Now turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. This is the text, this chapter which we will consider this morning. We are only going to consider the first three verses of Ephesians chapter 2, now but let me read verse 1 to 10 for some context. Ephesians chapter 2, I’m beginning with verse 1: “And you”. Now let me pause here and remind you that God in His Word here is speaking to you, referring to the saints. So listen very carefully, and I continue.

“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.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Now of course I’ve just read to you the first ten verses of this chapter. But again let me remind you, our focus this morning is only on the first three verses of chapter 2. Again I want to refresh our memories. Ephesians has six chapters- the first three chapters are doctrinal chapters; chapters four, five, and six are practical chapters. And so we are still in the doctrinal part of Ephesians, and of course this morning we are in chapter 2. Now before again we dive into the first three verses to help us understand the context of this, let me outline to you what chapter 2 is about. Let me try to outline to you the pattern of chapter 2.

Now chapter 2 is a chapter of contrast. And when I say contrast, I mean a striking difference. Now if you compare me and my brother Woei Chyuen, probably that’s not so much of a contrast right. We are brothers, and we have many similarities. Probably say there’s a slight variance. But if you compare me with a cow, then that would be a proper contrast because very obviously the cow and I are so different in every single way. So here chapter 2, we have a chapter of contrast. Now, why do I say that? Look at verse 1: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins”. Now look at verse 5: “even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive”. So you see the contrast here? Dead and alive.

Again another contrast, look at verse 11: “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh”. And then look at verse 13: “But now in Christ Jesus”. Again you see a contrast. Before this, you were in the flesh. Now you are in Christ Jesus. One last contrast. Verse 12: “at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Now look at verse 19: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God”. Before this you are aliens; now you are family. You are part of the household of God.

So I hope you can see that chapter 2 is truly a chapter of contrast. You’re once dead, and now you are alive. You’re once in the flesh; now you are in Christ. You were once aliens, and now you are part of the household of God. And from this contrast here is actually describing the people of the world. There are only two kinds of people in this world. There are those who are still dead in their sin, and there are those who are now alive. There are those who are still in the flesh, and there are some or those who are now in Christ. There are those still aliens to the gospel and those who are now part of the household of God, part of the church.

And as I look in front of me this morning, I see the same kind of people. There are also two groups of people in front of me. And as we reflect on these verses of this chapter, I hope you would think about this and consider: Now where do you stand? Are you part of the household of God, or are you still aliens and foreigners in this world? Now that was just an introduction of what chapter 2 is all about. Again we would read verses 1 to 3 to remind ourselves of what we are considering this morning.

“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 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”. As I’ve just mentioned a while ago, the contrast that you see here is that you were once dead, but now you are alive. Now verse 4 to verse 10 is a great explanation of what Christians were or what Christians are as they are now alive in Christ, and it’s because God intervened. But verse 1 to 3 is the direct opposite of verse 4 to 10.

And the more you are able to see the severity of verses 1 to 3, the more you will appreciate these verses in verses 4 to 10. Verse 1 says: “And you He made alive, who were dead”. Who were dead. Now, what is Paul talking about here? I don’t see any dead people in front of me. We all can move. We all came to church. It seems like we are all breathing and alive. So since when were we dead? Now take note that Paul is not talking about physical life and physical death. In chapter 1, you will notice that he is talking to the saints and he said: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”.

He is talking about spiritual things, spiritual life. And so here when Paul says we were dead, he is not talking about physical death. He is talking about spiritual death. Now every Christian who is now spiritually alive was once spiritually dead, and we need to dwell on this for a while because death is not something that we can take lightly. Everyone here, I know, hates death. Now we are trying to avoid it if we can. We don’t like to talk about it; and if possible, we want to escape it. But yet sadly, everyone will face physical death. And everyone born into this earth is spiritually dead. Now there’s two things about death which I hope to explain to you. Now I hope you would be able to realise what it truly means.

Firstly, the dead are characterised as a by an absence of hope. The dead are characterised as a by an absence of hope. Imagine with me you’re walking into a hospital. You go into the hospital, you see many ill and sick people there. Probably you go to the first floor, you see a lot of people who are recovering, or you can see the happiness in their faces. They have been at the hospital for a long time, and there is hope that they are finally leaving the hospital. If you go to the upper floors, probably you’ll see some who are critically ill. You’ll see family members beside them, praying and crying.

They are sad because these people are so ill. But you notice that no matter how ill they are, there is hope. Some floors, there may be more hope because they are recovering. Other floors may be little hope. But nevertheless, there is hope no matter how small it may be. Now change the scenario. Now walk with me to a funeral service. What do you see there? There is no hope at the funeral service. The person there is dead. At the hospital, there may be little hope; but at the funeral, there is no more hope. At the funeral, all you can see is people crying, tears, and despair all around because they know that there is no hope left. When someone dies, there is no second chance. Family and friends know that whatever they do, they will never be able to revive this person back again.

So the dead are characterised by an absence of hope. It is hopeless to try to bring someone back to life, and no amount of human effort is able to revive this person. This person is gone forever. So that’s the first thing about death: it is characterised by an absence of hope. Secondly, death is also characterized by an absence of sense. Now as you walk up to the dead corpse, the dead body at the funeral, you will notice that although the body is there, the person is not there. The body is not moving. He is motionless. The dead body cannot see, cannot hear. He cannot taste or smell or feel. There is an absence of sense. Now although the body may be there, you know the very fact that that person, the personhood, the person himself is not there.

You try to bring a nice painting to the body, hoping that the body will suddenly open his eyes and see. But there’s no response. You sing to the person a beautiful song, hoping that it will revive him. But that person is as deaf as a dead person. You bring to him his favourite food, but he can neither smell nor taste it. All five senses of this body are absent because that person is no longer there. Now spiritual death is similar to physical death. The unconverted are dead spiritually. There is also an absence of sense in those who are spiritually dead. You show him creation, but he cannot see that God was behind it. You preach to him, but he does not hear. Psalm 119:105 says: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”.

But the unconverted, they just cannot see that they are as blind as the dead. They cannot see that wonderful light. You preach to them, they are deaf. They cannot hear the sweet gospel voice. Psalm 34:8 says: “Oh, taste”, “Taste and see that the LORD is good”. But the spiritually dead cannot taste. They do not know what it means to taste that the Lord is good. They have no idea of the concept of the goodness of God. So do you remember a time when you yourselves were like this when Christ meant nothing to you? Every one of us was once spiritually dead. We are a people whom God made alive, but there was once upon a time when we were dead.

And so this is how Paul begins chapter 2. He expounds the deadness in us. I remember listening to a question during, I think it was one of the youth camps. The question was posed: “I’m a Christian now, but I love to mingle around with my non-Christian friends. Is it okay?” So the question was posed to the pastor. I don’t remember the answer, but as I was reading this text, the thought came to my mind. Yes, you may want to mingle around with your non-Christian friends. But don’t you feel lonely? Have you tried going to the graveyard and mingle around with your friends who are dead? It is exactly the same scenario. When you mingle around with your non-Christian friends, don’t you feel lonely, the spiritual deadness all around you? There is an absence of Christian fellowship when you mingle around with those people.

Yes, there’s nothing wrong, you can do that, but if only we are more aware of this spiritual deadness around us. And that’s what Paul is trying to highlight to us. We were all ones like this. We were all once dead. The dead are characterised by an absence of hope, and they are also characterised by an absence of sense. Now although the spiritually dead do not respond to the things of God, they are however not inactive. From the viewpoint of the realm of the living, the Christians, for us they look dead. But in the realm of spiritual darkness, they are of the dead and are very blind.

Now, you who are dead do not respond to the lawful. You do not respond to what is good and righteous. You do not respond to the things of God, but Paul now expounds in verses 2 and 3 you are still very active in the spiritual realm of darkness because he says here you “were dead in trespasses and sins”. So now you are in this realm, in this dominion of sin. You are dead in trespasses and sins. The Apostle Paul here describes to us these three great evil powers which influence us while we were dead in our trespasses and sins.

We read again in verse 2 and verse 3: “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”. Here Paul describes to us the standard which we are living in in verses 2 and 3. I say standard because he mentions ‘according’ alright- “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air”. This is the standard with which we are living right now.

Now firstly, we will consider this first great evil power which is the world. We once walked according to the course of this world. Now, what is this world here which Paul is referring to? Well, the word ‘world’ here is referring to the evil systems of mankind. The world is a system and we know it is filled with vileness and evilness. I say evil because the system of this world is not neutral. It is actively and positively evil. It is evil because it is a system which is opposed to God in at every level and every standard. For example, the Bible teaches us purity and how we should guard our purity. However, the course of this world is not a system of purity. The course of this world is a course of sensuality. The system of this world promotes physical lust and attraction.

Every advertisement, every magazine, websites, even the shops that you walk around in the shopping malls, they all have some sort of central display featuring a woman with a lustful appearance. The women of this world also walk according to the course of sensuality. They have no regard for modesty. They know what attracts the men, and so they dress in a certain way that would give them the attention that they want or will give them an opportunity to earn some money. And the men are also guilty. Wanting to fulfil the desires of our lust, we do not guard our hearts or our eyes. Instead, we indulge ourselves with carnal magazines and websites without restraint. And this is who we were while we were dead in our sin. A Christian must be different.

A Christian woman is someone who strives to be a woman of 1 Timothy 2:9- “women who adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation”. This is the Christian woman. She guards her purity. She does not go along with the course of this world. And the Christian man is a man who so dearly holds to Proverbs 6:25- “Do not lust in your heart”. This is how a Christian man should walk, not according to the course of this world but according to what is instructed in the Bible. Now being made alive, a Christian is someone who does not walk according to the course of sensuality. It is true that we may be tempted by these things, but a Christian is someone who would fight and turn their back on these things, and they will repent from their sins.

We look at one more example. The course of this world is a course that promotes the love of money. The Bible teaches us that we should not store up treasures in heaven, but we live in a system or a world where money is at the center of our lives (Mistakenly mentioned “we should not”, supposedly “we should”). It is a system where money rules over mankind. It controls our decisions, our actions, how we allocate our time, how we move in life. You read in the newspaper, you often see on news where they report that governments are corrupt, they have stolen money from the country. Sometimes you read of news saying that the police officer have taken bribes because of his love of money. You sometimes read of businessmen are not being honest in their dealings in this world because why? They love money.

A gambler goes to the casino because he wants to increase his wealth. And even we are no different. We were once also dead in our trespasses and sins, and we once devoted our lives to gaining more wealth, more money, more houses, more cars in the never-ending pursuit to store up our barns. We could not care less about the temporal value of money, neither did we care about the kingdom of God. So this is the world, the kind of world that we live in. It is anti-God from all angles of life. It could be family, it could be marriage, it could be the roles of man and woman, it could be vocations, religion, philosophy. Whatever it is, the standard of the world is in direct opposition to the standard of God.

That is why Paul uses the same word ‘world’ in Romans 12:1. He says: “Do not be conformed to this world”. Do not be conformed to the evil systems of this world. Paul is asking us to flee from its evil ways. Do not walk with it. Do not conform with it. But while we were still dead in our sins, we once walked according to the course of this world. Now not only do we have a world that is teaching us evil, we also have the devil who is influencing us to do evil. Verse 2, I read again: “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.”

Now I’ll admit, it wasn’t easy to figure out why Paul uses this term “the prince of the power of the air” to describe Satan. I looked up many sources, I think the one that I was most convinced with is when they mentioned ‘air’, it refers to the realm of the unknown- the spiritual realm. But whatever source you may try to look up, there is general consensus that this refers to none other than Satan himself. And I have just three things to mention about the prince of the power of the air. Firstly, this is a personal devil. The prince of the power of the air is none other than Satan himself.

He is not just happy to sit on his so-called throne and look from the surface and probably once in a while sneak in some lies and deception and hope one day it will reach you. No, this devil is very interested in you and your life. He is not just interested on the surface of the general population, he wants to influence you personally. And while you were dead in your sin, you were very much walking according to his power. Secondly, he is the supreme leader of all the demons. So there isn’t just one demon on the prowl. There are many demons going everywhere, working in everyone. But they have one leader, and that leader here is referred to as their prince, and that prince is Satan himself.

A quick reference to Luke 11:15. Luke 11:15, let me try to turn to that myself. “But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.””. And who is this Beelzebub? In verse 18: “If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? Because you say I cast out demons by Beelzebub.”. So here we see that the demons are not working alone, they are not working without the leader. There is a supreme leader among all these demons, and he is none other than Satan himself. And this leads us to the scariest point. Number three, he and his demons are actively at work. “According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works”. He works “in the sons of disobedience”.

So just as the Holy Spirit is now working in those who are now alive, just as the Holy Spirit is now working in Christians to renew our minds, to sanctify us, to transform us from within so that we may do good works, there is also a devil at work in those who are still dead in their sin, feeding them with lies, deceiving them, and manipulating their minds so that they’ll be continually blinded by the truth. He’s actively working people to keep people away from the truth and trying to keep them satisfied with this world. Sometimes if you ever look at a person who has done all kinds of evil, and you wonder how is it possible that this person could have done such an evil thing.

Remember that there is the prince of the power of the air who is actively working in the sons of disobedience. So here we have Paul saying that we are dead in our sins, but we are not inactive. We are active in the realm of darkness because we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And how are we active? We walk according to the course of this world. We walk according to the prince of the power of the air. And in case you think you are so innocent, look at verse 3: “among whom also we all once conducted ourselves. We 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.”. We were just as the others.

So what is this lust of the flesh which Paul is talking about here? Well, lust is a desire, but it’s not just some plain, small desire. It is a strong desire. In fact, it is a strong unregulated desire. Most of the time, the Bible would use this word ‘lust’ as a reference to strong sexual desires. But here, there is no sexual reference to the context which we are looking here. And so we will define lust here more generally as a strong unregulated desire. And what is flesh here? Now flesh here does not refer to the human body as it is sometimes referred in the Bible. But in our text, it refers to the human nature which is apart from God and under the dominion of sin.

So flesh here refers to the human nature which is apart from God and under the dominion of sin. You put those two together, and we can read that while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, we conducted ourselves in the lust, which is our strong and unregulated, uncontrolled desires, according to our flesh, which is our sinful nature. While we were dead in our sins, we kept feeding ourselves according to the desires of our sinful nature. Well, what do we lust for in this world? Well some of us lust for attention and recognition. And so we did whatever we could, from the clothes that we wear to the wealth that we have, to the house and the cars that we own. We did all these things to ensure that we would have the attention and the recognition that we think we so deserve.

Some of us lust for good exam results, and we would cheat during exams. Some of us would rather sacrifice Sunday worship to study for our exams so that we will get good results. Some of us have a lust for relationships, and we wouldn’t mind courting an unbeliever. Some of us have a lust for intellectual knowledge, and we will spend all our resources in order to get that. Some of us have lust for travelling, and we will spend our time and money travelling all around the world without restraint. But no matter what the pursuit was in life, while we were dead in our sin, we pursued these things for the purpose of fulfilling the lust of our flesh which is under the dominion of sin and had no regard for God whatsoever. And so this is us, what we once were.

So we have to recap once again. Paul here in the early part of chapter 2 is making a contrast between a Christian and a non-Christian. A Christian is someone who is alive in Christ; and a non-Christian is someone who is dead. Well as we look at this, we must remember that all of us here as we look at this text, this is not just merely speaking to the non-Christians. This text is actually speaking to us, and we must read this with humble hearts because we were all once like this. Before we were Christians, we were dead. There was no spiritual life in us. Now there was no hope in us. There was nothing in us that could save us. But although we were dead, we were not inactive.

And being in this realm of deadness, in trespasses and sins, we once walked according to the course of this world, we once walked according to the evil systems of this age, and we also once walked according to the prince of the power of the air which is the devil, who was once and worked in us. And we also conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, seeking to fulfil these unregulated desires within us. So that is a very depraved description of a non-Christian, and also a very depraved and vile description of us who once was like this.

Before I close, I just want to remind you that now we must humble ourselves as we read this text, how wonderful it is that God stepped in in verse 4: “but God”. If it wasn’t for God, we would have been lost forever. Do you see this morning, the depraved condition of man? Can you humble our hearts and see that we were once like this? There’s nothing in us that we can boast about.

You’ve seen in verse 8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves”. It is a gift, and “it is the gift of God not of works lest anyone should boast”. Now before we were made alive, we were dead. There was nothing in us that we could have done to save ourselves. There was an absence of hope, and there was an absence of sense. And my prayer this morning is that we will all remember what we were before we were made alive. Let’s close in prayer.

“Our Father in heaven, we thank You for reminding us who we were before You came down to save us, before You open our hearts and change our lives. And as we look at our friends who are still unsaved, let us not look with arrogant hearts, but let us look with humble hearts and with a desire. A desire to want to preach the gospel to them, that they too may be saved by the power of Your gospel.

I pray, O Lord, that every one of us here Christians will remember this great truth of Your grace, that we may live our lives as a living sacrifice for You. Help us, O Lord, as we continue to serve You in this church. Help us to live holy lives, working out our salvation every day, and continuing to build one another up in this church, for all this we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.