In The Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom tells the young singer
Christine, “Close your eyes to the truth…for the truth isn’t what you want to
see.” Life has occasions like that,
occasions when we don’t want to see the truth.
This passage (Ephesians 2:1-3) contains several such truths.
In short, the passage is about
sin. But it tells us our problem is
greater than our being guilty of occasional moral missteps. It speaks of the root of such behavior.
This behavior, which Paul describes
in the words “transgressions and sins,” is evidence that we are dead. In fact, we might be said to be the truly
living dead. Outwardly, we give evidence
of being alive but within our deepest being, our souls, we are
unresponsive. Any check for spiritual
vital signs comes up negative.
Now, we can push this imagery too
far—Paul elsewhere reminds us that we can see evidence of God’s existence in
the world around us. But, in the words
of Skevington Wood, “the most vital part of mans personality—the spirit—is dead
to the most important factor in life—God.”
As Paul continues to discuss
Christ’s work later in this chapter, he rejoices in the capacity Christians
have to enjoy a relationship with God and with fellow believers. The condition Paul describes in the opening
words of this passage would make such relationships impossible. You can’t have
a relationship with the dead.
Further evidence of our sinful
condition is found in the domination
often seen in the lives of our fellow human beings—and in our own lives. When Paul speaks of “the ruler of the kingdom
of the air,” he is speaking of Satan.
Jews and Christians believed in Satan.
This was not the horned imp with a pitchfork we see in cartoons; they
saw Satan as a malevolent entity opposed to God’s plan and purposes for
humankind.
Many moderns shy away from
affirming belief in Satan but some, like Archibald Hunter, insist there is no
logical reason to deny Satan’s existence.
If we grant the existence of a benevolent God, there is no reason to
question whether there might be another being whose agenda is far from
benevolent. The Bible denies what is
called “dualism,” that notion that God and Satan are equally matched, but it
does present the evil one as a formidable enemy. Without denying that some writers have gone
too far in describing demonic influence in the world, there’s no doubt Jesus,
the apostles, and most Christian thinkers until modern times believed in his
existence. Maybe it would be good to
keep in mind Verbal’s final observation in The
Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing
the world he did not exist.”
Paul’s mention of Satan may be
especially relevant in this letter.
There is evidence of a cult in Ephesus and much of Asia Minor that
worshipped the serpent. This included
the serpent mentioned in the story of the Fall.
In fact, several of the churches specifically addressed in Revelation
struggled with what appears to have been the worship of the serpent. If this is what he has in mind, Paul is
telling his readers that the power some of them may have been worshipping is
the power that has been enslaving them and keeping them from the freedom God
wants them to know.
Further evidence of our sinful
condition is found in our depravity. Paul speaks of our “gratifying the cravings
of our sinful nature, following that nature’s desires and thoughts.” This doesn’t mean every act we perform is
evil but is does mean every human capacity we possess is tainted by sin. In one-way or another we live in such a manner
that follows “the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature.”
(NLT) Whatever evil our minds (“thoughts”) conceive, we act on.
We can find a venue for evil in
every talent we have, in every expression of our personalities. The hand that can caress can abuse. “Social media” may allow old friends to
reconnect or allow bullies to torment the vulnerable. The voice that can sing a beautiful hymn can
blaspheme. Simple love of country
becomes mindless nationalism. Religion
that can be a voice of love becomes a voice of hate.
Just this past week I read stories
of parents from two very different cultures who murdered their children. I would like to believe such behavior belongs
to another place, another nation. Yet,
these acts took place only a few hundred miles from where I live. Only the most naïve parent or grandparent
doesn’t worry just a little about their children or grandchildren walking home
from school everyday; we know there are strangers who may sweep into the “safe”
community and shatter its illusion of safety.
And though such stories are hardly new we still shake our heads in
wonder asking how such things can happen.
But even without such tragic,
news-making evidence we know something is wrong. Every time you walk back downstairs to be
sure you’ve locked a door or wrestle with the shrink wrap around a product
you’ve just bought, you see further evidence—evidence we’ve lived with so long
we’ve learned to ignore it. These things
are part of life because we live in a broken world, a world where rebellion
against God is the order of the day.
This truth we’d rather not hear
cannot be escaped by embracing any culture.
Paul lets us know this in a subtle
but significant way as he changes pronouns.
He moves from “you” to “we” in his description of the human
condition. Here’s how Mounce translates
verse 3: “Among them we also all once lived in the passions of our flesh, gratifying
the desires and impulses of the flesh….” Paul may be writing to a church in the
Gentile world but he does not let his own people off the hook; they, too, are
sinners.
The Bible does not promote
racism—indeed, the Bible does not seem to recognize the category of “race,”
like we do. We are all God’s creation
and all living estranged from him.
So, Paul brings us to the terrible
outcome of our condition: “we were by
nature deserving of wrath.”
Let me put this in plain
language: All of us deserve to be
recipients of God’s wrath.
We don’t care for the notion of a
“wrathful” God because we’ve come to think of God in some very un-Godlike
ways. God is a buddy, a pal, “a slob
like one of us.” We no longer think of
God in the words of the great hymn: “Holy, holy, holy…there is none beside
Thee.”
As sinners, we cannot stand in the
presence of such a God. We know this so
we devise various ways to minimize the “infinite, qualitative difference”
between God and ourselves. We tell
ourselves that with enough good works God can be won over to our side, that God
will forget our rebellion and be reasonable.
Yet, the Bible makes it clear that
nothing we can do can overcome the impact of our rebellion. All our attempts to be good enough,
“righteous,” to use the Bible’s word, will fail. Because we are broken we can produce only
inferior works. We are “by nature”
deserving of God’s anger. And can
anything change that?
Paul begins this passage be
reminding the Ephesians of their former dilemma, the condition they were in
before Christ. The very fact he puts these
words in the past tense reminds us that something has happened for the believer. We will examine that later but for now,
here’s how The Message renders the
passage we’ve just looked at.
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.
It’s a bleak picture of the human
condition. But it’s not all there is to
say. When you shake your head at those
headlines, remember there is a word of hope that can be spoken to the
situation. Things are bad beyond our
ability to fix, “but God….”
