EPHESIANS 2:1,
George Walker,
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins”
This verse is good news to a sinner. It denotes the very fact that we are not dead any longer, but that at one time we were dead. Another point that this verse teaches is that we that are alive in Christ had nothing to do with getting life, because we were dead. If we went to the graveyard and stood over the graves of our loved ones and spoke to them and told them to arise and receive life, there would not be one of them that would arise, because they are dead. Just as they are dead naturally, so we were just as dead spiritually. Dead is dead, and if we were dead we could not act. The Primitive Baptists have always contended that we were passive in being born again.
The older that I get, the more I love the message of salvation by grace because it takes the condition away from me and puts it on someone that was able to save to the uttermost. It also takes the glory away from man and puts it where it belongs, that is, on the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse two, Paul says, “You were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” He is saying that we are Adam multiplied, that we are the offspring of Adam and if the offspring of Adam, then we are sinners by nature and sinners by practice.
Sin is a sickness; sin is inherited. It is passed down from generation to generation, and it is terminal; therefore, it brings forth death. “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). In Romans chapter three, Paul tells us the wretched condition that we were in through the fall of Adam. “As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one” (Rom. 3:10-12).
This puts us in a bad way, a way that we cannot get ourselves out of based upon our own merit, because we have no righteousness of our own. We have no good works; all our works are as filthy rags before God, and we have no standing with God in ourselves.
Job asks this question: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one” (Job. 14:4). But thanks be to God of what Paul wrote! “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Rom. 8:33). As death came upon all men because of one man’s disobedience, it took the obedience of one man, the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, to stand as our surety. Christ is more than our security; he is our surety. He is the one that God required to stand as our surety, that he might be the one of whom the penalty of the sin debt was required.
We are speaking of perfection, we are speaking of holiness and we are speaking of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who “was made to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Now as we go back to the text: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” We find that Jesus paid the sin debt, that he fulfilled the law to a jot and to a tittle, that he was the perfect sacrifice for sin, that he is our surety, and that he is our righteousness, and that we stand just before a Holy God as if we had never sinned.
But his work did not stop there, because he has the power to give life, because he is life itself. He is still on his throne, quickening or giving life to those that are dead in trespasses and in sins. He speaks to the hard and stony heart of a sinner, and he takes out the hard and stony heart and puts in a new heart, a heart that has feelings.
Therefore, we are not dead anymore; we have been made alive in Jesus Christ, and his blood has been applied and hath washed us, cleansed us and made us to be the righteousness of God in him. AMEN. George Walker, The Christian Pathway, Jan. 2006, Submitted by Mark Green,