Here’s the notes and audio for my sermon on Ephesians 2:1-3 “The PROBLEM” preached at Cross of Christ Fellowship.
Eph 2:1-3 “The PROBLEM”
Intro: MLJ (the Dr); The loss of ‘wonder’ among Christians (speaking glibly about glorious realities)
-Part of solution: remembering what we were before we were Christians—our radically hopeless state
–Today’s passage shows us our TRUE condition before we came to faith in Christ: spiritually dead and enslaved to sin
—If we are to be in wonder of God, we must first see our radically hopeless condition before we came to faith in Christ!
CONTEXT: Paul’s letter to Ephesus. (from jail)
-Ch 1=Paul’s prayers (praise God [3-14]; prayer for Ephesians [15-23])
-‘Eyes of heart open to know:’ 1 hope your calling, 2 riches of inheritance, 3 God’s power’(1:18-19)
-Ch 2:1-10 helps us know the hope of our calling by reminding us of our problem and solution in gospel.
-2:1-3: The PROBLEM—our hopeless state before we came to Christ
-2:4-10: The SOLUTION—God, in love, acted to save us and bring us to Himself.
-Today, we consider the problem: our radically hopeless state before we came to Christ.
— If we are to be in wonder of God, we must first see our radically hopeless condition before we came to faith in Christ!
I. THE PROBLEM: Our Radically Hopeless State Before Outside of Christ
1. Dead in our sins (1) And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
Our condition=DEAD! àSpiritual Death: physical alive, but spiritually dead.
-“Trespasses”=willful breaches of God’s law
-“Sins”=miss the mark
-Created to ‘hit the mark’—live a certain way, but now we miss the mark.
SUMMARY: Before we came to Christ, we were spiritually dead to God. This was our hopeless state.
2. Slaves to world, devil, and flesh (2-3)
Slavery is the condition we are in outside of Christ: sin, the patterns of the world, the Devil. -Bible speaks of the temptations we face as Christians against 3 enemies: world, devil, and the flesh.
-Commentators note how all 3 are mentioned here.1. Enslaved to the “course of this” World: “in which you once walked, following the course of this world:
ARNOLD: “The unhealthy and ungodly social, cultural, economic, and political environment in which we live. It represents organized evil in the form of peer pressure, ideologies, systems, and structures that provide us with a script for living life totally apart from God and his purposes.”
-Paul refers to this “present evil age” in Gal 1:4
-Examples: blasphemy of God’s name; minimizing God and exalting man; sex outside of marriage; greed; impatience
2. Enslaved to the Devil: “following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience”
ARNOLD: ““The ruler of the realm of the air,” the devil, is an intelligent and powerful spirit being who is thoroughly evil and intent on perpetrating as much evil in the lives of individuals and through individuals to society as he possibly can.””
– LEWIS: Screwtape Letters quote on two opposite errors.
-The devil is “at work in the sons of disobedience”
-NOTE: “sons of disobedience”=disobey God!
-TODAY, the Devil is at work, influencing, deceiving, and leading millions away from God.
-There are real spiritual forces at work around, and the devil is part of this.
3. Enslaved to the Flesh: among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
ARNOLD: “The “flesh” is the inner propensity and inclination to do evil. It is our creatureliness, infected by the implications of the fall of Adam, that propels us to act in ways contrary to what God would have us do. It represents a bent toward ourselves and away from God.”
-A crooked and perverse twisting of our desires in flesh and mind: Col 1:21
-Feeling and desires to do what is contrary to God’s holy will.
-Thoughts and planning that rely on human understanding and exalt humans above God.
3. By Nature, Objects of God’s Wrath (3b): and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
-Children of Wrath:God’s holy, righteous anger toward sin.
–OBJECTION: I thought God was love? How could he have wrath?
–ANSWER: God is holy and just, loving and righteous. Because God is love, He has wrath.
-Love for holiness; Love for His Creation;
-Opposite of love is not wrath, but indifference.
-By Nature: we came into the world this way: see Rom 5:12-14
*NOTICE: The universal nature of this– like the rest of mankind. =“you” (1); “we” (2-3a); “rest of mankind” (3b)
-EVERYONE! See also: Rom 3:23.
SUMMARY: Eph 2:1-3 shows the desperate, hopeless condition of humanity outside of Christ. We were dead in our sins, enslaved to what is evil, and under the wrath of God.
II. WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH THIS TRUTH? SOME IMPLICATIONS…
1.NON-CHRISTIAN:
Hear the apostle Paul’s teaching and consider it.
-Is not this what we see around us and inside us, if we are honest with ourselves?
-Schaeffer: we see the effects of sin in 4 realms: Man and God, Man and Man, Man and Self, Man and Creation.
-How do you explain this?
-Emptiness of Naturalism: Man is an accident of evolution.
-There is no good or evil, there just is what there is.
-There is no ‘ought’, just what there is.
-We know things are wrong and not the way they should be.
-Hear and consider God’s Word about human nature.
-See your own need for redemption.
-Come to Jesus in faith, the only solution for sin.
–Eph 1:7!
2. CHRISITAN:
1 Let this passage reshape our view of humanity.
1. We are not basically good people, but are “sons of disobedience” (2b)
2. We not free, autonomous individuals, but slaves to godless passions and pursuits of the world, our flesh, and the Devil. (2-3)
3. We not spiritually alive, but spiritually dead. (1)
4. We are not on good terms with God, but children of wrath—desiring of God’s holy, just anger and condemnation (3b)
5. We are not born innocent, but are ‘by nature’ sinners because of Adam (3)
2 Let this passage sober us as we consider the desperate plight of humanity
-This is the BIGGEST problem of our world: sin and estrangement from God!
-Should rearrange our priorities and what we work toward: good work of evangelism.
3 Let this passage lead us to compassion to those outside the faith
-No place for self-righteousness
-This knowledge should lead to compassion
4 Let this passage temper our hopes of what politicians or earthly solutions.
-Trump or Harris cannot fix this
-No education or social change can fix this.
5 Let this passage inform us of the ‘hope of our calling’—see what we’ve been saved from.
-By recalling our hopeless state before we came to Christ, we come to rejoice in Christ afresh.
If we are to be in wonder of God, we must first see our radically hopeless condition before we came to faith in Christ!
CONSIDER AND REMEMBER! Consider the state you were in before God’s grace transformed you.
-You were spiritually dead
-You were a slave to the world, the devil, and the flesh
-You were a ‘son of disobedience’—marked by a life and heart of rebellion against God
-You were a ‘child of wrath’—deserving of God’s wrath and headed to hell.
This is what God saved you from in the gospel! You can have hope, because God acted to you.
CLOSE: If we are to be in wonder of God, we must first see our radically hopeless condition before we came to faith in Christ!
