Memory Text: “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” Ephesians 2:3
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” Eph. 2:1-3
Can we please stop pretending that there is nothing particularly wrong with human nature? I’m not insisting that we believe in original sin, or that we use the term “original sin.” But I do insist that we tell the truth about our race, about the nature of our race. Scripture is clear that we are born sinful and depraved. That is the human condition, the human predicament:
“Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” Psalm 51:5 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
“The wicked are estranged from the womb; They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” Psalm 58:3 (KJV)
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Rom. 3:10-12 KJV
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6 KJV
“The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. Gen. 6:5-6 (New Living Translation)
“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jeremiah 17:9 (New Living Translation)
“For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. All these evils come from within, and these are what defile a man.” Mark 7:21-22. (see, also, Mat. 15:18-19)
We are born estranged from God, sinful and desperately wicked. The bad things we do that defile us come from inside us, from our depraved nature. We are truly “children of wrath,” deserving of punishment from birth, just as Paul wrote to the Ephesians. Ellen White concurs:
In evicting them from the Garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve “that their nature had become depraved by sin.” PP 61.4
“When man transgressed the divine law, his nature became evil, and he was in harmony, and not at variance, with Satan.” GC 505.2
“The inheritance of children is that of sin. Sin has separated them from God. . . . As related to the first Adam, men receive from him nothing but guilt and the sentence of death.” MR 246.1
It is important to get this right. As Christians accepting the biblical worldview, we understand that humans and human society are imperfect, and bad in many ways, because of sin, and the fallen, sinful human condition. That is the problem with human beings and human societies.
The problem is not from how society is organized, how governments are constituted, how property is owned, how domestic relations are arranged, the fact that people come in different shapes, sizes and colors, the fact that people were created, and are born, as either men or women, the fact that there are only two sexes, men and women, the fact that there are employers and employees, etc. None of that is the problem, and trying to rearrange those things, and using ever increasing quanta of governmental force and compulsion to rearrange those things, will never solve the problem.
The problem is sin, and there is one, and only one, solution to the sin problem, and He is Jesus Christ; He works on individuals, one person at a time.
If you don’t understand the depravity of the human condition, if you think people are basically good, or are capable of being made good by anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ, you have no defense against atheistic Leftist utopianism. And none of us expected it, but Leftist utopianism is still the most popular alternative to Christianity and the biblical worldview in today’s world. None of expected the dynamic of the French Revolution, as described in Great Controversy Chapter 15, to still be going on. But here we are.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Eph. 2:4-10.
For as in Adam all die, even also in Christ shall all be made alive. 1 Cor. 15:22. And not just made alive in Christ, but raised up in Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly realms. Because Christ is a human being, and all of us are represented to God the Father by Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we are even now seated in the heavenly realms, because Christ lowered Himself to become a man, a human being, so that we could be save in Him.
In order that in the coming ages He, God the Father, might show us, the saved, the incomparable riches of His grace toward us in Christ Jesus. As we mentioned last week, we are going to need eternity to study and comprehend the plan of salvation:
“In eternity we shall learn that which, had we received the enlightenment that it was possible to obtain here, would have opened our understanding. The themes of redemption will employ the hearts and minds and tongues of the redeemed through the everlasting ages. They will understand the truths which Christ longed to open to His disciples, but which they did not have faith to grasp. Forever and forever new views of the perfection and glory of Christ will appear. Through endless ages the faithful Householder will bring forth from His treasures things new and old.” My Life Today, p. 360.
Certainly, no one will be boasting, during those eternal ages, of having saved himself by his own works, which are filthy rags, or even by his own paltry faith, but only marveling at the grace and mercy of God.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Eph. 2:10
Lately, this text has been speaking to me very personally. I am amazed by how everything I studied as a young man—economics, history, capitalism, communism, the cold war—is suddenly and very unexpectedly relevant again just now, decades later. I thought that the cold was over; communism lost and free enterprise won, and atheistic Leftist utopianism was discarded into the dustbin of history. But no. Marxism is vastly more influential today than it ever has been since 1844, far more so that it was in 1988, just before the Soviet Union collapsed. Marxism now controls all of academia, most large corporations, and almost every significant American institution.
The same unexpected sudden relevance applies to the type of litigation I was involved with as a young attorney—medical malpractice, pharmaceutical products liability, adverse drug reactions, fraud in clinical drug trials. It is as though God took great pains to educate and prepare me for exactly what is most relevant right now. God knows the end from the beginning.
“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Eph. 2:11-13
Where are we? Again, in Christ Jesus. If we are not in Christ Jesus, we are not saved. Doesn’t matter how often you go to Church, how well you study your Sabbath School lesson, how much tithe you pay. If you are not in Christ Jesus, you are without hope and without God in the world.
“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Eph. 2:14-18
This is wild stuff, isn’t it? Jesus Christ made the “two groups,” the Jews and the gentiles, one. We are now one people, called spiritual Israel.
By the way, if you don’t understand the concept of spiritual Israel, you cannot properly interpret Bible prophecy. Every prophecy in Scripture that applies to the time after 34 AD and uses the term “Israel” is referring to the Christian Church. The Israel of God in prophecy is the Christian Church. Failure to understand the concept of spiritual Israel is what leads some of our more enthusiastic evangelical brethren into absurdities such as the idea that the temple at Jerusalem will be rebuilt and sacrifices will resume (as though they were not all fulfilled in Christ!).
But back to God making the Jews and gentiles one. How did Jesus do that? In His flesh, He set aside “the law with its commands and regulations,” the law of ordinances, the ceremonial law, the law of the sanctuary, the law of circumcision, the law of levirate marriage, the law of the feasts, the law of clean and unclean (yes, even that). There is no need for anyone, Jew or gentile, to try to observe any of that.
“So don’t let anyone criticize you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating Jewish holidays and feasts or new moon ceremonies or sabbaths. For these were only temporary rules that ended when Christ came. They were only shadows of the real thing—of Christ himself.” Col. 2:16-17 (LB)
And there is no need or cause for hostility between Jew and gentile because both are reconciled to God through the cross of Christ, and only through the cross of Christ. Not through circumcision, not through levirate marriage, not through keeping the feasts, not through keeping kosher, not through avoiding pork, not through anything but the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Note also that Paul does not say he is making one nation (ethnos) out of the two nations (ethnicities), Jew and Gentile. That is what we would expect given the ubiquitous use of the word ethnos both for gentiles and, occasionally, for the Jewish nation. No, God is not making a new nation; God is taking the Jews and the gentiles and creating in Himself a new man (anthropon), a new humanity. Spiritual Israel is to be a different creature, a different breed. Because, as we’ve just seen, the old humanity is by nature deserving of nothing but wrath.
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Eph. 2:19-22
There you were, watching a play written by Sophocles in your 25,000-seat theater, bringing offerings to your enormous pagan temple, four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens and dedicated to the glory of the goddess Artemis/Diana, hanging out in your grand library pretending to study Plato and Aristotle (or visiting a brothel through the connecting tunnel), trying to decipher the secret symbols of Artemis, and doing all sorts of silly pagan things.
But you listened to Paul’s preaching, you accepted Christ as your savior, and now you are just as much a child of God, just as much a fellow citizen with God’s people, as any Jewish believer in the Christ who comes from a long line of phylactery-wearing, Sabbath-keeping, dill-tithing Hebrews. You are a wild shoot that has been engrafted onto the olive tree of Israel, replacing one of the natural branches that was broken off. Rom. 11:17. Now you are part of a rapidly growing spiritual temple far grander than the temple of Artemis, a temple built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, a temple not for an idol of stone made by human hands, but a temple in which God Himself dwells through His Holy Spirit.