Ephesians 2:1-10
The TV show “The Walking Dead” was in production for twelve years, from 2010 to 2022. I personally never watched an entire episode, and couldn’t really get interested in the storyline, but this was a popular show, and remains so in syndication.
This series told the tale of what the world was like after a zombie apocalypse. Thankfully this was fiction. There are no “Walking Dead” – at least not in the sense meant by this show.
But a description of the “walking dead,” in a different sense of the term, is a component of what St. Paul tells us in today’s text about the natural, fallen human condition. He writes to the Ephesians, and to you, that you – that we –
“were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, … among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.”
Dead men don’t walk: except in zombie movies, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where St. Paul describes people who are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, and who walk according to the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil, rather than according to God’s ways.
The word “death” means separation. When someone physically dies, this means that his spirit or soul separates from his body.
And when someone is spiritually dead, this means that his spirit or soul is separated from God’s Spirit and from God’s life. Those who are spiritually dead – “in trespasses and sins” – are also separated from God’s approval, and are instead “by nature children of wrath.”
If you have ever watched an episode of “The Walking Dead,” or any zombie movie, you no doubt identified with the normal and healthy people in the story, who were trying to escape from the zombies and to survive.
You certainly did not feel any affinity with the walking dead in that story, whose soulless, disintegrating bodies were driven by mindless compulsions, and who were alive without really being alive.
But in St. Paul’s story, you do need to identify with those who were, or still are, “dead in trespasses and sins,” and who “walked,” or still walk, “according to the course of this world”: because that story is about you.
All human beings came into the world like this: separated from God and under his judgment; deceived by Satan’s lies and captive to his power; and driven by selfish impulses and destructive passions in their thoughts, words, and deeds. Even when people are able to put a civilized veneer on it, this is all still there beneath the veneer.
People may not perceive this level of corruption within themselves, but that’s because their power of perception is itself corrupt and unreliable. Through the prophet Jeremiah the Lord reminds us:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
What is reliable, however, is the testimony of Holy Scripture. And in Scripture, St. Paul says that we were all like this.
When God saved us in Christ, this is what he saved us from. This is what we were. And this is what we will return to, if we ever forsake God and his Word.
But God did save us. God saved you. Unlike the TV show, for the walking dead in Paul’s story – in God’s story – there is a cure.
The cure to our spiritual death is God’s grace. And this grace has been administered to you in the means of grace. Paul writes:
“God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus… For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
You came into this world dead in trespasses and sins. On the cross, Jesus your sinless Savior also became dead – with you and for you – to atone for your trespasses and sins.
The trespasses and sins of the whole world were credited to Jesus and laid upon him, so that he could carry them to the cross, and on the cross redeem and liberate the world from them.
He endured not only a physical death, but also experienced, in effect, a spiritual separation from the holiness of his Father in heaven. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” he cried.
But Jesus was then raised from the dead by his Father, fully alive once again: because his atoning sacrifice, and his death for you at all levels, was accepted by God. And in Christ, you are now accepted by God, too: no longer a child of divine wrath, but a child of divine, adoptive love.
When Jesus rose, he rose with a resurrection power that now makes you alive, and raises you up from spiritual death.
Your salvation is God’s gift to you. The faith by which you receive and believe his promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation, is God’s gift to you.
And the new, spiritual life that the Holy Spirit bestows through the gospel, which he energizes and directs into the new way of “walking” and living that now characterizes your existence, is God’s gift to you.
And so Paul concludes his thought:
“We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
God’s grace, which saved you from spiritual death in the past, saves you even now, from the lingering remnants of that death, and from the continuing threats to your new spiritual life that are always brought to bear against you by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
God’s grace brings strength, so that you can resist temptations to return to the way of death. And God’s grace bring forgiveness, and a new beginning in God’s life, when those temptations were not resisted.
God’s grace planted you in the fellowship of God’s church. And more specifically God’s grace has planted you in the fellowship of this congregation, where his Word is honored and revered, studied and expounded.
God’s grace through Scripture teaches you the truth of God and shows you his will, in how you should think, speak, and act. God’s grace through Scripture exposes the lies of Satan, and fills you with an evangelistic compassion for those who are still enthralled by those lies.
Because of God’s grace, and God’s grace alone, you are no longer the walking dead. You have been restored to fellowship with God, and so you are filled with the life of God and walk in that life. God has put a living hope into your heart, and God has put joyful songs on your lips:
By grace I’m saved, grace free and boundless; My soul, believe and doubt it not.
Why stagger at this word of promise? Hath Scripture ever falsehood taught?
Nay! Then this word must true remain: By grace thou, too, shalt heaven obtain.
I walk with Jesus all the way; His guidance never fails me.
Within His wounds I find a stay When Satan’s power assails me,
And, by His footsteps led, My path I safely tread.
In spite of ills that threaten may, I walk with Jesus all the way. Amen.