Verse 1 “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.” (NLT) This means we were alienated from God while we lived in our sin. Living apart from God, our quality of life is nothing more than death. Though it seems fun and pleasurable at the time to do what we please, act however we “feel”, it is a life of death. There’s no power or real lasting joy that comes from that life. We are essentially slaves to Satan and we are subject to his will, which is our flesh or whatever we feel. If we feel angry, we let out an outburst. If we feel like doing whatever feels good, we might fall into sexual sins and commit adultery, or eat too much that isn’t good for us. If we listen to Satan who tells us we have to protect ourselves, we might lie or steal or fall into sinful traps like that. Yeh, that’s a dead life. It’s no life at all.

Verse 2 “You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.” (NLT) The success of Satan is confined to unbelievers. Satan cannot do anything that is outside of God’s control. People who have unbelief in God show that through disobedience. We all struggle with unbelief at times. For example, when you elevate fear in your life above God’s control, that’s unbelief. When you focus on all the things you are anxious about instead of giving that to God to figure out, you have unbelief. You don’t believe in your heart that God has your good in mind and that He works all things for your good. And when we have unbelief, we make bad decisions. Poor decisions. We disobey God by following our emotions, like anxiety and fear, and we act on those instead of praying and giving them to God so that we can wait in peace for His answer to our problem.

Verse 3 “… we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (ESV) I like this description of what a life of death looks like. And yes, we ALL once lived like that. We were all just doing whatever we wanted, whatever our desires and passions told us to do.

Verses 4-6 says “But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.” (NLT) So it’s only because of God’s mercy that we have been saved from that life where we just follow whatever our feelings tell us. And there’s that great reminder again that God raised Jesus from the dead and in that same power that raised Jesus from the dead, He also raises us from our dead life and seats us in heaven with Him. This is our inheritance, remember. Verse 5 points out that it’s only by God’s grace that we have been saved. There is no other life than that which is breathed into us by Jesus. His grace, Jesus, saved us from our dead life. So the only life to live in is the one He breathes in us through His Word – the Bible – and the Holy Spirit. This is life!

Verse 8 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” (NLT) Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” There are no amount of good things we can do to earn the grace we have received. There is no amount of reading the Bible or rescuing all the poor on this planet that deserves what Jesus did for us on the cross. So no one can go around saying, ‘I deserved what Jesus did for me.’ We were empty when we came to God. We had nothing to offer but our faith in Him… our faith that said, “I believe you are the way and the truth and the only life there is to live.” By God’s mercy, we are made “right” with Him in heaven through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, forgive me for spending so much of my life living in disobedience to Your Word. I see that my former life was really a dead life, with no lasting joy. I was a slave to the devil, just trying to do what was comfortable, easy, and good to me at the time. This life without You, Jesus, only brought me short-sighted happiness and long-term grief. My desires have changed. I want to obey Your Word because I see that living according to Your design is for my good. Thank You, Father, for your mercy and loving me so much that You would send Jesus to die for me and my sins on the cross, making the final sacrifice for all my wrongdoing so that I can live in a relationship with You, God. I believe this with my words, and I’m recommitting my life to You, that You may see that I truly believe with my actions. In Jesus’ name, Amen.