Wanted Dead or Alive

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

WANTED DEAD TO ALIVE

Eph 2:1-10

2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 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. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 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. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

NIV

We are so glad, rejoicing in our hearts all the time because we are no longer dead in our sins, but we are alive in Christ. How can we not spend all day long with a rejoicing heart and spirit because we are no longer objects of wrath, but instead we are saved by grace? Although, as Paul said, we were once dead in our sins. It did not matter how good a person we might have been, or for that matter how bad a person we might have been, we were dead because we lived according to the ways of the world and, yes, we were living under the rule of the one referred to here as the ruler of the kingdom of the air, which would be the evil one, the devil. It is like that song that Bob Dylan wrote some years ago, “Ya gotta serve somebody, you are either goanna serve the devil or serve God, but you gotta serve somebody”. The day that we responded to the wooing of the Spirit, and accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we switched our allegiance from the devil to Jesus. We no longer serve the evil one, but we serve the Holy One of God. However, it is all due to the grace of God, for He is the one who started this work in us. It is God who gave us faith in the first place. When we were dead in our sins, we lacked any faith because we lived by the ways of the world, faithless and totally about satisfying our own desires and thoughts. We did not care about anything other than ourselves. We were all about making our mark in the world, bragging about whatever accomplishments we had, and thinking about how important we were, if not to anyone other than ourselves. But that is all changed because of the grace of God. Now our lives are about bragging about Jesus. We live now under the rule of God as a citizen of His kingdom. We have abdicated our citizenship in this world and are no longer looking for praise from men, but only praise from our Lord. We have done nothing to gain life, for it is all God and none of us, although we are saved by faith, which again, is a gift from God for he gives every man a measure of faith. As we think about that, we must have had some measure of faith even when we were dead in our sins. We just refused to use the faith we had to believe in God, and instead had faith in ourselves, which was useless faith because we were still dead men walking. God wants us dead or alive, for he is the one who can make the dead become alive and even after he raised us from the dead and made us alive in Christ, He still wants us, in fact, because we are now alive in Christ, we have the right to be called children of God. Praise God that we are alive and that we will always be alive, either here in this world or in the one to come.