I love Ephesians 2. Give me a scripture about death and life, and I’m in.
I’ve always loved a good black and white concept, a sharp analogy — something jarring and thought-provoking. Even better, make it dark.
Death to me is utter darkness, skulls and bones, dirt and decay, smoky graveyards, and agonizing pain. I love the heaviness of it. Maybe it’s because of my love for The Nightmare Before Christmas and anything Halloween as a child, but I’ll take spooky season over Christmas season any day.
But death doesn’t scare me. Death only means life is coming.
Ephesians 2:1–2a “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…”
If you are dead, you are unable to do anything for yourself — helpless. You can no longer make choices, speak your mind, or take any actionable step. You aren’t even involuntarily breathing. You’re done.
That’s what sin does. It kills.
We can look at death in two ways here. First, the state of death is referring to our spiritual state without God. Living life in our own power, following the ways of the world, and blind to God’s prompting. It’s like walking around in a black and white world without sounds or smells — you know there is more but you can’t find it. It’s going through the motions, living by what feels good, but with a deep, aching emptiness when you lay your head down at night. No solutions, no forward movement, no hope. But death is not just a state of being, it’s a legal sentence.
The payment for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Death is the legal punishment for all of sin — the world’s sin, your sin, my sin. Because we have a just, righteous God, sin cannot remain — but it is costly to remove. We have two choices: pay for our sin ourselves, or accept the free gift of life that God provided through His Son’s payment for sin. Paying for the sin ourselves looks like living life dead and spending eternity in hell in utter separation from God and everything Good. Accepting Jesus’ death as our own looks like true life, real life, free life, abundant life, and eternal life. It’s living this life to know Him and the next life beside Him.
This is the “But God” moment.
There you are, dead. Done. Can’t do a thing about it.
Ephesians 2:4–5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved."
Even when we were dead from our own doing, our own choices, our own inability to reach God, He came down and snatched us up out of the grave — by His choice, His mercy, His goodness.
We all need a “but God” moment. We need an interruption from God — an intervention.
I need Him to come into my mess and interject. Despite my choices, my attitudes, my sin, my inability to help myself, I need God to interrupt. And the best part is, I know He can. Why?
In the middle of my death, He interrupted and brought life.
And it had to be God. Only God can resurrect. Only He has proven that. Only He has power over death.
In the middle of my current suffering and inability to pull myself out, I know God is coming. Because if He can raise me from the literal dead, He can walk me through this life.
Kaley was dead in her sin, but God who is full of mercy, because of His great love for her, even in the middle of her death, made her alive with Jesus — by grace Kaley has been rescued.
