Note: Vision devotional article taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 2:1-7.
And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians
2:1).
In Ephesians 2:1 Paul
offers an inspired description of man’s spiritual state apart from God in Christ
as one of spiritual deadness. It captures man’s
spiritual inability apart from God’s grace.
We must be clear, Paul is not talking about a
biological state, but a spiritual state. One can be physically alive but
spiritually dead. In fact, apart from faith in Christ we might well say that men
are all dead men walking.
In R. C. Sproul’s brief commentary on Ephesians, he debunks a
misguided analogy of salvation that fails to consider fallen man’s state of
spiritual deadness (inability):
Another analogy goes like this: a
man is cast into the sea who doesn’t know how to swim. He is clearly about to
drown; he has already gone under the water twice, and is sinking for the third
time. His head is beneath the surface of the water. All that is left above the
water is his outstretched hand, and the only way he can possibly be saved is if
God would throw him a life-preserver. God is so accurate in throwing this
life-preserver that he throws it right up against the palm of this man’s hand.
But for that man to be saved, he must close his hand upon the life-preserver in
order to be pulled to safety (Ephesians, 48-49).
Sproul then observes that this view reflects an ancient error
known as Semi-Pelagiansim, in that it teaches, “man must cooperate with God in
order to be saved.” He then adds:
The Reformed [Biblical] view is
that man is not going under the water for the third time, but is already
drowned, spiritually. He is at the bottom of the sea, he is dead. The only way
he can be saved is if God dives into the water and pulls the corpse up out of
the water and brings him back to life (Ephesians, 49).
The problem with the life-preserver analogy is that it is not
miraculous enough. Conversion is a sovereign and miraculous life-giving act of
God alone.
As it says in Psalm 3:8a, “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD.”
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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