The Greatest Short Phrase In The History Of Human Speech

I have made it a habit that every day I constantly pray that God would continue to show me how vast and how deep my sinfulness REALLY is and to give me a larger view of His glory/love/mercy/grace/holiness. In asking for these things, He has been faithful. He continues to provide me with a larger view of my sin and a larger view of Himself. I have been realizing these things more and more by the grace of God alone. Just the other day I was reading through Ephesians 2:1-5 and I would love to share with all of you what God has been teaching me.

"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. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ---by grace you have been saved."

---Ephesians 2:1-5


This passage can be broken up into two sections. Verses 1-3 are all about Man's Plight and verses 4-5 are about God's Provision. Now if we break this passage up this way, lets pick it apart according to those two sections. First, we have Man's Plight:

Friends, this first section reveals to us that as human beings we are in one heck of a pickle! These three verses show us that we are in more of a crisis, in a more urgent situation than any of us can ever imagine. We are in more trouble then if we were being held at gunpoint and watching as our friends and family were enduring torture. We are in more hot water then if we were drowning under a three-foot thick sheet of ice in a lake, our lungs burning for air. We are in an even larger extremity than if we were stuck on the 100th story of the Twin Towers on 9-11; having the choice of being burned alive by the jet fuel or jumping out our office window to our deaths. This is our plight:

Human beings as sons and daughters of Adam enter this world spiritually dead (Psalm 51:5). We have absolutely no inclination or responsiveness toward God and no ability to please Him. From the moment we enter into this world, we are alienated or cut off from Him because of what our father Adam did in the beginning. His sin is passed on to us all (Romans 5:18-19) and has condemned us all. The text says we were "dead in our trespasses" meaning we have trespassed somewhere. That somewhere was God's boundaries. We have seen God's perfect Law and have stepped outside of that, thus, we have sinned. We have offended God in thought, word, and deed.

We have followed the ways of this world and have been deceived by it. We have been deceived by the ruler of the kingdom of the air, Satan. Not only has Satan deceived us (2 Corinthians 4:4), but he also dominated us. We were his servants and slaves; captives to the evil one (John 8:44). We were "sons of disobedience" because we obeyed every word of poison that fell from his lips and rebelled against the one holy and true God. Whether in obvious or subtle ways, we disobeyed God and gratified the cravings of our flesh and sinful nature. Paul also says that we were "children of wrath". This means that because we disobeyed God and served Satan, were were subject to God's condemnation; the condemnation and judgment that we rightfully deserved (Ephesians 5:5-6). We were dead, deceived, dominated, disobedient, and doomed for eternity.

If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, then you are still in jeopardy of a more dangerous predicament then you can possibly conjure up yourself and I strongly suggest listening to this next part. If you are a follower of Jesus, you WERE in this urgent situation. You were dead, but now made alive. You were condemned, but now you are justified through the blood of Jesus.

Friends, there is absolutely no worse condition than this....

It seems that this passage is pretty depressing....

And then comes the greatest short phrase in the history of human speech....two words that change EVERYTHING!!!

Take a look at verses 1-3 again. If you are a believer and follower in Jesus Christ, in the fact that He is fully God and fully man and came into this world to pay the penalty for your sins, then these three verses used to describe you. That is past tense, my friends! That was you....

No hopeless fate looks any grimmer than that which awaits the forlorn company of mankind marching behind the "prince of the power of the air" to their destruction under divine wrath. Just when things look the most desolate, verse 4 comes out of left field...

Now look at verse 4 again. What are the first two words?

"But God..."






BUT GOD!!!

The greatest phrase ever uttered out of one man's lips!

In just these two words the hopelessness and depression in the first three verses disappears without a trace! In these two words, we are brought out of darkness and have a way out of our quandary!

Paul goes on to tell us of three attributes of God that save us from total, eternal separation from Him. This section is all about God's Provision for the situation we find ourselves in. It describes his rich mercy, his great love, and the vastness of his grace. God's mercy on us, his helpless enemies, flows from his own loving heart, not from anything that we have done, but because he LOVES us (Ephesians 3:18-19)! God "made us alive together with Christ"...he gave us regeneration or new spiritual life within us (Ephesians 2:10; Ezekiel 36:26, 37:1-14). It is by nothing that we can do, but only by God's grace that we are brought from death to life!


If I could sum up the main thing I have pulled from this passage it would be this:

"Until you know your spiritual condition apart from the love, mercy, and grace of Christ, you will not and cannot appreciate the transformation God has led you to."

If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, I pray that God will penetrate your heart with this blog entry. I pray that you will recognize the state that you are currently in and that you can do NOTHING by yourself, that you need God to save you from yourself and this world around you. And for those who do know Jesus as the Lord of their life, brothers and sisters, I pray that we can all recognize the state of disaster that we were in when we were apart from Christ. And more importantly, I pray that we can acknowledge and appreciate that God has taken way our sins and the sting of death, giving us eternal life with Him. I pray that we can give Him every ounce of the glory and praise Him for the rest of our days. Amen.