Ephesians 2:2-4 ( ESV )
2in which you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in
the sons of disobedience—
3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body£ and the mind, and were by
nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
One of the things that I can’t handle is the
screaming kid who does not get his way in a store. Now I knew what would happen
to me when I acted in such a way. BANG, right then and there the law of Vera
Moore hurled down upon us like an asteroid impacting the earth. We learned the
important issues in life from the speedy hand of a woman who in her own words
said, “I will not put up with that!” “I
will not have children who are brats!”
Some parents get in
their heads that I will let my child find his own way in life. I will never
spank them if they do wrong. Trust me after years of ministry I know of the
abuses of ungodly parents who beat their children. This is an obscenity against
the very nature of God. Yet, God in His
wisdom has several verses that tell us that we are to discipline our children
and sometimes even with a rod. According to the book of Hebrews God disciplines
his children to conform them to His image. If we are not disciplined by the
hand of God we are called bastards and not his own.
Spiritually speaking we
were all the children of another Father. We walked according to his very nature
because it was our nature as well. It was like we were playing a profane game
of Follow the Leader. We listened to a pied piper who pretended to play for our
pleasure but instead he was only playing a funeral dirge for the walking dead.
We cried out in the night looking out only
for our own passions and desires. Screaming and clawing with our nails to grasp
the poisons that we longed to fill our stomachs emptiness. We never knew that
the very things that tasted so sweet in the end were only rotting us away. The
candy of this world and all of its allure shouted out taste and see. Taste and
see.
Once again it was only
natural that we would want these things not only because we had an evil Father
who let us do whatever we wanted. We also did it because like verse three
states, we were like the rest of mankind. We wanted to be just like the rest of
the world. We wanted to fit in. We wanted whatever we desired and like
disobedient children in a supermarket we never even saw our own selfishness and
ugliness of sin. All we knew is that we had to have our own way.
Please do not miss the
import of these few verses. Not only were we once sons of disobedience we are
also called in these verses children of wrath. Now hold on a minute, we can’t
all be that bad. Really, I wasn’t that evil. Yet, this is not what the Bible
says. The Bible tells us that we deserved the very wrath of God to be placed
upon us. Wrath is not a comfortable word but then again it was not supposed to
be. The problem that we have with a God who will act in wrath is because we
refuse to see how terrible our sin is within us.
Ephesians is trying to
wake us up to the reality that because we are sons of disobedience we rightly
deserve the wrath of God. Paul had earlier stated in Romans that the wages of
our sin would be death. It’s a shock to the system to be told that we are
sinners and deserve the judgment of God. This is truly the bad news. Many will
try to bury their head in the sand when it comes to this point. I believe that
Paul in all of his compassion is trying to warn us it’s time to wake up. Sin
will take your further than you want to go and its end is that of death.
Here is where the words
for hope come into play. Look at verse four with just these two words, “But
God.” This God who will destroy the children of disobedience cries out to them,
for He is by his very nature a God who is rich in mercy and still loves us. He
wants to adopt us into His family. He stretched out His hand in love through
His Son, Jesus Christ. His arm became flesh to offer us salvation and
deliverance from His wrath. His Son became our substitute for us upon a cross
and He incurred the Father’s wrath for us. Every stripe, every mark upon the
blameless one was for us. Why? The Father wants to adopt us into His family.
Children of God, what
an amazing concept. We need to no longer be called children of disobedience or
children of wrath but the children of God. Screaming, kicking and left alone on
the side of the road he wants to pick us up in His arms and take us to a new
home. He wants to lavish upon us the riches of His eternal glory and say,
“Welcome Home. My Son, welcome Home.”
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