It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Ephesians 2: 1-3 MSG
From Polluted And Stagnant to Embraced and Alive
Yesterday we heard a powerful sermon from Sam about how God saves us from a dead life of sin and gives us eternal life in Him. He didn’t have to do this. He could have left us, stagnant in our fowl sin, but He didn’t. Because He loves us so very much, He rescued us and gave us new life in Him. What a great story we have to share with world.
The version of Ephesians 2:1-3 from the Message definitely paints a very vivid picture for us of the stagnant life of sin that we live in until we realize our need for Christ. We all come into the world as sinners. The wages the sin is death, but God did not leave us dead in our sin, or to have to pay that debt ourselves. He provided a way for us to be raised to life, out of the death of sin.
The scripture above says that we are mired in the stagnant life of sin. Isn’t that the best description of a life of sin? Mired and stagnant. Mired means being entangled or hindered. Sam Nobles said in his sermon Sunday that when we are in sin we are not stuck. Mired is not the same thing. It means that when we get caught up in sin, it will pull us away from God – or hinder us from moving back to Him. Sin will entangle us making it even harder for us to get away from it. It will cause us to be stagnant, not moving at all but just sitting in the big mess we created. When we look to the world, we world to find answers about life, we will only find what leads us away from true life. Everything the world offers us will lead us to death. Our lungs will be polluted with unbelief as we breathe in what the world tells us – what we read on social media, what we watch on YouTube. The world will tell us to do what we want to do instead of what honors God, so we exhale disobedience. This is perhaps living as far away from God as we can go - completely ignoring His commands and denying His goodness and salvation. This is choosing to live opposite of His words. If someone did this to us, we would probably walk away. We surely would not sacrifice our only Son to save their life! God, in His immense mercy and incredible love embraced us instead of leaving us where we were.
Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4-7 MSG
God, in His immense mercy and incredible love for us saved us. He breathed life – real life – into our dead souls. He took us from the lowest, most wretched place on earth and lifted us up to the highest place on earth as His children. He gave us a new life with a clean slate. All our debt was paid by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Not only did He give us new life in an instant, but He also gave us an inheritance of eternal life in heaven with Him.
