From Death to Life | Ephesians 2:1-10

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10 "The whole range of human miseries, from restlessness and estrangement through shame and guilt… to the agonies of daytime television—all of them tell us that things in human life are not as they ought to be." – Cornelius Plantinga + The default mode of humanity is dead, defiant, and doomed "Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart which you had pity upon in the bottom of the abyss. Now let my heart tell you what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the evil in me—not that for which I was committing the evil, but the evil itself." – Augustine of Hippo "The thought is overwhelming, that soon this body of mine must be a carnival for worms; that in and out of these places, where my eyes are glistening, foul things, the offspring of loathsomeness, shall crawl; that this body must be stretched in still, cold, abject, passive, death. It must then become a noxious, nauseous thing, cast out even by those that loved me, who will say, 'Bury my dead out of my sight.' Now, endeavour, as well as you can, to get the idea of a dead corpse, and when you have so done, please to understand that that is the metaphor employed in my text, to set forth the condition of your soul by nature." – Charles Spurgeon + Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Romans 5:12; 17 + Partner with God in Kingdom Expansion