How does the Bible describe our unsaved past?

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“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Ephesians 2:1)

Three concise descriptions are given in Scripture of how God sees all sinners prior to the creation of the second birth in us.

  • We were dead in trespasses (activities) and sins (character, attitude, condition). 
  • The result was that we were unable to understand or seek God on our own (Romans 3:10-11). 
  • Nor are we able to know the things of God by our own intellectual prowess (1 Corinthians 2:14).
  • We “walked according to the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2), in bondage to the world (Galatians 4:3) and blinded by Satan (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).
  • We are by “nature the children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). Both our natural desires (Ephesians 5:5-6) and our willing unbelief (John 3:36) put us under an ever-increasing wrathful judgment of God (Romans 2:5-9).
  • The transformation performed by God on us can only be “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:10). 
  • It involves God’s rich mercy and great love (Ephesians 2:4) to make us alive when we were dead (see John 5:21-24; Romans 6:4-6, 9-11). 
  • That power raises and seats us with God in the heavens (Ephesians 2:6). 
  • That grace is effected through faith, and even “that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Whatever being twice-born may ultimately involve, it assures us of permanent status as the chosen, holy ones of God (Romans 8:29-39), “that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

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