Ephesians 2:1-3 (NIV)
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 sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
In this section, Paul is preparing to contrast the lives of those who are living lost in sin with those who have been saved by grace. This is not only the universal experience of all who come to Jesus, Paul included, it is good theology as well.
Everyone who lives in the world is born into sin and into lives separated from God. Paul calls this “natural” state being dead in transgressions and sins. This means that, although people in the world are physically alive, until they are saved by faith in Jesus, they are spiritually dead. They have no eyes to see the spiritual dimension that exists all around them, they are deaf to God’s voice, and they are unable to understand spiritual truths.
Instead, they are under the control of the “ruler of the kingdom of the air”, the one who Jesus called “the prince of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11): satan. It is important to understand that satan was not given authority over the world by God. That authority was given by God to mankind, His image bearers (Genesis 1:28). Nor did he usurp that power, simply declaring himself the prince of the world. But when people rebel against God’s authority, when they do what they know is wrong, when they willfully turn away from God’s authority, they enslave themselves to satan, ceding their God-given authority to Him, fastening the locks on their spiritual chains with their own hands. Thus, as all humanity, guided by the sinful nature instead of by the Holy Spirit and God’s word, enslave themselves to satan, his dominion and authority in the world grows.
Paul owns this tragic situation as his own history and identifies it as the history of the Ephesian believers as well. As subjects of satan, deceived, imprisoned and powerless (but all the time believing themselves to be wise, free and autonomous), they were children living subject to God’s wrath for not only their sinful actions, but for their spirit of rebellion as well.
This picture is very dark. But Paul is looking back on his previous darkness from a place of brilliant light and knows that the Ephesian Christians were doing so as well.
Father, this is my story as well, as You know: the sin, the rebellion, the enslavement, and even the self-deception. That is how I lived as a child of wrath instead of as a child of God. In other words, as a normal human being without Jesus. Thank You for seeing me as I was, for reaching out to me where I lived, and for rescuing me, bringing me into the light, into a whole new life with a whole new future. Amen.