Children of Wrath – Ephesians 2:3
In Ephesians 2:3, Paul takes the diagnosis of man’s sin even deeper. Believers were not only dead in trespasses and sins, and not only following the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air, but they also once lived “in the passions of our flesh.” Paul will not let us blame everything on the world, our upbringing, our circumstances, or even the devil. The problem is also in us. By “flesh,” Paul does not mean the physical body is evil, but the fallen human nature we inherit in Adam. Apart from Christ, mankind lives for self instead of God, following sinful desires such as pride, envy, anger, greed, lust, selfish ambition, fear of man, love of praise, and the desire to have life on our own terms. Sin begins in the heart, but it does not stay there. It moves into our thoughts, words, actions, habits, relationships, and patterns of life.
Paul also says that we carried out “the desires of the flesh and the mind,” showing that sin corrupts not only our outward behavior but also our thinking. The mind is not neutral; apart from Christ, it is darkened, hostile to God, and unable to arrive at true wisdom on its own. This is why sinners need more than better information or self-improvement. They need regeneration, renewal, mercy, and new life in Christ. Paul then says that we were “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” This means every person, Jew or Gentile, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral, stands guilty in Adam and deserving of God’s righteous judgment. Yet this is not meant to leave believers in condemnation, because in Christ God’s wrath has been satisfied. Remembering what we were should humble us, make us grateful, cause us to take sin seriously, and lead us to praise the mercy of God, who saves dead, guilty, wrath-deserving sinners through Jesus Christ.
FULL SERMON TEXT:
Ephesians chapter 2.
We are in chapter 2. We are looking this morning at verse 3.
The last couple of times we looked at verse 1 and verse 2, and what we are seeing is the depth of our depravity.
I’ll begin as I have the last couple of times with this statement:
Christian, beloved, you were a far worse sinner than you think that you were before Christ.
Christian, beloved, you are a far worse sinner than you think that you are.
But Christian, beloved, Christ is a far greater Savior than you will ever fully realize.
And that has been the weight of these first two verses so far.
Paul begins in verse 1 with a very blunt diagnosis of man’s problem: “And you were dead in trespasses and sins.”
Not that you were sick. Not that you were weak. Not that you were confused.
Dead.
And then in verse 2, Paul showed us how spiritually dead people live, how we walk. We walk. We are alive. As natural-born human beings, we are living creatures physically, but we walk in sin, following, as we saw, the course of this world, which is not neutral. It is following the prince of the power of the air. It is following the enemy.
The world lives, those who are dead in sin, those who are still separated from Christ, under the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
So Paul has already shown us two of these powerful influences on us apart from Christ. It is the world and the devil.
But now in verse 3, he goes even deeper and, as I said last time, even darker, showing the utter sinfulness of our sin. He does not let us blame everything on the world or on Satan. He doesn’t let us blame our problems or our sin or anything on anything outside of ourself.
He doesn’t allow us to say, “Well, the world made me do it.” Amen.
“The family I grew up in made me this way.” Amen.
“The devil made me do it.”
He doesn’t let us have any of those things.
Paul says the problem is in you.
Father, this morning, as we look at this third dimension of our depravity, this third verse just crushing us even farther, lower, farther down than we were already, Lord, show us the utter terrible depravity of our nature apart from Christ.
Lord, not just so that we can enjoy being pushed down, but so we can recognize just how sinful we really were in order that we might greater praise and magnify the grace and kindness that you have shown us in our Savior, Jesus Christ.
So, Lord, this morning there may be some things that need to be taught. There are some things that we need to learn. So Lord, would you use your Word this morning, your inspired, inerrant Word, to teach us?
For those of us who have been taught these things before, but we’ve come to an improper understanding, would you reprove us?
But more than that, Lord, would you correct us so that we would understand rightly?
And for those of us who might understand rightly, Lord, we need to hear it again this morning. So would you train us in righteousness through your Word?
Lord, do this so that we may become equipped for every good work. Do this by your Spirit, because without your Spirit, we can’t understand these things. Do this for your glory and to the praise and honor of our Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
Amen. Amen.
You may be seated.
So as you know, as I stated a moment ago, we are still in this section where we are talking about what we once were, what our nature was before Christ saved us. We are learning about the sinfulness of sin, the depravity that we were in before Christ.
And we’ve already been pushed down low, telling us how dead we were in our trespasses and sins, telling us how we were sons of disobedience, meaning that sinful lifestyle described us as so much of who we were, that we are called sons of disobedience because we were disobedient by nature.
And now he digs the knife in just a little bit deeper.
He says, following where we left off last time, “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.”
Paul begins this verse by saying once again, “Among whom we all once lived.”
We’ve talked about this idea already through these first two verses, that’s who we were. We were dead. This is the life that we lived beforehand.
But he brings it up again. He’s saying we were all, Christians, among them, among these dead, among the sons of disobedience.
Remember, he’s talking directly to the Ephesians. He’s talking to Christians. “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.”
Remember, the Ephesians here, these are a Gentile nation. This is a Gentile city, that these people did not grow up Jewish. That’s important here.
Listen, these people, these Gentiles, didn’t grow up in Jewish households. They didn’t grow up with the Torah. They didn’t grow up with the Law and the Prophets. They didn’t grow up with the Word. They didn’t grow up with the temple. They didn’t grow up with any of these things.
These Gentiles lived in paganism, idolatry. They were walking in darkness with no light around them, living in open rebellion against God.
So as this letter to the Ephesians is passed around in those early churches, I can imagine some of those churches who had Jewish converts go, “That’s right. Get ’em, Paul.”
Those first two verses, you’re like, “Yeah, that’s what those Gentiles were. That’s how bad they were. Man, they were dead. Sons of disobedience.”
And then Paul says, “Among whom we all.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Paul.
Maybe you, but not me. I’m a Jew.
No, he includes himself.
It’s not just the Gentiles who were those things. It wasn’t as if the Jews were good people that God saved.
He’s including everybody here. Jew, Gentile, those who were religious and those who were not, those who had some outward morality and those who were just sinfully living without restraint.
Today we might say the churchgoer and the one that stays at home on Sunday.
Everybody.
We all, Christians, once lived like this. We were all dead and sons of disobedience.
So this word “all” then means all.
Nobody gets to stand outside of this diagnosis.
This is not a description here then of a particularly bad group of people that God had saved. You know, we might say something like, “Well, that describes the Ninevites in the book of Jonah really well. They were dead, sons of disobedience. They were terrible people, but God saved them. Woo.”
No.
Everybody.
All.
Not some people were dead in their sins, but then the rest of us were doing pretty good.
Once again, this is the doctrine of human total depravity.
Romans 3:9 says that “all, both Jews and Greeks,” which would include every human being. Okay? That’s not just those who were in Israel and then those who were in Greece. Greek would be another term for Gentile, which would be another word which just means anybody who’s not a Jew, which is the whole world besides the Jewish.
But he’s saying both Jews and Greek, Romans 3:9, are under sin.
All.
And then of course we know Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Back in Titus when we went through there, Titus 3:3 says, “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures.”
And that’s the same kind of language that Paul is using here in Ephesians chapter 2.
Brothers and sisters, this should strip us of any spiritual pride.
If you are a Christian in this room, you’re not a Christian because you came from better stock. Amen.
You were not born more naturally inclined toward God than your neighbor.
You were not born with a little holiness that other people did not have. Amen.
You were not the one person in the cemetery of dead in trespasses and sins. You were not the one person who was not all dead, but a little bit alive and just needed a little help.
You were dead, verse 1 tells us.
Verse 2, and we all once lived there in the world as a son of disobedience.
We all.
Among whom we all once lived.
But listen, not only should that strip us of pride, but that should also make us see unbelievers differently. Amen.
We’ve been talking about this, but it bears repeating.
We should not look at the lost people who are around us with our noses held high as if our sin wasn’t nearly as stinky as theirs is. Amen.
Which also means in our evangelism towards them, we have to tell them the truth about their sin. We can’t skip this part. We must tell them, but we don’t do it from a place of authority over them. Right?
We tell them that they are sinners in need of salvation. We tell them that they are in need of rescue from the same death that we were in. Amen. The same dead state that we were in.
We tell them, “You are sinners, and I was just like you, but God.”
But God.
But that should also just change our view as we live in this world.
We don’t have the opportunity to evangelize everyone, everyone we see, everyone we come in contact with, everyone we see out there on Facebook or in the government or on the news or on the TV.
We don’t have the opportunity to evangelize all of those people, but we see them all the time around us. We see lostness all around us.
But what this should help us to understand then is that dead sinners are going to act like dead sinners.
When you see the world acting like the world, we shouldn’t be shocked.
“Oh, did you hear about what happened over there? Man, that’s crazy. I never thought something like that could happen.”
Really?
Because I’m sure something worse than that could happen. Amen.
Those who are sons of disobedience, they’re going to disobey.
People who are enslaved to sin by their nature are going to live as those who are slaves to sin.
It shouldn’t surprise us.
Now, don’t get me wrong. As I’ve already stated, that doesn’t excuse their sin.
“Oh, well, they grew up in a bad place. You know, the devil made them do it. They’re following the world. They can’t help it.”
No, no, no, no, no.
That doesn’t excuse them from sin, but it makes us slower to judgment. It makes us judge with, as Scripture says, righteous judgment.
I see why. I know why you act the way you do. I see why you do that. I understand why that group acts the way they do.
And instead of making us angry, it should make us prayerful. It should make us compassionate towards them.
If not for the grace of God, you would be in the same place.
Yes.
So Christian, our interactions with, our evangelism towards, our life towards the lost people should not be spiteful and rude. We should be Christ-like and compassionate towards them.
Beloved, God wants us to realize that our testimony is not, “I was smart enough and good enough to choose to follow Jesus.”
That’s right.
Our testimony is, “I was dead, but God made me alive.”
He says, “Among whom we all once lived,” and here’s, as we drive the knife in deeper, “in the passions of our flesh.”
So here’s the third part then of Paul’s diagnosis of man’s condition.
In verse 2 he showed us the world was part of it, that the devil was part of it, but here he shows us that it is a part of us.
He shows us the flesh.
The Bible does not give then a shallow explanation of sin.
Scripture does not say that all sinful behavior comes simply from our environment or the world around us. Does it have an effect? Does it have some influence? Yes.
But it’s not just from our environment alone.
It doesn’t say that our sinful behavior is simply demonic, that we are just following the prince of the power of the air alone. Does he have an influence? Yes.
And it also doesn’t say that our sinful behavior is only an internal desire alone.
It gives us all three.
The world around us is fallen, the devil is real and he’s active, and the flesh within us is absolutely corrupt.
Now, we don’t need the world and the devil to have influence over us. We can do it on our own, but they do exist. They’re there. We don’t deny that.
But more important is that the flesh within us is corrupted.
So when Paul is speaking of the flesh here, let me bring some clarity to this word, because some of you in this room who haven’t really thought about the word flesh before, you may be going, “Ew.”
Like, you’re thinking skin and blood and bones.
No, that’s not what he means here.
He’s not saying that the physical body is evil.
That’s not Christianity. FYI, to say the body is evil is not Christianity.
The body was created by God, and it was very good.
And when Christ came, what did He do? He took on flesh. He took on a body. Okay?
The body is not evil. The physical body is not evil. That’s what Christ came as in order that He might die as we do in a body that could die, and then in order that His body would be raised from the dead so that our sins may be paid for.
So Paul is not teaching here that material things are evil and spiritual things are automatically good.
That’s Gnosticism. That’s not Christianity.
So by flesh here, he’s not talking about our physical body. He’s talking about that fallen human nature that we discussed in that first verse.
He’s talking about our human nature that is ours by birthright, the nature you have by being a human, your fallen human nature.
He’s talking about the fallen human nature apart from the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. That’s what the flesh is referring to.
The flesh, then, is mankind as he is in Adam.
Remember how we talked about that?
The flesh then is man turned in on himself. It is man living for himself instead of for God. It is man under the power of sin. It is man unable to please God.
That’s the flesh.
Romans 8:8 says, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
That doesn’t mean those who are in a body cannot please God. It’s talking about those who are in their fallen human state, unregenerated, unsanctified by the Holy Spirit.
And Paul says, “We once lived in the passions of our flesh.”
That word “passions” is what you think it is. It’s the desires. It’s the longing. It’s the craving. It’s the impulses towards what we want.
And these are not just limited to our body, like our body desiring it. It is spiritual.
Sometimes when we hear the word flesh, we can tend to only think about sexual sins or physical appetites. Those are definitely included in this term, but that’s not limited to that.
Paul is speaking more broadly than just physical appetite.
Passions of the flesh then include what you would think. The Scripture talks about passions of the flesh are things like pride, envy, anger, bitterness, selfish ambition, greed, resentment, self-pity, lust, laziness, fear of man, love of praise, and the desire to have life on our terms instead of on God’s.
So then the flesh does not only say, “Give me immoral pleasure.”
That’s not the only thing that the flesh does.
It also says, “Give me control. I’m my own master. I say what is good for me and what is bad for me. I am my own god.”
That’s what the flesh says.
I want control. I want to be recognized. I want comfort. I want revenge. I want an easy life. I want what I want when I want it, and don’t tell me no.
That’s the flesh.
That’s what Scripture refers to when it’s talking about the flesh.
And Paul says, “We once lived there.”
We lived in the passions of our flesh.
He didn’t say we vacationed there. We visited there occasionally.
We lived there.
That was our life. Amen.
We only followed the passions of our flesh.
You only did what was right in your own eyes. You only did what was good for you in the way you think of good.
That’s how we all lived.
So then that means that sin is not just something we did. It was the whole realm in which we lived. It was the air we breathed. It was the pattern of our desires.
But listen, all of us know that when you look at unbelievers, you can see some have an outward sense of morality. They’re more clean than others, right?
And then you see others that are like, “Whoa, that person’s definitely not following God.”
But here’s the thing. What this tells us is that every one of them, including ourselves before Christ, all of us might look different on the outside, but inside, we all shared the same basic condition.
Some of them, some of us would go towards drunkenness.
Other people run towards self-righteousness.
Other people run towards greed.
Other people run towards sexual immorality of various kinds.
Other people run towards religious pride.
Other people wanted other people to give them applause.
It’s all different on the outside, but it’s all of the same flesh, passions of the flesh on the inside.
The truth is, a cleaned-up sinner is still a sinner.
And so that’s why the gospel is not just self-improvement. The gospel is not God helping those who help themselves.
God doesn’t come along and make the grave you’re living in more comfortable.
He gives life to those who once lived in the passions of our flesh.
So he says, “Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.”
Okay, come on, Paul. Stop.
So from the flesh, from the passions of our flesh, that is our spiritual nature, that is from within, it made its way out.
Those sinful passions expressed themselves outwardly in actual obedience to those sinful desires.
They didn’t just stay passions of the flesh. We acted on them. We didn’t just have these disordered desires. We carried them out willingly.
Sin, yes, begins in the heart, but it never stays there.
It moves into your thoughts, into your words, into your actions, which become habits, which moves its way into your relationships, which changes your priorities and your patterns of life.
James 1:14 and 15 says, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.”
You could say passions of the flesh there.
“Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown, brings forth death.”
Desire. Here’s the pattern of sin. Desire conceives, sin is born, and then death follows.
See, Paul says that we carried out the desires of the flesh and the mind.
We already talked about the passions of the flesh, the desires of the flesh. They’re the same idea.
But then he adds that extra layer, “and the mind,” and that’s important here.
This isn’t him just tacking on something extra like, “Well, let’s just make it even worse.”
It is. It’s even worse than you think it is.
But he says, “in the mind.”
The corruption of our sin is not limited to our bodily desires. It reaches deep within, all the way to our heart, all the way to our mind.
And as we’ve talked about previously in other sermons over the years, this is the noetic effect of sin.
Noetic meaning referring to the mind.
Sin then affects how we think.
It’s not just something we do outwardly that we can kind of keep away from our life.
“Well, that’s just something I do, that’s not who I am.”
No, no, no, no, no.
Sin affects how you think.
See, that’s one of the lies of modern society. We like to think that our minds are neutral. Naturally, our minds are neutral in this world, and how our environment, how we’re raised, the things that we come in contact with, those things then change our mind and influence us.
No, your mind is darkened.
We assume in our society that if somebody is educated, they’re articulate, they can speak well, they’re thoughtful and insightful and intelligent, well then, they’re definitely closer to the truth than I am.
Not necessarily.
A brilliant mind can still be a fallen mind.
An educated mind can still be rebellious against God.
A logical argument, listen to me, a logical argument can still be built on God-hating presuppositions.
Most people tend to separate those things.
No.
If it comes from a fallen mind, guess what? You’re not going to have truth, no matter how wise it seems.
Intelligence does not equal wisdom.
Ephesians 4 will tell us in a couple of chapters that unbelievers walk in the futility of their minds.
It doesn’t just say dumb unbelievers, uneducated unbelievers walk in the futility of their mind.
No.
All unbelievers walk in the futility of their minds.
They are darkened in their understanding, and they are alienated from the life of God.
Colossians 1:21 says, “We were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.”
So the mind then is not an untouched piece of mankind. It’s not untouched by sin.
No, no, no, no, no.
The mind is affected by sin.
This is why sinners don’t need just better information. They need the renewal of their mind. They need regeneration. They need light in their darkness. They need the Spirit of God to open their blind eyes and bring dead hearts to life.
So once again, this should humble us because even after we’ve been converted, we still have to fight the remaining sin that is in us.
It’s still there.
We’re no longer dead in our sin, but the flesh still wages war against the spirit.
Galatians 5:16 says, “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit.”
I was going to go into Romans 7 here, but we don’t have time for that.
Let me just say very quickly, Romans 7, if you remember, this is Paul talking about how the things he wants to do, he doesn’t do, and the things he doesn’t want to do is what he keeps on doing, talking about that law of sin and the law of the Spirit that is at war, waging war within him.
That is still the case for us, Christian.
We’re not dead in sin. Our eternity is settled. There’s no more condemnation for us, but there is still the law of sin active within us and the law of the Spirit that is within us, and we must wage war.
So you still, Christian, even in your redeemed state, cannot trust every desire that comes to you.
“Well, I’ve been saved, so now my desires are just for God, so any desire that comes to my mind must automatically be from God.”
No.
The enemy wants you to think that because got ’em. They’ll be ineffective now. They think that everything they do now, just because it comes to them, is right.
Your heart, your mind is still under the influences of those noetic effects of sins. You have built in these ungodly habits and ungodly lifestyles and ungodly ways of living, and they need to be undone. Amen.
Your heart, your mind is still not a reliable source.
Your desires, your thoughts, your emotions, your conscience needs to be instructed and trained by Scripture.
That’s why Romans 12:2 says, “Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
The Christian life then, even in our redeemed state, is still not just follow your heart.
No.
That’s still terrible advice.
As terrible advice as it is to give to unbelievers, it’s still terrible advice to give to believers.
Our heart is to be ruled by Christ, yes. But how many of you can tell me that every second of every day your heart is fully ruled by Christ?
Anybody?
Because raising your hand would be an example of not.
The Christian life is to continually deny ourself, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.
To put off the old self, to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to put on the new self.
To walk by the Spirit so we won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh.
To put sin to death, to mortify sin in our life, and to seek to always obey the word of Christ.
Now, we’ve got to be clear here. We’re talking to Christians again.
This is not how we earn salvation.
You don’t earn salvation.
Before Christ, we carried out the desires of the flesh and the mind, but now in Christ, we are called to carry out the will of God.
And so those desires are constantly at odds.
“Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.”
You guys have just been thinking this whole time in these first two verses, “Why are you saying this is by nature? You were dead in trespasses and sins. Well, that’s because I sinned, so yeah.”
No, no, no, no.
He says it’s by nature.
“Well, that’s not fair.”
Again, we’ve talked about fairness. Being found in Adam and being found in Christ, neither of those is fair in our estimation, but that’s the way that the world works. That’s how God has made us.
So by nature here, he’s saying then that this sinful way of living, this deadness, this being a son of disobedience came by nature.
It was not just a learned behavior.
It is our natural condition of every single human being.
It’s our natural condition in Adam.
Psalm 51:5 says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
Romans 5:12 says, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
So we’re not sinners merely because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.
And that’s the doctrine of original sin that we talked about in verse 1.
Adam’s fall did not affect just Adam.
As our federal head, as our first father, as our covenant head, Adam plunged the whole human race, every single one of us, into sin and death.
And so then we come into this world with a nature that is corrupted by sin.
We’re not just morally neutral until we commit our first outward sin.
We’re born in Adam, and in Adam we are guilty and corrupted.
Listen to me.
I know this is not popular. This is not one of those doctrines that you like to share with lost people because they’ll be offended.
The world wants to say that man is basically good.
The world tells us that we are born innocent and corrupted only by our environment, a lack of education, bad systems in place, or poor examples around us.
But the Bible tells us here that our problem is deeper than any of those things.
Our problem is our very nature.
And by nature we are, Scripture says right here, children of wrath.
John Calvin said that Paul could never have said all are by nature children of wrath unless we were cursed from the womb, not because God created human nature evil, but because human nature has been corrupted in Adam.
God did not create man sinful. God created man very good.
But in Adam, when he fell, mankind fell.
And so now the nature that we inherit as human beings is not a nature as it was originally intended, but it is a nature that has been corrupted by sin.
And that’s why Paul says that we were children of wrath.
Children of wrath doesn’t mean that we were angry children.
I mean, that definitely could be a part of it. Sinners are often angry.
But what it means is that we were destined for, deserving of, and liable to the wrath of God.
This is not one of those doctrines that people like to talk about.
God is a God of wrath.
That is one of His attributes.
His wrath is a holy wrath.
God’s wrath is a settled opposition to sin. It is His nature. It is as much an attribute of God as His goodness, His love, His omniscience, His omnipotence, and all the others.
God’s wrath is not like we would think of wrath in our human fallenness, where He’s angry, meaning He loses His temper.
God doesn’t get moody. He doesn’t get irritated.
His wrath is righteous. It is a holy hatred of all that is evil.
And listen to me, if God did not hate sin, He would not be good.
He must be a God of wrath if He would be a God of justice and holiness and goodness.
A god, lowercase g, who shrugs at evil is not worthy of worship.
A God who sees sin, sees abuse, sees murder, sees idolatry, pride, lust, lies, injustices, blasphemies, rebellion, and says, “Ah, well, nobody’s perfect,” is not holy.
Amen.
The true God is holy, and more than that, He is holy, holy, holy.
And therefore, He hates sin, and therefore, His wrath is real.
Romans 2:5 says that because of our hard and impenitent hearts, sinners are storing up for themselves wrath for the day when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
John 3:36 says, “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
And in Revelation 6:16, it speaks of people calling for the mountains and the rocks to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb.
It’s terrifying language on purpose. It must be, because the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
Paul says, “We were children of wrath like the rest of mankind.”
Again, here, nobody stands outside of this diagnosis of man’s nature. Jew, Gentile, religious, irreligious, moral, immoral, all those different things that we talked about, like the rest of mankind.
He says it again here.
Just in case you didn’t understand the word “all,” here it is again, Paul says.
Why?
Because repetition is how you learn.
Once again, this is why our salvation cannot be explained by human worthiness.
God did not look down and find some people who were less dead, less enslaved, less guilty, less deserving of His wrath.
He didn’t look at you and fall in love. It wasn’t love at first sight.
No, our sins made a separation between us and God. Our best deeds, Scripture says, are as filthy, dirty, putrid garments before Him.
He didn’t see your worth and say, “I’ve got to have that one.”
Preachers like to preach that nowadays because it makes people feel good in their seats.
That’s not what God did.
He saw the reality.
You are a sinner, dead in your sins, sons of disobedience, children of wrath just like the rest of mankind.
And then verse 4 comes, “But God, being rich in mercy.”
You see, mercy is for miserable sinners.
Grace is for guilty sinners.
New life is for dead sinners.
And God has given exactly what we need.
Listen, Paul has crushed us into the ground, taken us all the way down to the depths of our depravity, pounding out any pride that we may still have in ourselves.
You were dead in trespasses and sins.
You walked according to the world.
You followed the prince of the power of the air.
You once lived in the passions of your flesh.
You carried out the desires of the flesh and the mind.
You were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
That’s not an easy thing to hear, but it is the true diagnosis of our condition.
This is man’s true problem.
And apart from Christ, the truth is we were not basically good people who needed a little improvement.
We were dead under the righteous wrath of God.
And so we need to feel the weight of our sinfulness.
Not, hold on, not so that you as a Christian will feel condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation for us.
But we need to feel the weight of our sins so that we will stop treating our sin as something that’s small.
So that we will stop presuming on God’s grace.
Christian, yes, this is what you were.
You did not rescue yourself.
You did not raise yourself.
You were not saved because you were wiser or better or more deserving than somebody else.
You were a child of wrath.
But God had mercy.
And if you are in Christ, God’s wrath towards you has not been ignored. It’s been satisfied.
Romans 5:9 says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.”
So listen, remember what you were. Remain humble, remain grateful, but be serious about sin.
We don’t need to go back to that old life. We don’t need to remember fondly about it and think that there’s anything there to offer.
It’s empty.
But listen, if you are not in Christ, you need more in your life than just a better life.
You need more than just improvement.
You need the mercy of God.
You need new life.
You need Jesus Christ.
You need to trust that He died on the cross for your sins in accordance with the Scripture, that He was buried, and on the third day, He rose from the dead to save you from your sins.
You need to confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead as a payment for your sins, and you will be saved.
Amen?