Weekly Devotional: May 13, 2026
GOD’S WORD
Ephesians 2:1-3
"As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath."
DEVOTIONAL BY
This eight-week series will be excerpts from the late Lt. Colonel Allen Satterlee's book “Heavenly Places Revealed"
Devotional
“DEAD IN SIN”
DEAD
What more descriptive metaphor for the sinful life could there be than "dead"? Did Paul mean we are lifeless like a rock that never lived at all? Dead, like some frozen asteroid tumbling in a meaningless orbit somewhere in space? Things like that are not only lifeless but incapable of ever having life. We might paint a face on a stone, take a hunk of marble and chisel it into a statue that in every way mimics the dimensions and shapes of a human body, or grind dust into a compound and pour it into a mold to be shaped like a living thing. But dead it would remain. Lifeless. We can't even say it's hopeless because no life could be trafficked through it. Is that what Paul meant?
Or did he mean that we were as good as dead? That we were diseased from head to toe, filled with putrefying sores, wracked with unending pain, and waiting out the time until the last breath is drawn? Are we not more like the comatose patient in intensive care who lies motionless, aided by machines to breathe and to function at the basest level? This one cannot affect his own cure, cannot get up to go get the life-saving treatment even if it was just across the room. No, this man must be given help from someone outside who administers it on behalf of one so helpless. He is a dead man in every respect, except that somehow a whisp of life remains. This is more of what Paul means.
THE DIAGNOSIS
When the Holy Spirit begins His work in our life, He must help us see our own need. If we keep with the patient analogy, the one suffering must be roused to consciousness from his deadly stupor to be able to recognize the dire situation in which he exists.
Or perhaps a better way to see this is as a situation that too often tragically happens. Here is a woman who goes to the doctor for some minor pain or for a checkup, only to receive a diagnosis of an inoperable health condition that leaves her with only days, weeks, or months to live.
THAT is the exact situation ALL people are in before they receive Christ as Savior. We live our lives unaware that within us we are carrying our own doom.
We might feel fine or maybe a bit annoyed. Perhaps we are downright miserable but not enough to seek a change. Meanwhile every day pushes us closer to the edge of eternity. But the Holy Spirit shines His light where never a light shone, and our true condition is revealed. We are dead in our trespasses and sins.
TRESPASSES and SINS
Although it sounds like Paul is repeating himself by saying "trespasses and sins," in fact, they have different meanings. Sin in Greek is the word harmartia, which literally means "missing the mark." It is a term from archery, with the idea that the archer shoots his arrow, but it falls short of the target.
Spiritually, it is to fail to do what should be done, a partial obedience, a shying away from full submission. Rather than taking up the cross and following Christ, it is looking at the cross and turning away, judging that the weight is too much of a sacrifice.
The second word that is translated as transgression is the Greek word paraptoma, which literally means to "slip or fall, losing the way or straying.” This is more intentional sin. Here is not a failure to do what is right, but a deliberate decision to do what is wrong. It can be heard in statements such as, "I don't care what, I'll do as I please." Spiritually, it is to know I am not to lie, yet I lie anyway. It is to know that sexual sin is an affront to God and as Paul says elsewhere, "whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body" (1 Corinthians 6:18). In this, then, a transgression is more serious because it is a purposeful act of rebellion.
ENSLAVED by “FREEDOM"
Paul reminds the Ephesians that this state of death, this hopelessness created not only by their nature but their choices, is where they used to live. In the illusion of what they thought was "freedom," they were instead slaves to the "ruler of the kingdom of the air." Satan held the reins, bridling them with insatiable appetites and unrelenting shame.
Nor was it only the Ephesians. Paul switches from "you" in the second verse to "us." None of us escaped, no matter how reputable we passed ourselves off to be. What person doesn't have a moment or an action or a thought that if brought out into the open would be devastating? Like the crowd gathered around the woman caught in adultery, we know we cannot cast a stone based on the credentials of our innocence. It is not only you. It is us. All of us.
If God were to judge then destroy each one of us, none could point to our own purity and claim we were not deserving. The wrath of God is our destiny, the correct sentence of God's court of law. The Church Father Tertullian correctly remarked, "We create the grounds for the Creator's wrath ourselves." Not my parents, my spouse, my children, society, my enemies, or my friends. This crime is laid personally at our feet with our fingerprints and DNA all over it. "Guilty!" is the ringing verdict of our unregenerate life.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Which picture of being dead seems to you more accurate? Stone dead or terminally diseased with no hope of a cure?
- How have you seen sin and transgression at work in your life?
- Why do you think Paul felt it necessary to help the Ephesians understand the depth of their depravity?