A Living Death
If you will please turn to Ephesians chapter 2, the passage we have just read. Ephesians chapter 2, the message today will be focusing on verses 1 through 3. The title of the message this morning is “A Living Death.” Or we might say, to make it sound very contemporary, in touch with the movies and everything, “The Walking Dead.”
Ephesians 2 beginning with verse 1: “And you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Once again: “And you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Let’s bow for prayer.
Our Father, this is a deeply insightful and sobering passage of Scripture. We pray that you will open our minds and our hearts to it, that we may have a realistic grasp of who and what we were when you found us in grace. We pray that you would use this to cause us to swell in our hearts with great praise for our God. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Two of the leading characteristic beliefs of our age are, number one, “we are basically good,” and two, “we are masters of our own fate.” These are two leading thoughts. We are basically good, and we are masters of our own fate. Or, if I could put it negatively, two things that our generation just will not be told is, number one, they’re bad, and number two, they’re helpless. And if you think that’s bad, let’s add a third to that. Not only would we say they are bad and they are helpless, but we would add a third and say: for that sinfulness, God will condemn you.
We will not be told today that we are bad simply because anymore there is no such thing as sin. Good and evil have been democratized. We can talk somewhat still about ethics, but even in that context we can’t talk about sin. Sin is a word that you’ll never hear in a newscast. They will talk about tragedies, they will talk about crimes, and they will talk about, without using the word, evil of all of the worst kinds; and never will you find the term “sin” or “evil” crop up in the newscast.
Counselors won’t use the word sin because it will evoke feelings of guilt, and that would put us with a negative self-esteem and that would unravel everything. Even preachers today are slow to use the word sin. And essentially today in our society, the word sin—although it’s such a big word in the Bible, a word that has, oh, I don’t know, several dozen synonyms throughout the Bible—in our society, the word sin has been reduced to something like a snicker word. It’s a word that’s never used unless you’re snickering. “I sinned.” And that’s about all you’ll hear the word in our society.
Good and evil have been democratized and the notion of sin is almost entirely gone. And given all of that, if the Bible is true in what it says, then our society today is much like the human race before the development or the understanding of microbiology. We are suffering from diseases and infections of all of the worst kind and we haven’t a clue why.
What is it that gives rise to all the crime? What is it that gives rise to the tragedies that happen and that are inflicted on humanity at so many different levels? Why is it we have bad guys who will fly airplanes into big buildings? Why is it we have what we call terrorists? Or to just put it in Jesus’ words, why is it we have adultery, evil thinking, theft, lying? Why is it we have all of these manifestations of what the Bible calls sin?
And the Bible comes to us with the answer saying there is something about us that is deeply and dreadfully evil. There is something about us that is bent in the wrong way. There’s something about us that has this proclivity, this natural affinity to sinfulness and evil. And that’s what gives rise to all of this crime and tragedy and things that we see. The Bible’s diagnosis is there’s something about the human heart that is bent against God and is sinful in itself. And then it follows up with that terribly unacceptable notion that for that sinfulness God will condemn you. We ourselves are sinful through and through, so sinful that we cannot possibly help ourselves. And for that sinfulness God will condemn us.
If you fall asleep for the rest of the message, that’s verses 1 through 3 of Ephesians 2. There’s something about us that is dreadfully, deeply evil, bent against God so much that we’re helpless in it. And for that sinfulness, God will condemn us. We are exactly as bad off as we can possibly be.
Now the first four words of Ephesians 2—unless you have the NIV, then it’s the first six words, stretches it out—the first words of the verse give us a clue to the direction that Paul has turned now in his discussion. “And you were dead,” or we could finish it out, “and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”
Paul has been speaking, as you know, in broad sweeping terms of God’s eternal purpose of grace. He’s spoken to us about how God has gone to work to do for us what we could never have done for ourselves, and that this great purpose of grace began in eternity past. It is a work of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. God has chosen us. He’s predestined us to adoption in Christ. He has sent Christ. He has come to be the redemption for our sins. In Him we have forgiveness. God has revealed all of this to us so that we can revel in it. He has sent us His Spirit to draw us to Christ, and by His Spirit He has sealed us to the day of redemption, in which this great redeeming work of Christ will be brought to full climax.
He stops at verses 15 and following of chapter 1 to give thanks. Looking at the Ephesian believers, seeing their faith and their love, he gives thanks to God that it is clear that He has included them in His eternal purpose. We know that because they have faith and they have love. And if they have faith and they have love, then God is to be thanked for that. And then he prays further that the same God who is sovereign in giving them faith and love will work further and work in them a deep knowledge of Himself and a deep awareness and conviction of the great hope that they have in Jesus Christ.
And so he has turned to the personalization of it all. He’s been doing that. But now at this point, he stops to back up a little bit and paints the backdrop and provides, as it were, the black foil against which God’s grace will stand out in bold relief. How can we see this grace of God in our own experience? How can we rightly appreciate this great grace that he has been talking about and reveling in in chapter one, except that now we back up? Okay, let’s see what it was. What kind of condition were we in when this grace found us? How did it come to be in our own experience?
And the backdrop, then, of God’s grace is human depravity. And he paints a picture here that’s an ugly one. It’s a backdrop of sin, a backdrop of helplessness and condemnation. And we’ll work our way through these verses this morning.
Four points this morning. When I was young, when I was a kid in church, it was the thing for preachers to have alliterated outlines. And it always struck me that the preachers were more proud of their outlines than people in the pew ever cared. But they would have the definition and the desire and the whatever, and everything’s alliterated wonderfully. And I never do that; I always thought it was pretty silly. But this time I have, and I hope you won’t laugh at me when I do it, but it does really rise from the text, and I hope you’ll see that.
Number One: We Were Dead
Number one, the word is given to us with a D. Paul is describing what we were like, the condition we were in when God found us. Number one, we were dead. Now that’s an ironic kind of thing to say. He doesn’t say you were unhealthy. He doesn’t say we were sick, or even diseased, or even dying; he says, “you were dead in trespasses and sins.”
Now what’s so ironic about that, of course, is that in another sense they’re still living. Verse 2: this death in which you once walked, or in which you lived. That’s why I call the message the living death, or the walking dead, or a living death. These people are very much alive. They live, they walk, they talk, they think, and yet the Apostle Paul says you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
Now it’s clear that he’s referring back here in some way back to Genesis chapter 3, what we call the fall. God created Adam in His own image. He was given responsibility to serve God in a certain way. He was given one prohibition and that prohibition he violated. Of all of the entailments of the threat of death was this matter of spiritual death that fell upon Adam and which fell then upon the entire human race. An alienation from God—we see it in the garden itself, Adam hiding from God, afraid of God—and this alienation has passed down to all of his descendants. Dead in trespasses and sins, in reference to God, in reference to the things of God, in reference to spiritual things, the condition of natural humanity.
Before Christ, before faith, the condition is spiritual death. Like a corpse: unresponsive, unable, has no will, has no desire, has no ability. It just doesn’t have a capacity for the things of God. There’s no capacity for responding to the things of God. Now they’re very much alive in terms of transgressions and sins. That’s the world in which they live and they love living that. And these people are walking and talking and breathing and thinking and all of the rest. But in terms of any kind of relationship to God, in terms of spiritual things, he says, we were dead in trespasses and sins.
Entirely capable of relative good, Paul doesn’t say here that every last person behaved as badly as they possibly could have. Everybody could have been a little worse in their behavior. But he does say they’re dead: lifeless, unable to respond to the things of God. Now that’s an interesting metaphor. It’s a significant one theologically. Dead in trespasses and sins.
Did you ever, when you’re lonely, go out to the cemetery and have a chat with the residents? You ever attend a funeral, walk up to the corpse, tickle him, or tell him one last joke? Well, it’s silly. He’s unresponsive. He’s unable. He can’t respond to those kinds of things. You ever try to press the urgency of the gospel on a lost mind and lost soul? This, that is the most important question in all of life and all of eternity—this issue that makes your heart just leap—you press it upon someone you love and you try to push. They might be angry. At best, they’re bored. It’s just not important. Dead in trespasses and sins.
You’ve seen it when you’ve wanted to witness to family that you love. You want to press the urgency of the gospel on them. They seem indifferent. You want to grab them and shake them. Don’t you see it? No, they don’t. Dead. Dead in trespasses and sins. This that makes our heart just leap is boring to them. And this is the real tragedy Paul starts out with. This is the real tragedy of the human race. Theologians call it total inability. The Bible just calls it death, spiritual death. The problem of humanity is not ignorance. It’s not a matter that just education will fix. The problem is death. With reference to the things of God, there’s a complete indifference, no capacity for responding, no interest, no ability. It’s death.
Number Two: We Were Duped
Now, if that weren’t bad enough, we go to our second. You’re going to laugh with the alliteration, I’m sorry, but it really does capture it the best. In the next verse, not only are we dead in trespasses and sins in our natural condition, but number two, we were duped. That’s what Paul says here. Verse two: you’re dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince and the power of the air and the spirit that’s now at work in the sons of disobedience.
The atmosphere in which they do live, apart from Christ—trespasses and sins, a spiritual death—and yet they’re walking in that spiritual death, living, and walking in lockstep with two controlling factors. Notice them in verse two. Number one, following the course of this world. Following the course of this world or walking according to the course of this age. The idea here is not just that of making choices and determining to do this or that. The idea here is that of being hoodwinked, tricked, duped, and following along in lockstep, mindlessly along with the course of this world.
One paraphrase of the Bible renders it this way: “we drifted along the streams of this world’s ideas of living.” We drifted along the stream of this world’s ideas of living. A kind of bondage, following in lockstep with the course of this world.
Now this I think is just deeply insightful for our understanding of the world as it is today. Isn’t it sometimes amazing to you how sometimes each next notion or idea can just come so quickly to dominate an entire society? It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the notion is, it doesn’t matter how new it is, but there’s this new ideal and this new sense of what is right or this new sense of what must be wrong. And the whole society just goes right along with it. “Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right.” Following the course of this world. There’s a kind of cultural bondage that he’s talking about here.
I think one good example of this is, well, for those of you who are old enough to remember the 60s, which of course is not me. Anybody who’s old enough to remember the 60s, you remember that that was a time of rebellion, a time of anarchy. And what we wanted was freedom. What we wanted was our liberation. We wanted to be different. And the irony of the whole thing is everybody said the same thing, everybody looked the same way, behaved the same way, wore the same clothes, and all were walking along in lockstep proclaiming their freedom. Fascinating thing. Have their opinions ready-made for them, handed to them, “oh yeah, okay, yeah,” and they spout the same line, tout the same words, use the same talking points, and you sometimes wonder, are they just talking heads? How do they get programmed this way?
And it’s consistently the same in our society, and I think it only takes a moment of reflection to see it. No matter what the next ideal, or the next norm, or the next idea, it doesn’t matter how senseless it is, it doesn’t matter how destructive it is to society, it doesn’t matter how self-destructive it is, whatever the next notion, follow along with it. You can be told that you have evolved from a primordial soup. You can be told that you descended from an ape, and you’re not insulted. Oh. And you’re told that life rose out of non-life. Oh. Intelligence rose out of non-intelligence. Oh, that makes sense. Personality rose out of a non-person. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And all of these indicators of design and intelligent design—no, no, no, it’s really not, it’s just random. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. We take it in.
You can be told that it’s a matter of woman’s rights whether or not a baby should live. Oh, yeah, that makes sense, it’s woman’s rights. We can be told that homosexuality is normal. Yeah, that makes sense. We’re told, as some of the students in public schools in our country are being told now, that it’s a myth that a child is better off with both a mother and a father; that it’s just the same with two fathers or two mothers. Yeah, that makes sense. And whole societies just go along following the course of this world with their opinions ready-made for them, handed to them, just taking it in and going on.
And we’re told there’s no such thing as truth. Oh yeah, never mind that you need to believe that this is true. There’s no such thing as true. And that’s true. I have a friend who was in college—this is years ago—and he was told in the college classroom—he said the professor was lecturing and said, “All dogmatic statements are the result of gross ignorance.” His hand went up. “Professor, I’d like you to clarify it for me.” “What?” He said, “Well, you said that all dogmatic statements are the result of gross ignorance.” “Yes, that’s right.” He said, “My problem is, that’s the most dogmatic statement I’ve ever heard in my life and according to your own words, it’s the result of gross ignorance. I was wondering if you’d explain it to me.”
We can be told there’s no such thing as evil. Truth, evil—these things are societally defined. Oh, that makes sense. Never mind it doesn’t leave us with categories for things that are genuinely evil and that you still want to recognize as evil. We can be told, oh you pick it, what you need more than anything else is to listen to that inner voice. It will never lead you wrong. Yeah, never mind that it’s led me wrong a thousand times before. Yeah, that makes sense. We’re told that the deepest, most fundamental problem that we have is a lack of self-esteem. Never mind that the track record of that counsel has been disastrous. We’re told that we’re better off, we’re better off in society without God in the public discourse. Never mind the track record of that way of thinking has been disastrous on every level.
Carried along, opinions given to you, walking according to the course of this world. This age dictating what we think, how we act, what the fads are, what we believe, what our ideals are. And it’s like the whole of society is being irresistibly drawn along by some subtle, unseen force. That’s what Paul says here. In our spiritual death, we walked following the course of the world.
Now, how do you explain that? How do you explain that a whole society like this can be carried along in some drift of thought, even if it’s stupid? Well, he goes on with another factor that explains what we were like: being duped, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. Walking in lockstep with two controlling factors: one, the world, and two, Satan in control of the world.
Are you ever tempted to believe some grand conspiracy theory? Well, you hear some on TV once in a while. There are some good ones. And depending on how slanted the evidence can be, you can be awfully convinced it’s gotta be right. And maybe some of them are, what do I know? Who shot JFK? Abraham Lincoln is probably still alive. Some grand conspiracy theory. It’s really not the President and the Congress that are running things. It’s the Illuminati. Well, I don’t know anything about those things, and I’m no authority. Maybe they’re all true. I don’t know. But here’s a conspiracy theory that will make all the others seem trivial.
Dead in trespasses and sins in which you walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of the authority of the air. Quite a title given to Satan, isn’t it? The ruler of the authority of the air. It’s a great story about Harry Emerson Fosdick—he was the arch liberal of early last century. Quite outspoken in his unbelief, he was just a blasphemous, blasphemous man. He was in California to speak and he was brought into a radio station to give a radio broadcast there. It was a privilege to have such a man of great fame there. And the radio announcer was introducing him and he said, “Now with no further ado”—the man had some acquaintance with Scripture, but not very much, you can tell—”without any further ado, here he is, the great prince and power of the air, Harry Emerson Fosdick.” Spoke better than he knew.
But here he tells us is the controlling factor. Here’s a conspiracy that makes all the others seem trivial. You walk, they walk, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. Atop this world system, he tells us, sits Satan, manipulating society. Is that saying too much? Manipulating society? He’s called elsewhere the god of this world. Jesus calls him the prince of this world. The Apostle John speaks of the whole world lying in his lap. In Timothy, Paul speaks of Satan as taking men captive at his will. And here Paul speaks of it on a grand scale. All of lost humanity following along with all of their opinions and thoughts given to them, following the course of this age, which is itself directed by the prince of the power of the air, Satan himself, whose authority manipulates society.
You ever watch the news and you wonder, you’re just amazed at how organized evil seems to be? Something can happen and out of nowhere, there are thousands of people already there ready to demonstrate. Oh, sometimes it’s really good causes. Like I remember in one of those reality TV shows, they were starving and they needed to eat, so they ate some rats. And the next day, outside of NBC Studios or whichever it was, people are placarding, “And rats have rights, rats have rights.”
It is amazing to me, and I don’t think we can understand society, I don’t think we can understand our world today apart from these factors. It’s amazing to me how organized evil seems to be, how whole societies can be swept with ridiculous ideas. And what’s so amazing is that the people walking in lockstep with the world system, the people walking in lockstep with Satan, at the same time are proclaiming their freedom. “When you look at us and those poor people locked into that one book, and they think they are free.” Hence the word duped. But then I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that society without Christ is duped because after all they’re dead in trespasses and sins. That’s the tragedy.
Number Three: Sons of Disobedience
There’s a third, and again the word is given to us here although I might give it a second word as well. Verse two: the spirit that is now at work in the sons of—there’s our third D—disobedience. I think I’d rather state the point here with another D, and that is depraved. Notice it says here, “the sons of disobedience.” The idea there is not only that they’re disobedient, they want to be. You find that in verse 3 as well: “by nature, children of wrath.”
The point here that Paul is making is not only that humanity is disobedient to God’s law, although that’s obvious enough. His point goes deeper than that, and that is that humanity wants to be disobedient. In the words of Jesus, they love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They hate the light. They will not come to the light lest it expose their evil deeds. Not just sinful, but a want-to-be sinful. Not just poor creatures who have not had a good enough chance that are deserving of God’s pity because they’re trying so hard, but rebels, sinners by very nature and preference, deliberately choosing a path of sin. Not basically good people with a few problems.
One of the happy experiences of parenting, even if it is frustrating at times, one of the happy experiences of parenting is teaching your children. It’s a lot of fun, especially when you see the light bulbs go off—go on, you know—”oh, I get it.” Frustrating at times; I remember my poor mother trying to teach me how to tie my shoe, I couldn’t get it, I was really thick. Oh, finally broke down and cried, I did. I remember teaching Gina how to drive a straight shift. She wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift. So I got in her truck with her. We went out to the school parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. That’s not a happy memory. I came home with a headache and a sore neck and a sick stomach. She came home crying. Not a great time. We were able to laugh about it years later, but it wasn’t a happy experience.
But teaching your children can be, and it often is, just a wonderful thing. You teach them how to talk. And of course, they’re going to say “daddy” first. Got to love that. And you reward them when they’re happy. You teach them how to read, teach them how to eat, how to use a fork and a spoon, how to eat without getting food all over their head. And they’re so proud of themselves when they do it. They grow up in us a little more. You teach them how to drive, and you teach them how to do music. We used to love that in our house. Teach them this note, that goes to this key, and they’re so proud of themselves, and that’s cool. Then they grow beyond that, and you start explaining a little theory, and, “oh, I get it,” and you see the light bulb go on, and that’s fun.
But what strikes me as remarkable is that never once did I ever have to teach my children how to hate. Never had to teach them how to lie. Never had to teach them how to throw a temper tantrum. Never had to say, “Now, I don’t know why you’d ever want to do this, and I’m sure you never would, but this is how you disobey daddy.” Never had to give any instruction along those lines. Never had to say, “this is how you lust, this is how you are greedy.” I never had to teach any of that. “This is how you blaspheme.” Never had to teach any of that. I hate to say it, even my kids came by it naturally.
There’s a fascinating passage in B.B. Warfield where he’s dealing with a theologian who made the statement that people are basically good. And he said, “We see it in children. They’re basically good.” And Warfield takes up that quotation and he says—and this is a perfect example of answering a fool according to his folly—he says, “Dr. Rishel does great honor to the children that he has seen grow up around him. We can’t say that we can say the same for the children we have witnessed growing up around us.”
You see it. Naturally, we’re bent toward evil. Naturally, there’s this proclivity to rebellion and sinfulness. This is why we all need restraints. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. And this is the consideration that must shape your parenting. Foolishness is bound in the heart of your child. Your child will think that you and your rules stand between him and his happiness. Foolishness is bound in the heart. That’s why we all need restraints. This is why we can’t be trusted to go off on our own. There must be people with us. There must be our family. Our wife must go with us. Our family must go with us. There must be people at the other end. Somebody knows us. Somebody to keep us accountable, capable of anything.
There’s something about the human heart that just naturally runs to evil. Just give us the opportunity. Did you know that left to yourself, you would still refuse Christ? That’s just what spiritually dead people do. They have no sight of the glory of Christ. And Paul presses this. Verse three: this was true of all of us. “Among whom we all once lived” just, at the end of the verse, “just like the rest of mankind.” The condition of every person born: a proclivity to sin.
He fleshes it out further in verse three: “among whom we also, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.” What did you do for Christ? Answer: lived in the passions of our flesh, carried out the desires of our mind, and I did what I wanted to do. Did what I wanted to do. I did what I wanted to do. Did what I wanted to do. No great passion for Christ. Did what I wanted to do. And this is the condition of us all. Enslaved to the world, enslaved to Satan, and enslaved to our own sinful heart. And our life was shaped not by an eye for the glory of God. Our life was shaped not by the law of God. Our life was shaped by sinful desires. I do what I want to do. Self-centeredness, self-gratification.
Number Four: Doomed
And as a result of it all, if you will pardon the last D—if you’ll put up with it this morning—dead in trespasses and sins, duped, disobedient or depraved, and finally, doomed. That’s what he says in verse 3: “among whom also we once lived in the passion of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just like the others.”
Now, again, he’s stressing our depravity. We are, by nature, children of wrath. We’re not generally well-intentioned people, but sinful people. By reason of what we are, as well as by reason of what we have done, we’re deserving of God’s wrath. If hell is prepared for sinners, then it’s a fitting place for every one of us. Every one of us, from our hearts, have defied God. Dead, duped, depraved, disobedient, and doomed.
This, brothers and sisters, this is where God found you. He did not look ahead and see you trying so hard to make your way to Him. We did not find Him, He found us. And when He found us, He found us lying in our sin, helpless, in bondage to our depravity and wanting to be, disobeying and wanting to, and wouldn’t help ourselves if we could. We were precisely as bad off as we could possibly be. And like all of the others, we wanted our sin. If left to ourselves, there we would have remained. End of story.
But amazingly, amazingly, with no real explanation in terms of particulars, amazingly, God reached down and brought us life. And suddenly everything changed. I’ll never forget those first stirrings of grace in my heart. I was a young boy. Like anybody else, I’d heard the gospel a thousand times: daily in the home, weekly at church. I heard it a thousand times. I walked into church that day, like any other of a thousand Sundays, wanting to play with my friends, see them, have a good time. That’s what was on my mind. Little did I know God had other plans. He opened my heart, and for the first time, I heard the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ.
I had a good friend in high school. He and I were very much a David and Jonathan kind of friends. He was saved out of a very, very rough life, gang and whatnot. He and I were just the closest of friends. We played football together. We got in some fights together. We memorized Scripture together. We prayed together. And I remember every time at church when we would have one of those choose-your-own-hymn, choose-your-favorite-hymn sings, every time his hand would go up. “I want to sing ‘And Can It Be,’ stanza number four.”
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” That’s the testimony of every one of us. This is where God found us, lying helpless in our sins.
If you wonder why we must spend so much time looking at such repulsive subjects like our sinfulness and our depravity and what is so wrong about us, we have to say that it is necessary in order for us to have a right appreciation of the grace of God in saving us. And in all of this about our sinfulness and our depravity and our lostness and helplessness and ill-deserved—in all of this, God is telling us not just something about us. He’s telling us something about Himself. That He is a God of grace and a God of mercy. That you are not saved because of anything about you. We are saved only because of Him. And whatever mysteries there are in the whys and wherefores, still, the only explanation is found in Him and not in us.
And if this study does nothing else, it must at least bring us to praise the God of grace and the God of a great rescue, that we have been rescued from an awful, awful condition. Passages such as this are necessary to give us a right understanding of ourselves. They’re necessary to give us a right understanding of the world. But more important than that, they are the necessary backdrop to a worshipful understanding of God’s grace.
If you are here today without Christ, we want to say to you that what this passage says about lost sinners, it says about you. And what it says about you is very, very serious. It says that you are precisely as bad off as you can possibly be. That what you need, what you need is entirely beyond you. What you need is something entirely beyond you to produce. And your hope—your hope does not lie in your good intentions. Your hope does not lie in your will. Your hope does not lie in anything about you. Your only hope, your only hope is divine power coupled with divine mercy.
If you’re bothered by this kind of theology, you’re afraid it might make you feel desperate. All I can say is I hope it does. I hope it does. Regularly before I preach, that’s what I pray: God make some lost sinner desperate. So that out of his desperation, he will take God at his promise and run quickly to Christ, who alone can save.
The funny thing about us Calvinists, we love to talk about our own depravity. Isn’t that a crazy thing? We love to talk about our own depravity because at the end of the story, we’re talking about the glories of God’s grace and what He has done for us. Amen. Let’s stand together and sing, “Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.” Sing it with me.