EPHESIANS 2:1-10 God ... made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. The Bible says every person without Christ is spiritually dead. But when we look around us, this doesn't seem to be true. Some people might look totally corrupt, but many others look like decent people and appear very much alive. Isn't it extreme to say that all people without Jesus are dead in sin?
Well, a carefully embalmed body may be less shocking than a mangled or decaying corpse, but a corpse is still a corpse, no matter what cosmetics are used. In the same way, one person's sinful condition may be much less offensive than another's. There may be different degrees of spiritual decay, but all are equally dead in sin.
Once a person is dead, the degree of decay makes no difference. Dead is dead. That's why believers talk like this: "On my own, I would ignore the Bible and be indifferent to Christ. But because God's Spirit has breathed new life into my soul, I trust in Jesus and believe his Word. It is by grace I have been saved."
"At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly... While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6-8). When we were dead and decaying, Jesus overcame sin and death. Then he breathed the life of his Spirit into our souls and created in us the faith to believe in him. We did nothing. God has done it all.
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