Everett Henes: Bad news first
Nobody likes bad news. Whether it is news about the economy or the state of morality, bad news is not something we want to hear. Unfortunately, this is often reflected in how we can present the gospel to others. This is not a new problem. Paul knew that the Christians in Ephesus faced great pressure to water down the Gospel.
There were many idols and claiming that Christ was the exclusive way of salvation was a very unpopular doctrine that put Paul in prison. Paul’s answer to this was not to set the doctrine aside and substitute it with something more palatable. Nor was it to send the Ephesian Christians out into their culture telling everyone that God is angry at them. Christians have good news to share with an unbelieving world; but before the news is good, we must understand the bad news.
Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you were dead in the 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 the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Paul does not mince words when describing what these believers used to be. These believers were dead in their transgressions and sins. This is not hyperbole, as though Paul is simply overstating the case to make his point. Scripture is clear. To be apart from Christ is to be dead in sin. The picture of salvation is often one of raising the dead to new life. We are immediately faced with the paradox: how can dead people live?
This is how Paul words it, “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked …” Walking is another term for living; they walked around though they were dead. How is something like this possible? The best illustration I can find of this sort of situation is zombies. Like a spiritual corpse, an unbeliever walks around dead in their sin and unable to please God. But being apart from God gets worse.
Paul goes on to talk about how it is that they lived: he says that they followed the course of this world, the ways of the ruler of the kingdom of the air and sought to gratify the desires of their body and mind. This is what it means to live apart from God, to live for oneself is to live in disobedience and rebellion against God. To follow the world and the devil. If we view it in this biblical way, then it really does make sense why Paul says that they were, by nature, “children of wrath.”
The word that Paul uses here for ‘wrath’ comes from a root word that means "to swell or grow ripe for something." This gives us a picture not of an impatient God who looks for every opportunity to pour out his wrath upon man but a picture of a God who bears with the injustice and sin allowing time for repentance until all such activity comes to its full fruition — until it is ripe — and then the wrath is poured out. It speaks of the wrath under which all unbelievers fall but it also points to the final wrath that will be poured out in final judgment.
Many people don’t like to think of God in these terms but we are given these words in Scripture and so we know that they give us truth about God and man. The truth of man is that apart from God he is dead in sin and unable to do any spiritual good; he is unable to please God. But the truth about God is that he good, holy and just.
As a good God he will never turn away those who come to him. As a holy God, he cannot dwell with sin and as a just God, he must punish sin. Many object that God’s wrath is neither a reasonable nor practical message in our day. If sin is as bad as the Bible declares it to be then nothing is more reasonable or practical than warning that “the wrath of a holy God will rise against it.” Paul reminds them about these truths because they live in a hostile world that needs Jesus, and we do too.
— Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Everett Henes: Bad news first
