Friends Tell the Truth
Telling someone the truth is one of the most loving things we can do. The people who love us the most are willing to tell us the truth. Genuine and deep friendships are built on truth-telling. I’m not talking about truth spoken in a condemning way, in a “I’m better than you” kind of way, but truth spoken with love. The people who’ve loved me the most have told me the truth about me. We’re drawn to deep relationships with these kinds of people because we know that they’re not trying to butter us up in order to get us to like them. We know that they truly care about us and not just what we might think of them. We may not be happy about what we hear, but if it’s true, we’ll come to see that they’re trying to help us, not hurt us.
Speaking truth is a non-negotiable part of having growing and maturing friendships. Many of those in our circle of friends avoid telling us the truth, and we avoid telling them the truth. We love them and enjoy them, but our relationship with them never gets below the surface because we’re afraid we might offend or be misunderstood or be rejected. True friends love us enough to courageously tell us what we need to hear. Not out of pride, but out of love.
God Tells the Truth
If this is true about human relationships, wouldn’t it also be true of our relationship with God? The Bible tells us that God wants a relationship with us. He made us in his image. And even though we’ve disobeyed him and run away from him, he still sent his Son Jesus to die for us so that our relationship with him might be restored.
God is committed to genuine and authentic relationships, so he tells us the truth. In the Bible, God tells us the truth about himself – that he’s the holy God who created all things. He tells us the truth about us – that we’re made in his image and that we’re fallen and cursed by sin. He tells us the truth about how we can be forgiven and restored to him – that if we turn from our sin and trust in his Son we can be redeemed and cleansed and given eternal life.
What God tells us in the Bible is welcome news and confirms many of the things we already think and feel. We know deep down that there’s a God who made us, we sense that we’re different from everything else he’s made, we know that something is wrong with this world and even with us, and we see something true and compelling in the man Jesus Christ who was crucified although he was innocent.
But the truth is both pleasant and painful. We’re thankful that God tells us the truth. But there are parts of the truth that sting. One of those parts is the part about our fallenness in sin. We don’t like to hear that we’re what the Bible calls sinful, “full of sin.” We’d much rather think of ourselves as basically good. We’re not conceited enough to think we’re perfect, everyone makes mistakes after all. But we don’t think that our nature is infected with a disease called sin, that this disease corrupts every part of our lives, and that this disease puts us at odds with the God who made us. We like the truth about God’s love, but not about his judgment because of our sin.
But would it be loving if God withheld the truth from us? Is God so insecure and desperate for a relationship with us that he’d flatter us and tell us that our rebellion against him isn’t that big of a deal? How hateful would a doctor be to not tell us that our test results for cancer came back positive just so that we would like him? God loves us more than anyone, so he tells us the truth about our sin disease.
“Dead in Trespasses and Sins”
Ephesians 2:1-3 is one of the clearest passages in the Bible about the human condition. In these verses, Paul describes our spiritual condition apart from Christ in five ways. First, he says that we’re “dead” in our trespasses and sins (v. 1). Some have argued that “dead” here simply means “separated from God.” It’s true that our sin separates us from God, and Paul reminds us in verse 12 that at one time we were “separated from Christ.”
But if Paul only meant “separation” in verse 1, he would’ve used that same word. But he says that we’re “dead” in our sins. His point here is crucial for our understanding of our condition outside of Christ. Paul is saying that, because of sin, man is dead spiritually, that there’s no spiritual life in us. There’s not a “divine spark” in us. We are spiritually dead.
Some think that our life before Christ can be described as us struggling to stay above water in the ocean of sin. We’re groping for air until Jesus passes by in a life boat and we grab his hand. But our condition according to this text is that we’re lying dead on the ocean floor, lifeless, motionless, no air in our lungs, and the search party is being called off. We are dead spiritually and nothing can be done. Unless, of course, there’s someone who can raise the dead. Next week we’ll see that there is just such a person.
“Following the Course of this World”
The second thing Paul says about our spiritual condition is that, apart from Christ, we were “following the course of this world” (v. 2a). Before Jesus saved us, our lives were governed by the world’s attitudes and preferences. We loved what the world loved. We loved material things more than people. We pursued comfort at all costs. We didn’t care much about the injustices all around us – like the one million babies that will be aborted this year or the millions of children sold into sex slavery or the ethnocentrism that pervades our culture and our hearts. We quietly assumed that our skin color made us better or smarter or more reliable than people of other skin colors. We thought that our health and safety, or the health and safety of our kids and grandkids, were the most important goals in life. We put our hope in politicians and political parties. We knew more about the lives of those in our favorite television shows than we did our own friends and family. We got more excited about sports than we did about church and Jesus and the Bible. We “followed the course of this world.” Before God saves us, we’re conformists. We act like the world, think like the world, and love like the world. We’re only concerned with the activities and values of this present age. We give no thought to God or eternal values or the judgment to come. Paul is saying that this is one of the indications that we’re dead spiritually. By way of application, if our lives still conform more to the thought and behavior patterns of the world, then we might still be dead spiritually.
“Following the Prince of the Power of the Air”
The third thing that Paul says about our spiritual condition apart from Christ is that we followed “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (v. 2b). Outside of Christ, we live under the influence of Satan himself. This doesn’t mean that everyone who is outside of Christ is demon-possessed. It does mean that all who are outside of Christ are citizens of a kingdom that Paul elsewhere calls “the domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13). There’s no neutral ground. We’re either following God or following the one who hates God.
We do this unknowingly, but not imperceptibly. There are ways to perceive this truth at work in the world. What else explains the general apathy that the world has toward the idea of a Creator God and his Son Jesus Christ? Or the unquestioned assumption that all religions are basically the same? Or the rise of a materialistic view of the universe, that matter is all there was, is, and ever will be, and that the supernatural is therefore impossible? Or that all authority structures must be cast off and individual freedom pursued at all costs? Or that religion poisons everything?
Why do such wide swaths of humanity believe and teach these things? Because we’re following someone more crafty than any other thing God has made. Because we’re following someone who hates God and wants to prevent us from entering into a relationship with him. Paul is saying that this is yet another indication that we’re born spiritually dead.
“Carrying Out Desires of Body and Mind”
The fourth thing Paul says about our spiritual condition outside of Christ is that we “lived in the passions of our flesh” and “carried out the desires of the body and the mind.” This is a further statement of what he’s already said. Our deadness in sin meant that we did whatever felt good. If our body had desires, we pursued them. If our mind had desires, we entertained them. We did what we wanted. We thought what we wanted.
In 2011, New York Times columnist David Brooks pointed out this is the advice we give college students on graduation day. He said, “If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism.”
We aren’t encouraged to find life and joy in God, but in ourselves. We’re encouraged to find our life in self-expression and the pursuit of whatever we think will make us feel good. Even Coca-Cola promises that a Coke will “open happiness” for us. This pursuit of individual happiness at all costs is yet more evidence that we’re dead spiritually.
“By Nature Children of Wrath”
The fifth way that Paul describes our spiritual condition apart from Christ is by saying that we are “by nature children of wrath” (v. 3). This is the exact opposite of one of the fundamental and governing presuppositions of our culture, namely, that mankind is inherently good, or at least neutral. But the biblical portrait of mankind is much different. This text says that our very nature makes us worthy of God’s judgment. We learn elsewhere from Paul that we’ve inherited this nature from Adam, whose “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom. 5:18). All of humanity is born into this sinful condition with its consequences.
The consequence is the “wrath” that Paul refers to (v. 3). The “wrath” in view here is God’s holy displeasure against sin and the judgment that results. Theologian Wayne Grudem says that “God’s wrath means that he intensely hates all sin.” Theologian R. C. Sproul takes it a step further and says, “If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in his character, indeed if God exists as God, how could He possibly be anything else but angry with us? We violate His holiness; we insult His justice; we make light of His grace. These things can hardly please Him.” He goes on to discuss how God’s wrath is different from our wrath. Our wrath has an ending point, God’s wrath can go on forever. The wrath of God is fierce. The Bible describes it as a winepress. No grape escapes. In hell, there is no moderation. God’s wrath isn’t an annoyance or mild displeasure. “It is a consuming rage against the unrepentant…There is no end to the anger of God directed against those in hell.”
The really scary thing is that, despite the constant warnings of Scripture and Jesus’ clear teaching on this subject, we continue to ignore or dismiss the reality of God’s wrath in hell. In his famous sermon, “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards said, “Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail.”
But our schemes will fail. Our plans to convince God that we’ve done more good than bad and our belief that we’re not that bad and don’t deserve judgment will prove empty and foolish when we stand naked before the eternal and holy God who made us. His wrath will consume all who have rejected him and remained in their sin. This is the truth, and God tells us because he loves us.
No One Escapes
According to these verses, outside of Christ we are spiritually dead, followers of the world and the devil, pursuing our own passions, and by our very nature deserving of God’s judgment. These verses also make it clear that this indictment applies to everyone. Notice Paul’s language. Verse 3, “We all once lived…” And, we were children of wrath “like the rest of mankind.” Romans 3 makes the same point. “All, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (v. 9). “None is righteous, no not one” (v. 10). “All have turned aside…no one does good, not even one” (v. 12). Paul says this “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be accountable to God” (v. 19). “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (v. 23).
Out of love, God tells us the truth about us: every person who has ever lived is fallen and dead in sin. He knows that we all think too highly of ourselves, that we all assume that the rules don’t apply to us, that we can somehow pay off our sin debt with good works or religion. He knows that we’re all closet universalists – believing that everyone somehow makes it to heaven in the end. So he tells us that all people in all places are dead in sin and children of wrath by nature.
God tells us the truth about our nature because he knows that we like to think of ourselves as good because we like to compare ourselves to other people. But God doesn’t evaluate our goodness by comparing us to other people. He evaluates our goodness by comparing us to himself. And none of us is good compared to him. You’re a bad person, and so am I.
We have to make a decision here. We’ll either accept what the Bible clearly teaches, or we’ll leave behind the hard parts and focus on the things that make us feel good. Remember that Jesus’ strongest words were for those who twisted God’s word, adding to it and subtracting from it. Either the Bible is true for all, or it’s not true at all.
We don’t naturally think this way, which is why we need new spiritual eyes to see ourselves in light of God. The better we see him, the better we’ll see ourselves. This is why I think Paul puts this section right after the last few verses of chapter one, where he talks about Jesus reigning over all things. He’s painting a contrast for us: Jesus is ruling over all things, we are ruled by sin and Satan. Jesus is exalted in glory, we are dead in sin. The contrast teaches us that we aren’t just imperfect people. We’re rebels to the crown.
“You Were Dead”
The last thing I want us to notice is the past tense of Paul’s language. Verse 1, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Verse 3, “Among whom we all once lived…(we) were by nature children of wrath.” The things that Paul describes here used to be true of the Ephesian Christians. But they aren’t true anymore.
Outside of Christ, our situation is bad, but it’s not irreversible. Our nature is fallen, but it can be redeemed. Our minds are self-focused, but they can be renewed. Our desires are impure, but they can be changed. Our master is Satan, but it can be Christ. Our path is the world’s path, but we can be rerouted. We’re dead in sin, but we can be resurrected. Children of God’s wrath can become children of God’s love.
Everyone who will humbly admit that God’s truth is true about them, who will agree with God about their condition, who will admit their sin and rebellion against him, who will admit that they can do nothing to save themselves, and who will look to Christ on the cross as their only hope will be rescued from God’s coming wrath and will receive God’s satisfying love.
“To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12). We may be bad people, but God is a good God who stands ready to save all who embrace and trust in his Son.