Daily EncouragementSample

It is good to remember where we came from and how far away from God we were when saved by grace. The condition was desperate and the distance was great, as this chapter emphasizes.

How serious a state we were in! We were spiritually dead - “you were dead in your transgressions and sins” (verse 1). We were serving the devil, “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (verse 2), following his ways, under his rule, moved by his spirit - “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (verse 2). We were satisfying the flesh, “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (verse 3). We were subject to the wrath of God - “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath” (verse 3).

How far away we were! We were farther away than the Jew. “The old covenant,” comments E. K. Simpson, “had been in the main a dispensation of distance.” The people were barred from the holy place and only the high priest reached the holiest of all. But they were the people of God, and his covenants were theirs, and in a sense Christ was theirs too. But we were “separate from Christ . . . without hope and without God in the world” (verse 12).

How great is the grace which made us alive and brought us near! (Eph. 2:13).