Dead Men Walking - Part 1

In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul is writing to believers who were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who were raised to life by the power of God. If you are a christian, do you understand the greatness of God’s power in salvation? If you don’t understand the depth of sin and what sin has done to the human race you will never have a true concept of redemption. If you don’t understand the biblical doctrine of sin you won’t understand the incarnation— “The word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John1:14). And you won’t understand the cross, you won’t understand what life is all about, and you won’t understand human history.
Paul begins by giving us the biblical assessment of human nature in these verses. There are only 3 ways to assess human nature: #1 People are basically OK. They are healthy as opposed to being sick or dead. Man is not as good as he is going to be because he is evolving, but he is basically good. Man’s nature is only slightly flawed— the world is getting better. The evidence is to the contrary, there are still wars, starvation, disease, economic turmoil, corruption, mans inhumanity to man. # 2.Man is not well, he is sick. There is something wrong but it’s not hopeless. People are still alive and where there is life there is hope. All man needs is the right environment, the right political philosophy, freedom from religion, freedom from God, or the right medicine and he will recover.
#3. The biblical view— man is not good, slightly flawed or sick, man is dead! “You were dead in trespasses and sins” (2:1). There is no stronger word than “dead” — You were not “almost dead”, not “desperately ill”, but dead — no life. This is spiritual death, the person is dead toward God, but quite actively involved in sin. Dead men walking! Dead to God, alive to wickedness. The sinner always follows the ways of the world and of the devil and spends his time fulfilling the desires of the flesh. Have you ever seen a zombie movie? “Night of the Living Dead”, “Zombies”, “Shawn of the Dead”. Zombies are people who have died but are still walking around. Their body is decaying and putrefying, rotting, stinking flesh. (Old song— “I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in”[First Edition]). This is the picture Paul paints of the human condition before God. Walking corpses, the living dead. Unable to understand spiritual things, unable to please God. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him: nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (1Cor.2:14).Sinners are trapped by the very things that are destroying them. They are subjects of the kingdom of darkness, captives of the devil and the flesh.