And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
The quickening power of the gospel
This the peculiar characteristic of the preaching of Christianity in the first age. It came into a world preoccupied by other systems of religion, Jewish and Gentile, and succeeded where they had failed. The secret of its success is the same today--vital power.
I. Upon whom is it exerted?
1. The spiritually dead.
2. The bondslaves of Satan.
3. The subjects of Divine wrath.
II. Through whom does it operate? Christ, the manifested Son of God, is the Alpha and Omega of its proclamations.
1. Through faith men are united to Him.
2. Share in His resurrection.
III. In whom is its source? It is God who ordained the means of salvation, sent His Son into the world to die for sinners, and raising Him from the dead raised also all those who were united to Him by faith by a spiritual resurrection, that they might “walk in newness of life.” This gracious work is due--
1. To His nature. “Being rich in mercy.”
2. To His affection for men. “For His great love wherewith He loved us.” (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
Regeneration
I. The change here noticed is of a remarkably decided nature. A change of the whole human character, by which the dispositions of men become thoroughly altered from that which is evil to that which is good, and by which there are implanted and formed within them those spiritual graces which are essentially connected with the bestowment of the Divine favour and the restoration of the Divine image.
II. This change is accomplished purely by Divine agency.
1. The agency of the Spirit of God in the work of renovation is sovereign.
2. The agency of the Spirit is mysterious.
3. The agency of the Spirit is connected with the instrumentality of the Word.
III. This change is absolutely essential for the salvation of the immortal soul.
1. This is evident, if you consider the occupation, society, and enjoyments of heaven.
2. It is also evident by considering the express testimony of God on the subject. (J. Parsons.)
Quickening of the dead
I. The Scripture phrases by which the sinful state of man is described. Sleep. “Therefore let us not sleep, as do others,” etc. (1Th_5:6, etc.). “Wherefore he saith, ‘Awake thou that sleepest,’” etc. (Eph_5:14). Death in trespasses (see text). “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh,” etc. (Col_2:13). A corrupt tree. “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,” etc. (Mat_7:18). “For he shall be like the heath in the desert,” etc. (Jer_17:6). Darkness. “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness,” etc. (1Th_5:4). Led captive, etc. (Eph_2:3). Enmity (Rom_8:7).
II. How the scriptures describe the change that is wrought in those that shall be saved and state God as the Author of it. Being quickened--by God (see text). Born again--by God (Joh_3:3; 1Pe_1:3). Washed and sprinkled--by God (Eze_16:8-9; Eze_36:25). Writing the law in the heart--by God (Jer_31:33). Grafting--by God (Rom_11:23-25). Creating light to shine where was darkness (2Co_4:6).
III. No means short of God can quicken and convert such a sinner. Let us consider everything that is likely.
1. Will miracles? No (Exo_8:16-18; Joh_12:10-12; Act_4:16-17).
2. Will the fulfilment of prophecies? No (Cf.Mat_27:62, etc. with Mat_28:11, etc.)
.
3. Will prosperity? No (Psa_73:3).
4. Will adversity? No (Pro_27:22).
5. Will preaching the gospel? No (1Co_1:23).
6. Will one rising from the dead? No (Luk_16:31). The necessity of a Divine agent in the Church of God.
IV. Evidences of being quickened.
1. A feeling sense of the evil of sin (Rom_7:18; Psa_38:3-7).
2. A dying to self-confidence, and a trusting in Christ alone (Rom_7:7-11; Gal_2:19-20; Php_3:7-9).
3. An appetite for the means of grace (1Jn_2:3).
4. Love to the brethren as such (1Jn_3:13-14). (H. Foster, M. A.)
Various manifestations of death
Thefrightful presence of death is manifested in many ways.
1. The dead have no motion; they cannot come to God; they are helpless as was Lazarus till the voice of Jesus reached him; grace alone can quicken the dead soul.
2. The dead have no sensation; they are past feeling; all the fountains of passion and emotion are sealed (Eph_4:19); so that before they can love God or hate sin they must get a new life.
3. The dead have no enjoyment; food satisfies, beauty pleases, and music charms no more. It is even so. Sin has perverted the moral sense, and shut up the heart against the enjoyment of God Himself. His character and His love please us no more. All the wonders of grace, as well as the excellencies of the Divine character, which the Cross reveals, fall upon us like sunbeams on the eyes of the dead.
4. The dead have no restorative power. Life, that mysterious, incomprehensible principle, which, though ever present with us and filling all things, eludes research and baffles reason, has a wonderful restorative power. Indeed, life is a sort of miracle, for it reverses, suspends, and modifies most of the laws of nature. In every plant, in every living creature, you see life assimilating and incorporating most heterogeneous elements, counteracting the law of gravity, nullifying the most potent chemical agencies, and resisting the mechanical laws. The dead are destitute of all these mysterious powers; they remain as they are, or they become more and more corrupt. There is no healing process going on in the dead soul by which, in the course of nature, it can become pure and healthy and happy in the enjoyment of God. (W. Graham, D. D.)
The dead man
I. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians of their former condition. Contraries give lustre one to another. It magnifies grace marvellously to consider the opposite condition. It should also stir up our thankfulness when we consider from what we are delivered. Now to come to the words themselves. What is death? Death is nothing else but a separation from the cause of life, from that from whence life springs. The body having a communicated life from the soul, when the soul is departed it must needs be dead. Now death, take it in a spiritual sense, it is either the death of law, our sentence--as we say of a man when he is condemned, he is a dead man--or death in regard of disposition; and then the execution of that death of sentence in bodily death and in eternal death afterward. Now naturally we are dead in all these senses.
1. First, by the sin of Adam, in whose loins we were, we were all damned. And then there is corruption of nature as a punishment of that first sin, that is a death, as we shall see afterward, a death of all the powers; we cannot act and move according to that life that we had at the first; we cannot think, we cannot will, we cannot affect, we cannot do anything [that] savours of spiritual life.
2. Hereupon comes a death of sentence upon us, being damned both in Adam’s loins and in original sin, and likewise adding actual sins of our own. If we had no actual sin it were enough for the sentence of death to pass upon us, but this aggravates the sentence.
3. We are dead in law as well as in disposition. This death in law is called guilt, a binding over to eternal death. Now what is the reason of it why we are dead? First of all, the ground of it is; by sin we are separated from the fountain of life; therefore we are all dead. Secondly, by sin we lost that first original righteousness which was co-produced with Adam’s soul. When Adam’s soul was infused it was clothed with all graces, with original righteousness. The stamp of God was on his soul. It was co-natural to that estate and condition to have that excellent gracious disposition that he had. Now, because we all lost that primitive image and glory of our souls, we are dead. Nay, sin itself, it is not only a cause of death--of temporal death as it is a curse, and so of eternal death; of that bitter sentence and adjudging of us too, both that we feel in terrors of conscience and expect after--but sin itself is an intrinsical death. Why? Because it is nothing but a separation of the soul from the chic! good, which is God, and a cleaving to some creature; for there is no sin but it carries the soul to the changeable creature in delight and affection to its pride and vanity, one thing or other. Sin is a turning from God to the creature, and that very turning of the soul is death; every sinful soul is dead. In these and the like considerations you may conceive we are all dead. Let us consider a little what a condition this is, to be “dead in trespasses and sins.” And what doth death work upon the body?
1. Unactiveness, stiffness; so when the Spirit of God is severed from the soul it is cold, and unactive, and stiff. Therefore those that find no life to that that is good, no, nor no power nor strength, it is a sign that they have not yet felt the power of the quickening Spirit; when they hear coldly and receive the sacrament coldly, as if it were a dead piece of work and business; when they do anything that is spiritually good coldly and forced, not from an inward principle of love to God, that might heat and warm their hearts, but they go about it as a thing that must be done, and think to satisfy God with an outward dead action.
2. Again, death makes the body unlovely.
3. Loathsomeness.
4. We sever dead persons from the rest.
5. Death deprives of the use of the senses. He that is spiritually dead can speak nothing that is good of spiritual things. And as he is speechless, so he hath no spiritual eyes to see God in His works. There is nothing that we see with our bodily eyes, but our souls should have an eye to see somewhat of God in it, His mercy and goodness and power, etc. And so he hath no relish to taste of God in His creatures and mercies. When a man tastes of the creatures, he should have a spiritual taste of God and of the mercy in him. Oh, how sweet is God! A wicked man hath no taste of God. And he cannot hear what the Spirit saith in the Word. He hears the voice of man, but not of the Spirit when the trumpet of the Word sounds never so loud in his ears.
6. As there is no sense nor moving to outward things, so no outward thing can move a dead body. Offer him colours to the eye, food to the taste, or anything to the feeling, nothing moves him. So a dead soul, as it cannot move to good, so it is moved with nothing. That affects a child of God and makes him tremble and quake, it affects not a carnal man at all.
7. And as in bodily death, the longer it is dead, the more noisome and offensive it is every day more than other, so sin makes the soul more loathsome and noisome daily, till they have filled up the measure of their sins, till the earth can bear them no longer. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
On spiritual death
I. To what sins this representation is to be applied, and to what description of persons it belongs.
1. The apostle expressly includes himself among those whose former state he had been considering.
2. The same expression is applied generally to those who never were heathens (Mat_8:22).
3. It is the declared intention of Jesus Christ, by His appearance in our world, to give life to the world by exhibiting Himself as the Bread of Life. “I am come that they might have life.”
4. True Christians, without any exception, are described as persons who have “passed from death unto life.”
II. Explain the import of this representation.
1. It implies a privation, or withdrawment, of a principle, which properly belongs, and once did belong, to the subject of which it is affirmed. The withdrawment of God is, with respect to the soul, what the withdrawment of the soul is in relation to the body. In each case the necessary effect is death; and as that which occasioned that withdrawment is sin, it is very properly denominated a “death in trespasses and sins.” Now this view of the subject ought surely to fill us with the deepest concern. Had man never possessed a principle of Divine life, there would have been less to lament in his condition. We are less affected at the consideration of what we never had, than by the loss of advantages which we once possessed. We look at a stone, or a piece of earth, without the least emotion, because, though it be destitute of life, we are conscious it was never possessed. But, when we look upon a corpse, it excites an awful feeling.
2. To be dead in trespasses and sins, intimates the total, the universal prevalence of corruption. Life admits of innumerable degrees and kinds. There is one sort of vegetative life, as in plants, another subsists in animals, and in man a rational, which is still a superior principle of life. Where life is of the same sort it is susceptible of different degrees. It is much more perfect in the larger sorts of animals than in reptiles. The vital principle in different men exists with various degrees of vigour, so that some are far more animated, alert, and vigorous than others. But there are no degrees in death. All things, of which it can be truly said that they are dead, are equally dead. (R. Hall, M. A.)
Standing, yet dead
Whilst visiting the beautiful island of Tasmania our attention was often called, nay, arrested, to huge trees which appear as “bleached ghosts of a dead forest.” They stand out in the brilliant moonlight with a weirdness that is surprising and magnificent. The reason for their condition is as follows: On account of their great size and the heavy cost of what is called “grubbing up,” the settler leaves them in the ground, but proceeds to cut them round the trunk at a height of about four feet. The axe cuts through the bark and about an inch into the tree. The effect is that when the next early spring comes all the sap exudes from the “gashed wounds,” and the monster of the forest dies. The great branches wither, the leaves fall off, the bark strips, and a year or two suffices to join the army of the upright dead. The farmer can now plough the ground between, sow his corn, and reap the harvest in the huge mausoleum of the forest. No sheltering foliage hinders the sun’s rays and the wheat plant thrives and ripens amidst hundreds of towering trees whose only voice is the silence of the dead. As we looked upon these dead ones we were reminded of an experience which comes to many men who are dead also even while they too are in posture, at least, upright. Hewed round in the trunk of their robust life, the axe of “the adversary,” hews and cuts until the sap, the rising, spreading, and expanding life, is drained. The spring time in these goodly trees of promise is followed by the bleach and ghostly death which comes of the exuding of conscience, honour, strength, and life. Alas, alas! this living human mausoleum knows no wheat growth or harvest at its base. The malaria of death is there, and the spreading corruption infects other trees also, and the forest of the dead extends. Welt does the apostle say of such, “They wax wanton and are dead while they live.” (Henry Varley.)
Partially quickened
I desire, brethren, for myself and you, that we may be alive all over, for some professors appear to be more dead than alive; life has only reached a fraction of their manhood. Life is in their hearts, blessed be God for that; but is only partially in their heads, for they do not study the gospel nor use their brains to understand its truths. Life has not touched their silent tongues, nor their idle hands, nor their frost-bitten pockets. Their house is on fire, but it is only at one corner, and the devil is doing his best to put out the flame. They remind me of a picture I once saw, in which the artist had laboured to depict Ezekiel’s vision, and the dead bodies in course of resurrection. The bones were coming together, and flesh gradually clothing them, and he represents one body in which the head is perfectly formed, but the body is a skeleton, while in another place the body is well covered, but the arms and legs remain bare bones. Some Christians, I say, are much in the same state. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ quickens the morally dead
I remember once conversing with a celebrated sculptor, who had been hewing out a block of marble to represent one of our great patriots--Lord Chatham. “There,” said he, “is not that a fine form?” “Now, sir,” said I, “can you put life into it: Else, with all its beauty, it is still but a block of marble.” Christ, by His Spirit, puts life into a beauteous image, and enables the man He forms to live to His praise and glory. (Rowland Hill, M. A.)
The nature and universality of spiritual death
To explain the context and show you the connection, I shall make two short remarks. The one is, That the apostle had observed in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the foregoing chapter that the same almighty power of God, which raised Christ from the dead, is exerted to enable a sinner to believe. The same exertion of the same power is necessary in the one case and the other; because, as the body of Christ was dead, and had no principle of life in it, so, says He, ye were dead in trespasses and sins; and therefore could no more quicken yourselves than a dead body can restore itself to life. Death is a state of insensibility and inactivity, and a dead man is incapable of restoring himself to life; therefore the condition of an unconverted sinner must have some resemblance to such a state, in order to support the bold metaphor here used by the apostle. To understand it aright we must take care, on the one hand that we do not explain it away in flattery to ourselves, or in compliment to the pride of human nature; and, on the other hand, that we do not carry the similitude too far, so, as to lead into absurdities, and contradict matter of fact. A sinner dead in trespasses and sins may be a living treasury of knowledge, an universal scholar, a profound philosopher, and even a great divine, as far as mere speculative knowledge can render him such; nay, he is capable of many sensations and impressions from religious objects, and of performing all the external duties of religion. Trespasses and sins are the grave, the corrupt effluvia, the malignant damps, the rottenness of a dead soul: it lies dead, senseless, inactive, buried in trespasses and sins. Trespasses and sins render it ghastly, odious, abominable, a noisome putrefaction before a holy God, like a rotten carcase, or a mere mass of corruption: the Vilest lusts, like worms, riot upon and devour it, but it feels them not, nor can it lift a hand to drive the venom off. You have seen that the metaphorical expression in my text is intended to represent the stupidity, inactivity, and impotence of unregenerate sinners about divine things. This truth I might confirm by argument and Scripture authority; but I think it may be a better method for popular conviction to prove and illustrate it from plain instances of the temper and conduct of sinners about the concerns of religion, as this may force the conviction upon them from undoubted matters of fact and their own experience.
I. Consider the excellency of the Divine Being, the sum total, the great Original of all perfections. How infinitely worthy is He of the adoration of all His creatures! how deserving of their most intense thoughts and most ardent affections! Yet how insensible are we and all men to His perfections and majesty. The sun, moon, and stars have bad more worshippers than the uncreated Fountain of Light from which they derive their lustre. Kings and ministers of state have more punctual homage and more frequent applications made to them than the King of kings and Lord of lords. Created enjoyments are more eagerly pursued than the Supreme Good. Search all the world over, and you will find but very little motions of heart towards God; little love, little desire, little searching after Him. The reason is, men are dead in trespasses and sins.
II. The august and endearing relations the great and blessed God sustains to us, and the many ways He has taken to make dutiful and grateful impressions upon our hearts. What tender endearments are there contained in the relation of a Father! Now the name of a father is wont to carry some endearment and authority. Children, especially in their young and helpless years, are fond of their father; their little hearts beat with a thousand grateful passions towards him; and they fly to him upon every appearance of danger: but if God be a father, where is His honour? here, alas! the filial passions are senseless and immoveable. And is not a state of death a very proper representation of such sullen, incorrigible stupidity? Living souls have very tender sensations; one touch of their heavenly Father’s hand makes deep impressions upon them. Concluding reflections:
1. What a strange, affecting view does this subject give us of this assembly!
2. Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, that Christ may give thee light. The principle of reason is still alive in you; you are also sensible of your own interest, and feel the workings of self-love. It is God alone that can quicken you, but He effects this by a power that does not exclude, but attends rational instructions and persuasions to your understanding.
3. Let the children of God be sensible of their great happiness in being made spiritually alive. Life is a principle, a capacity necessary for enjoyments of any kind.
4. Let us all be sensible of this important truth, that it is entirely by grace we are saved. If we were once dead in sin, certainly it is owing to the freest grace that we have been quickened; therefore, when we survey the change, let us cry, “Grace, grace unto it.” (President Davies, M. A.)
Dead
The epithet implies--
1. Previous life. Death is but the cessation of life. The spirit of life fled from Adam’s disobedient heart, and it died, for it was severed from God.
2. It implies insensibility. The dead, which are as insusceptible as their kindred clay, can be neither wooed nor won back to existence. The beauties of holiness do not attract man in his spiritual insensibility, nor do the miseries of hell deter him.
3. It implies inability. The corpse cannot raise itself from the tomb and come back to the scenes and society of the living world. The peal of the last trump alone can start it from its dark and dreamless sleep. Inability characterizes fallen man. And this is not natural but moral inability, such inability as not only is no palliation, but oven forms the very aggravation of his crime. It is inability not of mind but of will. He cannot, simply because he will not, and therefore he is justly responsible. (J. Eadie, D. D.)
Quickening grace
Hencelearn--
1. It is not sufficient that the servants of Jesus Christ do only preach privileges, and hold forth unto believers that happy estate unto which they are lifted up through Christ; it is necessary also that jointly herewith they be calling them to mind their woeful, miserable, and lost estate by nature: for the apostle, in the preceding chapter, having spoken much of those high privileges unto which the Ephesians were advanced by Christ, he doth here mind them of that miserable state wherein God found them; “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
2. There is nothing contributeth more to commend the doctrine of free grace to people’s consciences, and so to commend it as to make them closely adhere unto it, both in possession and practice, than the serious perpending of man’s woeful and altogether hopeless estate by nature: this alone would do much to scatter all that mist whereby human reason doth obscure the beauty of this truth, by extolling man’s free will as a co-worker with grace (Rom_3:19-20).
3. Believers in Jesus Christ are not to look upon their lost and miserable estate by nature separately, and apart from, but jointly with God’s free grace and mercy, which hath delivered them from that misery; for otherwise the thoughts of sin and misery may, if God should give way, swallow them up (Mat_27:4-5). Hence is it the apostle hath so contrived his discourse here, that all along, while he speaketh of their misery in the first three verses, the mind of the reader is kept in suspense without coming to the perfect close of a sentence, until God’s mercy in their delivery from this misery be mentioned (verse 5); for the original hath not these words, “He hath quickened,” in this verse: but the translators have taken them from verse 5, to make up the sense, without suspending the reader so long until he should find them in their own proper place, “And you who were dead,” etc.
4. Every man by nature, and before conversion, is dead, not to sin (for that is proper to the regenerate only; see Rom_6:2, where the grammatical construction is the same in the original with that which is here; only the sense is much different), but in sin, whereby he is wholly deprived of all ability and power to convert himself (Rom_9:16), or to do anything which is spiritually good (Rom_8:7). (James Fergusson.)
Dead souls
When there is an estrangement of the soul from the Spirit of God and Christ, sanctifying, and comforting, and cheering it, then there is a death of the soul. The soul can no more act anything that is savingly and holily good, than the body can be without the soul. And as the body without the soul is a noisome, odious carcass, offensive in the eyes of its dearest friends, so the soul, without the Spirit of Christ quickening and seasoning it, and putting a comeliness and beauty upon it, is odious. All the clothes and flowers you put on a dead body cannot make it but a stinking carcass; so all the moral virtues, and all the honours in this world, put upon a man out of Christ, it makes him not a spiritual living soul; he is but a loathsome carrion, a dead carcass, in the sight of God and of all that have the Spirit of God. For he is under death. He is stark and stiff, unable to stir or move to any duty whatsoever. He has no sense nor motion. Though such men live a common natural civil life, and walk up and down, yet they are dead men to God and to a better life. The world is full el dead men, that are dead while they are alive, as St. Paul speaks of the “widow that lives in pleasures” (1Ti_5:6). A fearful estate, if we had spiritual eyes to see it and think of it. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
Sin is the death of the soul
Sin disengages the love of God to the creature, because it renders the creature useless as to the end for which it was designed. Things, whose essence and being stand in relation to such an end, have their virtue and value from their fitness to attain it. Everything is ennobled from its use, and debased as far as it is useless. As long as a man continues an instrument of God’s glory, so long his title to life and happiness stands sure, and no longer. But now, sin in Scripture, and in God’s account, is the death of the soul. “We were dead in trespasses and sins.” Now death makes a thing utterly useless, because it renders it totally inactive; and in things that are naturally active, that which deprives them of their action bereaves them of their use. The soul, by reason of sin, is unable to act spiritually; for sin has disordered the soul, and turned the force and edge of all its operations against God; so that now it can bring no glory to God by doing, but only by suffering, and being made miserable. It is now unfit to obey His commands, and fit only to endure His strokes. It is incapable by any active communion or converse with Him to enjoy His love, and a proper object only to bear His anger and revenge. We may take the case in this similitude. A physician has a servant; while this servant lives honestly with him, he is fit to be used and to be employed in his occasions; but if this servant should commit a felony, and for that be condemned, he can then be actively serviceable to him no longer; he is fit only for him to dissect, and make an object upon which to show the experiments of his skill. So while man was yet innocent he was fit to be used by God in a way of active obedience; but now having sinned, and being sentenced by the law to death as a malefactor, he is a fit matter only for God to torment and show the wonders of His vindictive justice. (R. South, D. D.)
Spiritual insensibility
Announce to a man who believes himself possessed of an enormous capital that bankruptcy and beggary await him; tell a prisoner who hopes for certain deliverance that the sentence of death is passed on him, and he may expect the summons of the executioner; inform a man who thinks he has got but a slight disease, that it is the symptom of a fatal plague, and advise him to prepare for death; thunder at a man’s door, and shout that the house is on fire, and bid him escape for his life--and surely nothing but that men had sunk in death before these tidings reached their ears, could prevent their being suitably affected by them. But men can hear of the judgments and the wrath of God as though they heard them not; such announcements are like those of the destruction of Sodom by Lot, “He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law,” or like the language of unbelieving Israel to the prophet, when he proclaimed the fearful judgments to come, “Ah, Lord God! they say of me, doth he not speak parables?” (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)
The solemnity of death
What a solemn sight is presented to us by a dead body! When last evening trying to realize the thought, it utterly overcame me. The thought is overwhelming, that soon this body of mine must be a carnival for worms; that in and out of these places, where my eyes are glistening, foul things, the offspring of loathsomeness, shall crawl; that this body must be stretched in still, cold, abject, passive death, must then become a noxious, nauseous thing, cast out even by those that loved me, who will say, “Bury my dead out of my sight.” Perhaps you can scarcely, in the moment I can afford you, appropriate the idea to yourselves. Does it not seem a strange thing, that you, who have walked to this place this morning, shall be carried to your graves; that the eyes with which you now behold me shall soon be glazed in everlasting darkness; that the tongues, which just now moved in song, shall soon be silent, lumps of clay; and that your strong and stalwart frame, now standing in this place, will soon be unable to move a muscle, and become a loathsome thing, the brother of the worm and the sister of corruption? You can scarcely get hold of the idea; death doth such awful work with us, it is such a Vandal with this mortal fabric, it so rendeth to pieces this fair thing that God hath builded up, that we can scarcely bear to contemplate his works of ruin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
All are dead by nature
Now, endeavour, as well as you can, to get the idea of a dead corpse, and when you have so done, please to understand that that is the metaphor employed in my text to set forth the condition of your soul by nature. Just as the body is dead, incapable, unable, unfeeling, and soon about to become corrupt and putrid; so are we, if we be unquickened by Divine grace, dead in trespasses and sins, having within us death, which is capable of developing itself in worse and worse stages of sin and wickedness, until all of us here, left by God’s grace, should become loathsome beings: loathsome through sin and wickedness, even as the corpse through natural decay. Understand, that the doctrine of the Holy Scripture is, that man by nature, since the Fall, is dead; he is a corrupt and ruined thing; in a spiritual sense, utterly and entirely dead. And if any of us shall come to spiritual life, it must be by the quickening of God’s Spirit, vouchsafed to us sovereignly through the goodwill of God the Father, not for any merits of our own, but entirely of His own abounding and infinite grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Man dead in trespasses and sins
One Sunday Father Taylor preached upon the Atonement. His text was, “Dead in trespasses and sins.” “Dead!” he exclaimed; “not only dead, but buried; and you can’t get out! A big boulder lays on the main hatch, keeping it down over your heads. You may go to work with all your purchases--bars, handspikes, winch, and double tackles; but you can’t make it budge an inch. But hark! who is it that has the watch on deck! Jesus Christ. Now, sing out to Him, and Sing out loud. Ah! He hears you; and He claps His shoulder against this rock of sin, cants it off the hatch, the bars fly open, and out you come.”
Image of the unregenerate
The unregenerate man may be said to be made up of two parts--a living body and a dead soul. In states of disease and injury we sometimes find something analogous, in one part of the body being full of life, and another part of it palsied and dead. I have seen a person after injury of the lower part of the neck surviving for a time; the head perfectly alive and well, but the body and limbs perfectly motionless. In the last fatal duel fought near Edinburgh a bullet struck the spine of the challenger. I have often heard this unhappy man’s physician tell that when he first visited him, some hours afterwards, and asked him how he felt, “I feel,” he replied, “exactly what I am--a man with a living head and a dead body mysteriously joined together.” Every unbelieving man consists of a dead soul mysteriously joined to a living body. (Sir James Simpson.)
A dead soul
As a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul inherit the kingdom of God. (H. G. Salter.)
Care for souls
When on a visit to a city in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, St. John commended to the care of the bishop a young man of fine stature, graceful countenance, and ardent mind, as suited to the work of the ministry. The bishop neglected his charge. The young man became idle and dissolute, and was at length prevailed on to join a band of robbers, such as commonly had their strongholds in the neighborhood of ancient Greek cities. He soon became their captain, and attained to notoriety in crime. Long after St. John entered the city again, and inquired for the young man. “He is dead,” said the bishop, “dead to God.” Having ascertained the particulars, the apostle exclaimed, “I left a fine keeper of a brother’s soul!” then, mounting a horse, he rode into the country, and was taken prisoner. He attempted not to flee, but said, “For this purpose am I come, conduct me to your captain.” He entered the presence of the armed bandit, who, recognizing the apostle, attempted to escape. “Why dost thou flee, my son,” said he, “from thy father--thy defenceless, aged father? Fear not, thou still hast hopes of life. I will pray to Christ for thee. I will suffer death for thee. I will give my life for thine. Believe that Christ hath sent me.” The young man was subdued, fell into the apostle’s arms, prayed with many tears, became perfectly reformed, and returned to the communion of the Church. (Legend of St. John.)
Spiritual death and life
I. The original condition of the Ephesians. They were deaden trespasses and sins. The two words, “trespasses and sins,” have almost the same meaning. They imply the breaking, not keeping, or offending against the moral law of God. The negative symptoms of spiritual death are--
1. The want of spiritual perception. As a dead body has not the five bodily senses, so a dead soul has not the spiritual senses. It neither sees nor hears, nor tastes, nor perceives the perfume, nor feels the reality of the spiritual world. The glory of God shineth forth in the gospel of Christ, but dead souls are blind and cannot see it (2Co_4:3-4). God speaketh by His providence and by His inspired word in loudest tones of reproof, admonition, invitation, and love, warning, and terror; but the dead soul is deaf, like the adder that heareth not the voice of the charmer, charm he never so sweetly. The dead soul cannot taste and see that God is gracious.
2. No spiritual understanding. “There is none that understandeth.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (Rom_3:2).
3. Want of spiritual desires. “Depart from us, we desire not knowledge of Thy ways.” “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.”
4. The dead soul has no spiritual strength. The natural man is, in spiritual exertion, absolutely helpless and powerless.
5. The dead soul has no capacity of spiritual enjoyment. Dead in trespasses and sins, it can have no true or permanent happiness.
Having thus enumerated five qualities in which the spiritually dead soul is deficient, we may now mention those which such a soul has.
1. It has entire corruption and depravity.
2. From entire depravity proceeds the second positive quality in the dead soul--it is constantly committing actual sin.
3. A third property of a spiritually dead soul is, that it is under the wrath and curse of God (Gal_3:8).
4. The fourth and last property which we shall mention is, that the soul in this state is deserving of and prepared for eternal death. “The soul that sinneth shall die” is the unchangeable word of the inflexibly just God. “The wages of sin is death.”
II. The change which the Ephesians underwent, so as to bring them into the state in which they were when the apostle transmitted to their Church this epistle--“You hath He quickened.” Under this head we might direct your attention to the five following particulars: The nature, author, qualities, effects, and subjects of this change.
1. As to the nature of this change. It was to the souls of the Ephesians what the resurrection of Lazarus was to his body, the actual communication of life to what was previously dead.
2. Who was the author of this mighty transformation? Not the apostle; he utterly disclaims the power, as well as the honour, of effecting it (1Co_3:5-6). Not the Ephesians themselves. Can the dead quicken the dead? “You hath He quickened.”
3. As to the qualities of this change. If our time permitted, we might describe it as being supernatural in its origin, nature, and effects; immediate, abiding (1Jn_2:19), saving, transforming, and a most glorious and happy change, giving glory to God, and conferring happiness on men.
4. The effects of this change of being quickened from spiritual death were two-fold--inestimable privilege and holy fruit.
5. The subjects of this change. “You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
III. Let us now endeavour to apply to our own use what we have learned respecting the Ephesians. Should anyone be saying, “I greatly fear that I am dead, but oh that I knew how I may be quickened!” Be of good courage, my brother, and despair not, for the mercy of God is unsearchable, and may reach even to you. If anyone in this assembly be quickened from his death in sins, to him I would say, You have been quickened in order that God in Christ may be glorified in you and by you. You are a monument of the marvellous grace of God, therefore glorify the grace of God by ascribing your salvation to sovereign grace as its origin, depending on efficacious grace as its means, and living to the praise of redeeming grace as its end. (W. Mackenzie,)
I. In the first three verses the state and character of the Ephesians before their conversion is described. As to their state, they “were dead in trespasses and sins.” This death may be viewed as two-fold, namely, legal and spiritual. The former consisted in the condemning sentence of the Divine law, under which they lay, as its transgressors; the latter consisted in the moral pollution of their natures, in consequence of which they were utterly incapable of any holy obedience to God. As to their character, or external deportment, the Ephesians are described in verses second and third, They “walked in sins.” The term “walk” is expressive of a regular habitual course. Their whole life was sin. The sinful life which the Ephesians led was more particularly distinguished by conformity to the world, and compliance with the devil. They walked in sins “according to the course of this world,” “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
II. We come, secondly, to consider the great change which had taken place in the wretched condition of the Ephesians through Divine grace.
1. This blessed change is explained in verses 1, 4, 5, and 6. In verse 1 we are informed in what the change consisted “You hath He quickened.” To quicken is to implant holy principles in the soul, so that it becomes alive to God and righteousness.
2. We have next the author of this gracious change, in verses 4 and 5--“But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).” To quicken dead souls is a Divine work, as much so as is the resuscitation of a dead body to life. The new birth is as far above the effort of nature as the rearing of a world.
3. We have next the formal or meritorious cause of this change--“He hath quickened us together with Christ” (verse 4). Christ was quickened by the mighty power of God when He rose from the dead; end His resurrection was the Father’s testimony to the perfection and acceptance of that glorious work, which is the foundation of all the grace which flows from heaven to poor sinners.
4. “And hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Jesus not only rose from the dead, to which His people are conformed in regeneration, but also ascended into heaven, and “sat down at the right hand of the throne of God”; and this He did as the Head, so that in Him His people sat down in heavenly places; and His exaltation there is the assurance that they shall personally appear in heaven, and share in the glory the Father hath bestowed on Him.
5. We have, finally, the moving cause of the grace shown to the Ephesians, in verse 4--“But God, who is rich in mercy,” etc. The cause of the grace manifested to Jews and Gentiles lay in God alone, not in any measure in them. It was love residing in the bosom of the Eternal Himself which moved Him to quicken these wretched sinners.
III. We come, thirdly and lastly, to the ultimate object of God’s grace to sinners of the Jews and Gentiles. It is mentioned in the seventh verse--“that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” This was a noble end, in all respects worthy of our gracious God. These poor idolaters, quickened to a heavenly and endless life, are patterns of Divine grace to every age, and to every sinner of every age, till time has run its course. Let me shortly improve this subject by urging on you the lessons it inculcates. Learn, first, from this subject, the guilt and wretchedness of our spiritual condition by nature. We learn, secondly, from this subject, how great is the grace of God in Christ Jesus. (M. Grigor.)
