Ephesians 2:1-2
And you have he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that
now worketh in the children of disobedience:
So, the path you were on was the path the world said you had to be on.
Ephesians 2:3
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
‘Nature’ – You are the course of this world. You walked among people that didn’t know God or weren’t born again. When this world was up, you were up; when they were down, you were down. It said, ‘You were by nature…’ In other words, there was nothing different about you. By ‘nature,’ you lived that way. This kind of life came to you very naturally and you were just as the others. You blended in. There was nothing different about you.
Ephesians 2:4
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Because He loved you so much, He reached in and grabbed you and pulled you out of that kind of life. You came in contact with the Grace of God and you responded in faith and pulled you out of that kind of life and set you on a different path.
There’s supposed to be a difference. You were by ‘nature’ just like everybody else. You know, you’ve got to be very watchful over who you give this advice to.
‘Yeah, just do what comes naturally.’ or ‘Just use common sense.’
Be very careful who you tell to use common sense. You don’t know what is common to that guy! You don’t know what they’ll do by their ‘nature.’ There was a common way you used to think. Now to walk in a different life you’ve got to make something else common. You’ve got to have a new way of thinking. You’ve got to be a new nature. He said, ‘by nature you were a child of wrath.’ But when Jesus became the Lord of your life, He put HIS nature on the inside of you, and it is possible for you and I to develop that nature to the point where NATURALLY we walk in love.
We walk according to the Spirit. This is the kind of life that is supposed to be marking our lives as different.
Jeremy Pearsons, KCM