Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Ephesians 2:1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.
THE START: DEATH
Paul starts where any good map starts, letting us know exactly where we are starting from: "who were dead."
Although many translations have a simple past tense verb, I believe more accurate those translations that use "when," showing that Paul is not speaking of some vague time in the past, but rather at the very moment of our conversion. At that moment when God gave us life we were "dead in trespasses and sins."
In a sense we think of death as something very passive. To Paul death, especially spiritual death, is not passive at all, it is very active. It is all which is not simply opposed to God but actively opposed to God. Paul makes this very clear in the following verse when he describes our starting point as "walking in the course of this world", "sons of disobedience", and "fulfilling the desires of the flesh." To Paul death is everything that is actively opposed to life.
This verse is often used to describe how, being dead, we are unable to do anything to help in our conversion -- the dead simply lie there, unable to respond to any stimulus. But the picture Paul paints is not simply one of inability to act but of active opposition.
"But God who is rich in mercy," finding us dead, "made us alive."
