Eph. 2:1

1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

As for you. The soaring promises of God and the glory of life in Christ make for breath-taking reading. I read on and meditate on every word, almost every syllable, because I do not want to miss a thing. By reading and praying I begin to fathom the reality of the new life in Jesus Christ that is not only a possibility but a daily reality in my own life.

Having said that, no matter how sublime the redemption story, it remains only compelling and brilliant literature unless it is a present, living, compelling reality for ME! “As for you.” I recall that Jesus, on a high Syrian mountain, asked his disciples, “But whom do you say I am?” He put the emphasis on the YOU!

Can the work of God’s redemption and the enormous promises of God become a living reality in Ephesus where people of many cultures are experiencing the Kingdom of God, right there in that great cosmopolitan city? Absolutely. Because the gift of life is for US, for each ME. All are encouraged to believe and obey the revelation of the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ.

You were dead

Each person was dead, absolutely unable to do anything at all about the human tragedy, whether Jew or Gentile. Paul calls it, “Dead in transgressions and sins.” This picture is shocking to human pride. Is each person is a living corpse? A corpse has no power to believe or live at all. Neither I nor anyone else can break the death grip of sin which is rebellion against God because I am powerless, absolutely powerless, DEAD according to Paul.

Sometimes I wonder, is it really all that hopeless? Can not people, by philosophy and religion or just by pure determination break out of the grave of death? Can a corpse will to life when it is dead, absolutely dead? Hardly. However, it seems as though human history is one long tale of that attempt.

Wesley penned a poem about this, # 360.

Faith is thy power thou seest I have,
For thou this faith hath wrought.
Dead souls thou callest from the grave,
And speakest world from naught.