The Bible Study podcast, episode 503.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the book of Ephesians with chapter two.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

We continue on with chapter two,

which we're starting to get in the meat of the book of Ephesians. Again, not a very long book.

This won't take us all that long, but we get to figure out why it is that Paul wrote as we get into the meat of the book.

Chapter 2, starting in verse 1, made alive in Christ. 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. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following

its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath, but because of his great love for us,

God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ

even when we were dead in transgressions.

It is by grace you have been saved.

Let me pause there in the middle of this paragraph here.

This is the first thing that Paul is trying to establish here in Ephesians is that there was

a pattern here. We were in sin, we were dead in sin, and that we were saved by grace, that God has

made us alive again because of what he did in Jesus. It talks about us when we were dead in sin,

when we were in that state, that we were

living by the cravings of our own flesh, that we're living by our own desires and thoughts.

Now, obviously, one of the things we have to think about when we get to this point is, is that

something we're past? It's definitely talking about that living by the cravings of our flesh, whether that

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