The Bible addresses each one of us when it says,
|
"And you He made alive, who were dead..." (Ephesians 2:1).
|
"But," you might say, "I have never died or been made alive again."
Even though you have simply continued to live and breathe from the day you were born into this world until now, the Bible says,
|
"And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1).
|
Since this point is made very clear, how did this happen? And what are these words trying to tell us?
If we concentrate and examine the Bible carefully, it is not difficult for us to arrive at Genesis chapter 2 verse 17. There we find the words that God spoke, very early on, to Adam, the forefather of all mankind:
|
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
|
Even so, in the end, Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus becoming a sinner and the forefather of sinners, since he caused all of mankind to inherit this sin.
At that time, even though, outwardly, Adam was living and breathing, he was in a spiritually dead state in God's eyes. In this sense, he was dead in trespasses and sins.
As a result of Adam's mistake, we too, as descendants of this man who ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are condemned to being full of wrongs and sins for as long as we live.
So the apostle Peter wrote,
"...from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,"
(1 Peter 1:18),
|
and the apostle Paul,
|
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned... (Romans 5:12).
|
He explained that through this one sin, many people came under condemnation (See Romans 5:18).
If this is true, I cannot help but acknowledge as fact that I, too, was undoubtedly born a sinner and, like Adam, was spiritually dead.
In the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 3, it says,
|
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).
|
This passage clearly indicates the captive state of our minds as we live in this world. This is truly the way it is. Since we were dead in our trespasses and sins, we were by nature the children of wrath. If this is the case, and we are clearly aware of this fact, we can not just allow ourselves to fade quietly away and die in the midst of such wrath.
|
