Ephesians 2 really boils down to being a summary of the gospel. The first ten verses describe what I call the "vertical beam" of the cross: the relationship between us and God. The next eight verses describe the "horizontal beam" of the cross: our relationships with one another. The remaining four verses describe the "building" on which the cross is mounted: the church.
Paul starts off the summary of the gospel by describing the basic state that every human being finds themselves in:
- Spiritually Dead,
- Following the ways of Satan (the ruler of the kingdom of the air)
- Slaves to satisfying the desires of our brokenness
- and Destined for Judgement.
The Matrix Movie Trilogy, illustrates this quite powerfully. The Matrix is a virtual world where humans and computer programs reside as entities in a system. One of the programs "Agent Smith" goes rogue and begins to infect all the entities in the matrix with his basic philosophy which is "me, me, me!" In the closing scene the hero character, Neo, returns to the matrix which was once a nicely functioning 1980's American City with parks and sunrises but now is a ruined slum with pouring rain and dirty slosh in the streets and Agent Smith gloats "Do you like what I have done to the place?"
When we look at the world around us, we can see the effects of the rogue angel, Satan, and what his philosophy of "me, me, me" has done to us and to the world...
The only hope we have is to stop following Satan but we find it hard. We need a Saviour and Paul shows us that it is Christ alone who can save us!
More tomorrow...
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
