Page 60 - Ephesians

I heard about a man who gave testimony in words similar to these,
“I’m not what I want to be, and I’m not what I should be. I’m not
what I could be. And I’m not what I will be. But Praise God, I’m
not what I was.” Well, that’s Paul’s message in these three
verses. He’s looking back at what he was. He’s going back in
time, before he trusted the Lord. There are five expressions that
the Holy Spirit uses in these three verses. They each show how
hopeless we were, before God had mercy on us. Let me share
them before we move on. May God quicken us to this!

The first expression is in chapter 2:1, “Dead in trespasses and
sins.” Verse 5, the same thing, “Dead in your transgressions.”
It’s not possible to catch this graphic description, unless the Spirit
of God quickens us. It’s hard to see what the Spirit meant, when
He said, “Dead in trespasses and sins”. Picturing, the
unsaved, as “walking sepulchers”. Seeing with God’s eyes, that a
sinner is a corpse, lying in a grave of corruption. Nothing, but
the stench of rot and decay.

This brings us to verses 8-9, “It’s a gift of God and it’s not of
works, lest any man should boast.” If you’ve got the truth in
your heart that you are dead. You have nothing to boast about,
when you get rescued. A dead person, is a dead person, is a
dead person. No life. He can’t even holler, “Help!” He can’t do
anything. That’s why God uses this strong illustration. We
watched a news report showing the horrible conditions after the
Beirut massacre. The air was so polluted they had to wear
masks. You can’t escape the smell of death! That is God’s
illustration of a soul separated from Him.

Hold that for a moment. Look at verse 2, “The prince of the
power of the air.” What is God saying, by describing Satan this
way. One commentary says, “He’s called ‘The prince of the
power of the air’ because he spends more time in the upper
atmosphere than he does on earth”. Well, I don’t know where he
spends his time. Another one says, “The prince of the power of
the air, means that Satan has the power to raise winds, and cause
storms like he did in Job’s day. He controls the weather.”
Another says, “There are so many demons, that they fill the air