could ever imagine. And that study says, the biblical doctrine of total depravity means neither that all humans are equally depraved—equally dead, but not equally depraved—nor that nobody is capable of any good, but rather that no part of any human person—mind, emotion, conscience, and will—has remained untainted by the fall. In other words, the dust of death has settled on every part of our humanity.

It affects everything. So our world today bears testimony to it, although it will not accept it. Outside of Christ, Paul says, we are all dead men, dead women walking. Well, the verses are fairly tightly packed. I've tried to summarize them. This is my first attempt at it. We may have to come back and do them again, having heard myself in the first hour. But anyway, let's just give you five words that begin with the letter D. The first one is obvious.

We've already mentioned it. Dead. And you were, past tense, dead. If this does not describe you, I say to you again, just so we understand one another, if there is no past tense, if it is present tense, then you're logical enough to recognize that the Bible diagnosis says you're a dead man. You're a dead woman.

You either were or you are. You're either dead or you're alive. Isn't that what—just thinking about it right now, in John chapter 3, where Jesus is talking about, you must be born again. And he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Whoever believes in the Son is eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

So in other words, unless a man or a woman comes to believe in Jesus, accepts all that God has done in Jesus, then they remain in the condition in which they are created, namely dead men walking. So like Adam and Eve, we take what God has forbidden, and we trespass. We overstep his boundaries. We fail to live by his standards. That's what we did, because we were sinners. We were dead in our trespasses and in our sins. Our sins separated us from God. We were made by him. We were made for him. And yet, by nature, we chose to live without him.

And the inevitable impact of that on our lives has borne out in all kinds of ways. Oh, of course, we were at the same time physically alive. We were able to get up and go out in the morning, engage in sport, in commerce, in academics, in politics. We enjoy friendship.

We enjoy family and so on. But the Bible says that as we went through all of that, we did so as dead men. We were able to argue about religion, but we had no relationship with Jesus. We were blind to the beauty of Jesus.

People would talk about what a wonderful savior Jesus is. We said, I don't get that at all. We were deaf to his voice when the Bible was taught.

It just was like one ear and out the other, or maybe not even in an ear at all. We had no ability to please him. We weren't even interested in pleasing him. Somebody said, well, do you please God? We said, no, I don't think so. That's the way we were. Attendance at church was at best a kind of religious ceremony. Get it over as fast as you can.

Hopefully it won't take too long. Or it was a chore, something to endure. The songs were an embarrassment. How strange these people singing these songs. Why are they getting themselves so worked up? What is that fellow doing raising his hands in the air? I can't believe these people.

What a strange group they are. Let's get out of here as quickly as we can. And hopefully we won't have to come back very often. That's the way we were. She's unresponsive. She doesn't hear God, and you can't make her, and neither can I. Only God can. Only God raises the dead. You see, that's our evangelism.

It's impossible. When I go to the graveyard for my lunch every so often here in Chagrin, I might as well stand there and call people out of their tombs. I see the names. Come on out. Nothing happens. I eat my lunch. I go away again. It's the same here. Come out, I say.

Believe, I say. You look at me like a cow looking over a wall. What's he on about?

What's he getting upset about? I just don't understand it. That's the way we were.

Dead. You see, the diagnosis of humanity is either that we're sick and we just really need a doctor or that we're well and we just need a few more vitamins. We can fix this. We can work it out. Think of what I'm saying. Do I have to keep on speaking until I can't go on? You know, we can work it out. And then you say to yourself, I can work it out.

Why can't you work it out? Dead. Secondly, drifting, drifting. We walked on a path that was the course of this world. Verse two, you once walked down this path. You remember the Bible says that there is a broad road that leads to destruction and there is a narrow way that leads to life. And what Paul is saying here is before we come to trust in Christ, we just go down the same path as everybody else. We convince ourselves that there's safety in numbers. Everybody believes this or everybody disbelieves this or everybody does this or everybody wants this.

That's what everybody does. That's before we came to Christ. I use the word drifted because it starts with D and also because J.B. Phillips uses it in his paraphrase. You drifted along on the stream of this world's ideas of living.

That helps me. So what am I like before I trust in Christ? I'm a drifter. I'm a drifter. Any dead fish can go with the current of the river.

It's a live fish to swim against the current. And before I was made alive, I inevitably went with the current. I'm not being as ostensibly bad, as engaged as everybody else, but a condition of my life before God, my soul before God, was that the deadness of my life meant that I was a drifter. To quote the Kinks, which shows just how old I am. I was a dedicated follower of fashion.

One day he's in polka dots, the next day he's in stripes, because he's a dedicated follower of fashion. You seek him here, you seek him there. That's what the Bible says.

We were swimming with the stream that was secular. We can't even begin to see our need for a savior until God opens our eyes to the extent of our sin. We're listening to Truth for Life.

That's Alistair Begg reminding us that outside of Christ, all of us are dead men walking. Now I don't know if you realize this or not, but Truth for Life is entirely listener funded. These daily programs come to you by way of many faithful listeners who are passionate about seeing others become committed followers of Jesus. So if you've been listening to and benefiting from this program, will you become one of our Truth Partners today?

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Go to truthforlife.org slash donate. Now are you looking for an exciting adventure? If so, you might want to consider the deeper faith 2023 Mediterranean cruise. Alistair will be the guest speaker on this nine-day journey that departs out of Rome, Italy in late summer of next year. The trip takes place aboard one of the newest ships in the Norwegian cruise line, and it stops in nine locations, including Naples, Malta, Croatia, and Venice. Alistair will be teaching the Bible along the way. You can find out more and book your cabin at deeperfaithcruise.com. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Join us tomorrow for the conclusion of today's message, where we'll discover the danger of being lost in all of our niceness. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.