Dead and Unable to Hear
Tom Shrader opens an extended study of Ephesians 2:1-10 by focusing on the first three verses, which describe the natural condition of all humanity as spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. Drawing on Genesis 3, Romans 3, and John 3, he argues that spiritual death is universal and total — not a matter of degree — and that no person has either the desire or the ability to respond to God apart from divine intervention. The teaching closes by pointing toward the pivotal phrase 'but God' in verse 4, framing the weeks ahead as an exploration of how God's sovereign grace alone raises the dead to life.
“Man is not sick. Man is not terminally ill. Man is not dying. Man is dead.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ephesians
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 43 min
Themes: spiritual death, sin, grace, salvation, human nature, God's sovereignty, new life, redemption, new believer, questioning faith, feeling spiritually lost, seeker, skeptic, young adult, struggling with sin, searching for hope
Scripture: Ephesians 1:1, Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 1:5, Ephesians 2:1-10, Ephesians 2:1-3, Ephesians 2:4, Ephesians 2:8-9, Ephesians 2:10, Ephesians 2:11-22, Ephesians 4, Ephesians 6, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Genesis 4, John 1:1-4, John 3:3, John 3:36, John 10:10, Romans 3:10-12, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, 1 John 2
Theological Themes: total depravity, original sin, monergism, regeneration, hamartiology, sovereign grace, soteriology, dead in sin
Full Transcript
Introduction
If you are with us today for the very first time, God sovereignly has you here. This is the day to be here — or perhaps more appropriately, this is the season of our study to be with us. If you have Bibles, open them to the book of Ephesians. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand high and the men and women walking down the aisles will bring you a copy. When you get that Bible, go about two-thirds of the way back to the New Testament, then turn to page 150, and that will get you into the book of Ephesians.
We have spent four or five weeks in that first chapter. When we get to verse 11 of chapter 2, my heading reads "United in One Body," but as you read through it you will see that what Paul is teaching us is that in Christ, Jew and Gentile are brought together — the world united, the religious world united, in Christ. When we get to that section, I have asked Neil to teach verses 11 through 22 and include his testimony in that. I want to tackle verses 1 through 10.
The staff, the sound people, the graphics people, and Neil himself have all been asking me how long we are going to be in this section. Honestly, I don't know — maybe two, three, four, or five weeks. I can guarantee it won't be a single week, because we already proved that this morning.
A Recurring Theme
Everyone who teaches for a long time will come back to certain themes over and over again. I have observed, for example, that no matter what Bible book Larry Wright is studying, somewhere in that study he will do something on marriage — I guarantee it absolutely. When you listen to me over a period of time, you are going to hear something about contentment and about it being a missing ingredient in our lives. But you are also going to hear from me how in the world we got into the shape we are in, and how we get out of it — individually and collectively.
Years ago I taught Genesis chapter 3 and titled it "The Most Important Chapter of the Bible." I did that more for effect than anything else, perhaps, but I find myself continually going back and marrying Genesis chapter 3 together with Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10. This is really important material. When Mahaney quotes the author who says that one of our first duties is to go back to the obvious, this is the obvious. It is my personal view that if you get this wrong, the rest of your spiritual life will always be marked by an exalted view of man and a diminished view of God.
When you want to understand East Valley Bible Church and our theological DNA, at its core are the very truths we will be looking at here today and for however many weeks we remain in these verses. So if you happen to be with us for the first time on this cold, rainy day, my suggestion is that God brought you here for a reason. It may be that you don't know Christ. It may be that you have been walking around searching and wondering. It may be that you have been in church for a long time.
I know — because I have done this many times — that there will be some of you who will say, "I have been around church all my life," and then add either, "I never heard that before," or, "I never understood it." You may not say it today, but if you stay with us through these verses, you will say it. And it is not because this truth is hidden. It is not hidden. It is held up in plain view.
Reading Ephesians 2:1–10
As we read through these ten verses now, you are going to find passages that are very familiar to you. Ephesians chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:
"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."
Note the phrase "But God" in verse 4. Even reading through casually, this is a good moment to circle it, mark it, or put a box around it — however you do that in your Bible. As we said, if you have been around church for any length of time, you certainly know Ephesians 2:8–9, and perhaps verse 10 as well.
Opening Prayer
Father, thank You for the preservation of this Word to this very day. You communicate to us Your very heart. We see in these verses truths that are so difficult for us humanly to comprehend. We see how lost we are, and then You take us deeper still — pointing out that we are not just lost, we are dead. But You — but God. Father, I pray that You would work here today. For those who do not know You, may this be a day when Your Spirit stirs them, a day of salvation. For those of us who do know You, may Your Spirit apply this Word to our hearts. We pray this in Your name, Amen.
The Condition of Natural Man
And you he made alive when you were dead, slain by your trespasses and sins, in which at one time you walked habitually. You were following the course and fashion of the world, were under the sway of the tendencies of the present age, following the prince of the air. You were obedient to and under the control of the demon spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience, the careless, the rebellious, and the unbelieving, who go against the purposes of God. Among these, we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh, our behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature, obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind, our cravings dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings. We were then by nature children of God's wrath and heirs of his indignation like the rest of mankind.
Eugene Peterson in The Message puts it this way: It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in the old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like when we felt like doing it and all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.
The old Phillips paraphrase reads: To you who were spiritually dead all the time that you drifted along on the stream of this world's ideas of living and obeyed its unseen ruler who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God, to you Christ has given life. We all lived like that in the past and followed the impulses and imaginations of our evil nature, being in fact under the wrath of God by nature like everyone else.
What you get as you listen to those three readings, before we even begin to break any of the text apart, is a sense of the condition of man. You hear words like nature, sons of disobedience, children of wrath. What Paul is describing here, as you will see in verse 2, is written in the past tense. In these ten verses, he actually talks about the past, the present, and the future.
Who Paul Is Writing To
Paul is writing to Christians. Remember what we saw in verse 1 — to those who are faithful in Christ Jesus. It says to those who are in Ephesus, but in the earliest manuscripts that phrase does not appear. In all likelihood, it was a general epistle sent to the church at Ephesus with the intention that it would be copied and circulated around Asia Minor, the wider world, and obviously to us today.
He says, here is what you were — that is verses 1, 2, and 3. Here is what you are — that is verses 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9. And this is what you will be — verses 7 and 10. He talks about salvation from sin, and the motivation of that salvation is the deep, deep love that God has for His people. We move into life, there is a purpose in this life, God has given us that purpose, it is accomplished through faith, and we are designed and saved for good works. That is the backdrop.
Natural Man Apart from Christ
The first thing Paul does in this chapter is address the condition of natural man. When I talk about natural man, I am talking about all of us apart from Christ. I am talking about the condition that all of us are in when we enter the world.
I taught Genesis 3 and called it the greatest chapter in the Bible. What I was trying to drive home is this: if you do not get Genesis 3, and you do not get Ephesians 2, you are not going to understand man, the condition of man, and you are not going to understand how God saves His people. We use a word like save — what does that mean? It means that we were once under the wrath of God, but now we are alive. We were dead, and now we are alive.
If you go back to Genesis 1 and 2 and read, when Genesis 2 ends, man and woman are naked in the garden. They are innocent. Skip Genesis 3, and when you get to Genesis 4, Eve gives birth — there is Cain and Abel. By verse 6, God is saying, "Cain, why are you so angry?" And now comes murder, arguing, war, everything we see around us.
Why Genesis 3 Is Indispensable
Ray Stedman writes this about Genesis 3: We come to Genesis 3 with a heightened sense of anticipation. In many ways, this is the most important piece of information ever conveyed to man. Here we have the answer to the eternal whys that arise in our hearts in times of sorrow — the explanation of hundreds of centuries of human heartache and misery, torture, blood, sweat, tears. Here is the reason for the powerful fascinations that drugs hold for us, the passion for power, for sex, for wealth, to young and old alike.
Stedman continues: You remove this chapter from the Bible and the rest of it is absolutely incredible. Ignoring the truth of this chapter, the history and the story of humanity becomes impossible either to understand or explain. The most striking thing about this chapter is that we find ourselves. You cannot read through this story without feeling that you have lived it yourself because, of course, you have.
When we come to Adam and Eve, it is not just a myth or a fable — it is an actual story. Paul tells us, and the Bible teaches, that through one man, that is Adam, all of us have inherited this condition.
Dead in Sin, Alive in Christ
All of us have sinned, and death has spread to all of us. That is what you have in front of you here today. Verse 5 says you were dead, and then you were made alive. This is a difficult concept to grasp. When you start to talk to people about being alive or being dead, you have to be very clear and say, "I'm not talking about physically — I'm talking about spiritually."
Paul is making no comment on your physical condition. To illustrate that point, consider something that happened to me recently. I have been working with a trainer this year — six sets of exercises, twelve repetitions, three times a week, and every three weeks or so we change things up. I was in the gym on Thursday with my new set, which includes doing a pushup on a stability ball.
That sounds easy, but it is not easy. I got onto the ball, tried to get myself balanced, hands down, feet back, body up — and I absolutely looked like I was having a convulsion. Everything on me was shaking; I could feel my jowls shake. I did twelve of them, more or less, and got up. Standing nearby was a man who had 250 pounds on each side of the bar — 500 pounds plus the bar — and I had been listening to him dropping that weight while I was shaking through my pushups. When I finished, he looked over at me, didn't say a word, but the disdain was written all over his face. You could see him thinking, "Why are you wasting the oxygen in this gym?"
Now, I cannot look into that man's soul, but for the sake of the illustration, I want to. I do not know whether he is dead or alive spiritually. I can see he is very much alive physically. And that is exactly the tendency we have when we hear the word "dead" in Scripture — we minimize it, because we think of it physically.
What Death Really Means
What Paul is saying is this: with the exception of one man, Jesus, all of us universally and absolutely came into the world dead. Everything in me wants to say "utterly dead" or "completely dead," but there are no degrees of dead. That is a very important point to get our arms around. We are dead — utterly dead.
As a result, we do not follow God. Looking at verse 2, we are walking according to the prince of the power of the air. When we get to Ephesians chapter six, we will spend more time on that concept, but what Paul is saying here is that you follow the world, Satan, and your flesh — that is how you live. And he says it is not just you: "we all" did it. We lived roughly like animals to some extent, doing nothing but following our lusts and our desires.
What a Dead Man Needs
Now keep your finger in Ephesians 2 and turn to the left to the Gospel of John. This is not a trick question. It does not require a seminary degree or any knowledge of Greek. Here is a very simple question: what does a dead man need? There is only one answer — life. A dead man needs life.
John writes in chapter 1, verse 1, about Jesus: "In the beginning was the Word" — that is Jesus — "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was" — what? — life.
Then in John chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus and barely gets a word out before Jesus answers in verse 3: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God." That produces all sorts of confusion for Nicodemus, because he is still thinking physically. He says, in effect, "I cannot climb back into my mother's womb a second time — I am not up for that, and she is certainly not excited about it." Jesus clarifies: it is the Spirit. The Spirit moves. He is describing the condition of man — man is spiritually dead, and there is only one thing a dead man needs.
Jesus says in John 10:10, "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly." Apart from Him, there is no life.
Wrath and Justice
Still in John chapter 3, at the end of the chapter, John the Baptist — not the Gospel writer — is speaking. He says, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
If you go back now to Ephesians chapter 2, that is exactly what Paul is saying. You were dead. You were sons of disobedience, recipients of wrath — "by nature children of wrath." What he is saying is that you were recipients of the wrath of God, and it was not unjust.
God is not some capricious entity sitting in heaven looking for people who are having fun so He can destroy them. God is not a killjoy God. He is a merciful God, a loving God, and a kind God — but He is also a just God. Sin must be punished. The wages of sin are death.
The First Dead Person I Ever Saw
I have told this story before, but it connects so vividly for me. The first dead person I ever saw was my grandfather. I was ten, eleven, maybe twelve years old, and we were in Sheraton, Iowa. We went into Beardsley Funeral Home, which was a house —
Dead in Our Sins
My grandfather was laid out in a casket in the front room of a large house. I was there with my mom and my Aunt Margaret, and it is still so fresh in my mind. We walked out onto the front porch, and my aunt said to my mother, "Didn't Dad look good?" I remember thinking I had better go back in there and check this out again. I walked back in and looked, and this was my thought at the time: he really does look good. That was, to my knowledge, his only suit. His tie was perfectly tied, his glasses were square.
But even as a young man of eleven or twelve, I was able to discern that while he looked good, he had one overriding problem. He was dead. And what does a dead man need? Life.
Years later, thinking back on that moment, the spiritual truth of it came into focus. My grandpa was lying in that casket. If I had come by and dropped bottles of booze in there, or put a little cocaine in there, or thrown money in there, or tossed in honorary PhDs — if I paraded Shania Twain by — none of it would have mattered. There is only one point today, and it is this: we are dead.
The Blanket Indictment of Romans 3
Turn to Romans chapter 3, verse 10. What Paul has done to this point is essentially look at people who don't care about God, people who would say they are just good people, and people who are religious people. He takes them all and puts them in one group and issues a blanket indictment of all of them.
Romans chapter 3, verse 10:
> "There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one."
He belabors that point a little further in the chapter. Romans chapter 3, verse 23:
> "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
And then for a snapshot — a microcosm of what we are talking about — Romans chapter 6, verse 23:
> "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."
Paul makes the point simply and without elaboration: by nature we are dead. We are dead, back to Ephesians chapter 2, in our sins and in our trespasses.
Sins and Trespasses
The word "trespass" means to slip, fall, stumble, go in the wrong direction. The word used here for "sin" appears 173 times in the New Testament. It means to miss the mark — in this case, to fall short of God's standard. Paul is not separating sins and trespasses; he is simply emphasizing the breadth of our sinfulness.
I remember talking to a police officer once who said the one sure way to get a ticket is to say, "I didn't know." Consider a receiver coming out of his route in the NFL. You will hear people cry out for pass interference, and there is a distinction between incidental contact and pass interference. In baseball, there is a difference between obstruction and interference. Paul is saying that even if you did not know, even if it was incidental contact rather than deliberate, it does not matter. The effect is the same. You are separated from God. You are a son of disobedience.
John warns us in 1 John chapter 2:
> "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lust, but the one who does the will of God abides forever."
As Bad Off as We Could Possibly Be
Paul is making an important distinction. He is not saying that we are all as bad as we can possibly be. He is saying that we are all as bad off as we could possibly be, and that we act like it.
We babysat last night — three girls: Gracie is three, Reagan is one and a half, and Brooklyn is three weeks old. In all the time spent with them, you are never going to have to say to them, "You are lost, depraved, and sinful — now act like it." You will never have to say that. They just do it. As the old Ringo Starr song goes, act naturally. Just do what comes naturally. That is the point Paul is making.
We are under the influence of the world — meaning the world system and the age we are in — the devil, the prince of the air, and the flesh. That trifecta comes together and summarizes what is at work in us. He says this is who you are, and you are acting accordingly.
Walking Worthy of the Calling
That changes, by the way, when we get to chapter four. There Paul says, "Therefore, I want you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling." You used to do this; now do this. You followed your lusts and your desires. The word "lust" here refers to a strong inclination or desire of every sort — not just sexual. "Desire" carries the sense of diligently and determinedly seeking after something. Paul is saying that is how you lived: you simply followed your lusts and your desires. And the result of that — and this is really important —
There Are No Degrees of Deadness
There are no degrees of deadness. If I take you over to Faulkner Funeral Home this morning, and in one room is a gentleman who passed away in his sleep last night — and maybe you've been there, I certainly have, where you've seen someone who's dead and it feels as though they just went to sleep — and in the next room is somebody who was in a horrific motorcycle wreck, literally just scraped up and brought in, that second man is as dead as the first. So you put the mass murderer, Jeffrey Dahmer, on one side, and Gandhi, Mother Teresa, your grandma on the other side — it doesn't matter. Both of them are dead. It takes no more grace to save one than the other.
This becomes really difficult for us, because we're looking on the outside. What Paul is giving us here is a behind-the-scenes look. He's saying, here's what's happening theologically. There are physical laws, and there are spiritual laws. The inevitable consequence of our nature, naturally, when we come into this world, is that we are sons of disobedience, and the natural consequence of that disobedience is that we are to be recipients of the wrath of God. That is what, in our natural condition, we deserve. The wages of sin is death.
William Barclay writes this: "The great central idea of sin is failure. Failure to hit the target. Failure to hold to the road. Failure to make life what life is capable of becoming." That definition of sin includes every one of us. When we understand what sin is, we are left in no doubt as to the universality of sin, and in no possible doubt of our own sin.
Man Is Not Sick — Man Is Dead
Drilling deeper: man is not sick. Man is not terminally ill. Man is not dying. Man is dead. Sin may exhibit itself differently. John Gerstner had a great term — there's always room for deprovement. We can always get worse. No one is as bad as they can possibly be; Hitler didn't kill his mother. That is not Paul's point. Paul's point is that we are as bad off as we can possibly be. We are lost in our sin. We are dead spiritually.
The other night I was watching TV and flipping through channels. We have 150 channels and nothing to watch — that always amazes me. The movie *The Sixth Sense* was on, and I hadn't seen it in a long time. Remember the little boy in that film? He says, "I see dead people." Well, once I see the world as God sees the world — like when I looked at the guy bench pressing 550 pounds — I see a dead, muscular person. I see a dead man. He didn't re-rack the weights either, which bothered me. I wanted to say something, but I figured I'd leave it alone. The point is: I see dead people.
Now this is really important. There is one thing a dead man needs. What is it? Life. And is there anything a dead person can do to bring himself to life? Not only is there nothing he can do — and this is very important — there is no way he can even respond.
Thirty Years Ago This Week
I didn't even realize it until the first service today, but it was thirty years ago this week that God saved me. I look back over that and I remember coming in and hearing Larry teach, and I'll say this all the time: it was the first time I heard the gospel. That's true, but it needs to be spelled out a little more carefully. It was not the first time the gospel had been proclaimed to me. On at least two other occasions I can clearly remember the gospel being presented to me.
I was raised in church — Catholic grade school, high school, and college — and I am very confident, though I don't mean this to sound judgmental, that I never had the gospel of salvation by Christ alone presented to me. I have friends who say they heard it there; I didn't. But after I came down here and started working, a friend invited Susan and me over to his house for dinner. I don't remember whether it was cheeseburgers or meatloaf, but when we walked in I said, "I know that smell — that's brownies." He said his wife had made frosted brownies for dessert, and they would be warm, straight from the oven, served with ice cream. My favorite dessert is probably a hot brownie — I like the corners, I like the crunch — so I was very much looking forward to this.
We're sitting there eating, and it becomes very apparent partway through the meal why we were invited. He starts talking about how we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They get up to take the salads away, and Susan leaned over and said, "We're out of here." I said, "Susan, they have brownies — I'm not buying what they're saying either, but hang on for the brownie." The more they talked about how sinful we are, the angrier Susan got. Most of you know Susan more as a caricature than as a person — the reason I married her is because she is so nice, so kind, and so gentle — but she was getting more and more upset. I finally said we had to go, though I did ask if I could take a brownie with me.
So I heard the gospel proclaimed that night. But it was on March 6, 1980, that I literally heard the gospel for the first time. Why? Why didn't that
Dead and Unable to Hear
You should feel a little tension at this point, a little pushback. And that is okay, because I am about to push back at you. I want you to simply acknowledge what the text says. We are dead. There is nothing I can do to improve that situation, but I am not hopeless — verse 4: "But God."
There is not one thing I can do. There is nothing I can do to earn salvation. I cannot even believe the gospel when it is presented. But God moves. In the midst of my sin and unworthiness and all the things attached to that, God moves.
The Only Hope for the World
I was watching something on C-SPAN this week with Bill Bennett. He was speaking to some organization, and he was talking about how the last great hope for the world is the United States of America. He was essentially quoting Abraham Lincoln, and I love the United States of America. I am very American-centric in my view of the world, and I know I am a dying breed. I love this country. I have no interest in traveling abroad — the only reason I would need a passport is to get to Vancouver. Am I deficient for that? Probably. Should I change? I do not know, but I am not going to.
I will tell you this, though: the last best hope for the world is not the United States of America. The last and only hope for the world is Jesus. That is the only hope for the world and for each of us in it. Brian Larris made the point last week that the hope for our world is the church — and what he means by that is not that we find hope in East Valley Bible Church specifically, but that we find hope collectively as we proclaim that truth. We have one message: we are dead, but you can be made alive through Christ.
But God intervenes. But God reacts. "For God so loved the world" — see the motivation there in verse 4: "Because of His great love with which He loved us." God so loved the world. He so loved you that while you were separated from Him, He died for you. That is why Paul tells us it is the love of Christ that compels us.
What Can a Dead Man Do?
What can a dead man do to save himself? Nothing. The response might be: just believe. But there is a problem with that. I cannot. I am dead. Does natural man, in the state we find him here in Ephesians chapter 2, have either the desire or the ability to believe, or to trust, or to come to Christ? No. It is not that man is sick — it is that he is dead. And the only thing that can change that is "but God." Man's will cannot change it. Man's desires cannot change it. He does not have the capacity to believe or the desire to believe. He is dead.
This is really important, and here is where we are going. We are going to spend some time exploring man's death and the consequence of it, but we are really going to unpack the "but God" part. And here is what will happen every time we look at it — some of you know these truths inside out, and so do I, and every time I study them, speak them, and read them, God gets bigger and bigger and I get smaller and smaller. This is not about you. This is about Him.
He starts at the beginning and says in verse 4 of chapter 1 that you were chosen, and in verse 5 that you were predestined. You were blessed with every spiritual blessing because you were dead and now you are alive, and you had nothing to do with it. But God did it all.
Wrestling These Truths Down
That is what we are going to do — take some time, however many weeks it takes, and just explore this. If you are with us for the very first time, I truly believe God has you here for a reason, not by accident. Speaking from my own personal experience, dealing with, grappling with, and wrestling these truths down — letting the Bible say what it says — radically and profoundly changes your view of yourself. You do not have a deep enough view of your own sin until you see yourself as dead.
For most of us, the problem is this: man is too big and God is too small. What Paul does here is take man to his proper place — naturally, he is dead — and elevate God. But God. Next week we are going to make the distinction between being dead and mostly dead, so look forward to that.
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*Let us pray together. God, thank You for this amazing, simple truth — we were dead, now we are alive. There is nothing a dead person needs but life, and there is nothing a dead person can do. He cannot even respond — just as I could not. The gospel was proclaimed to me, but I never responded. But God, You moved. I did not change; You changed me. I did not make a decision; You saved me. You caused us to be born again, and the evidence of that is our faith. It is not our faith that saved us — it is Your grace that saves us. God, take that truth, make it real to us, and give us a spirit of humility and gentleness as we try to live this truth out and as You move us to share it with others. Let it first drill deep into us and fill our well with Your grace and Your mercy. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.*