From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: I should like to call your attention this morning to the words which are to be found in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, in the second chapter, in the first three verses. The first three verses in the second chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians.

And you hath 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.

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.

Now, we must remind ourselves that the apostle at this point is concerned to display to these Ephesian Christians, and all the other Christians to whom he was writing, and therefore to us, the greatness and the glory of the Christian salvation.

These Ephesians had already believed the gospel. Paul thanks God for their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love to all the saints. They had been sealed with the Holy Spirit. They had the earnest of the inheritance within them. And yet the apostle prayed that the eyes of their understanding may be enlightened. They're merely at the beginning. They're merely as babes.

He wants them to grasp something of the largeness and the greatness and the majesty of this wonderful salvation. And subject as they are to temptation still, and living as they were in a gainsaying world, surrounded by paganism and by opposition in various forms, the apostle is particularly anxious that they should be clear of the greatness of the power of God toward all that believe.

And it is surely the one thing that we need to know and to be certain of more than anything else at all times and in all places in the Christian life. Nothing is more vital to us therefore, than that we should be clear of the power of God that is manifested in this Christian salvation.

Well, now, the apostle helps in that respect. He's not only praying for them, he's also instructing them. And the two things must always go together. He prays, as I've reminded you, that the eyes of their understanding may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. That is absolutely vital.

Without that understanding that the Holy Spirit alone can give us, words like these that we are looking at this morning will obviously be quite meaningless to us. We will probably hate them, dislike them, feel they're pessimistic, feel that they're morbid. We say we want something to cheer us up, not a terrible analysis of human nature such as that. That's depressing.

Well, in other words, without a spiritual mind, we cannot hope to understand them. So he puts that first. His prayer comes first. Then, having prayed, he puts the knowledge and the instruction before them. Very well.

How are we to have a true conception of the greatness of God's power in salvation? You see, it was a constantly recurring theme with the Apostle Paul. Take that magnificent statement in Romans 1:16. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." Why? Well, because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. This power.

How do we measure it? Well, I suggested last Sunday morning that the apostle gives us the precise measurements here. And the first is the depth of sin out of which we have been raised. In other words, in order to measure the greatness of this power, you've got to go down and you've got to go up.

Man never starts on ground level as it were. The Peter Pan idea of human nature is pathetic. It's so untrue. It's so utterly and completely wrong. We don't start neutral. We don't start in a kind of indeterminate state, neither good nor bad. No, no. We start down in the depths of a pit. And we've got to be raised up from that, and then we are raised right up into the very heavens themselves.

So the apostle starts, of course, where we must start. Salvation comes to us where we are, not where we'd like to be, not as we like to think of ourselves idealistically. The gospel of Jesus Christ is thoroughly realistic, and it starts with us exactly where we are, and that is, I say, in the bottom of a pit of corruption.

Very well, then. The apostle's case is this, that we will never have an adequate conception of the greatness of this salvation unless we do realize something at any rate of what we were before this mighty power took hold of us. Unless we realize what we would still be if God had not intervened in our lives and had rescued us.

In other words, we must realize the depth of sin. What sin really means, and what it has done to the human race.

Now, we must start with this, I say, because it is a fact. It's not because it's theory, but because it's a fact. The Bible is a book of facts. It's concerned about us, as I say, as we are. It's historical. We must start with facts, whether we like them or not. If we want to be honest in our reasoning, well, we've got to face facts, and here's the first one.

And let me show you how absolutely vital it is that we should start here. No man will ever have a true conception of the biblical teaching with regard to redemption unless he's clear about the biblical doctrine of sin.

And that is why so many people today are so loose and vague in their ideas of redemption. The common idea is that our Lord is a sort of friend to whom we can turn in difficulties, as if that were all. He is that, thank God for it. But that isn't redemption in its entirety. You can't begin to measure it unless you realize something about what the Bible teaches us about man in sin.

The whole effect of sin upon man. Or let me put it in another way. You can't possibly understand the doctrine of the Incarnation unless you understand this doctrine of sin. The Bible tells us that man was in such a condition, that it necessitated the coming of the second person in the Blessed Holy Trinity from heaven to earth.

He had to come down and take unto him human nature and be born as a babe. It was absolutely essential before man could be redeemed. Why? Well, that's because of sin. That's because of the nature of sin. Therefore, you see, you can't understand the Incarnation unless you're clear about sin.

And in the same way, look at the cross on Calvary's hill. What is it? What does it mean? What's it telling us? What happened there? Well, I say again, you cannot possibly understand the death of our Lord and what he did there on the cross unless you are clear about this doctrine of sin.

And of course, there is no question at all about it. The utter looseness in people's ideas about the death of our Lord is entirely due to this. They don't like the doctrine of substitution. They don't like the doctrine of penal suffering. That's because, of course, they've never understood the problem. It's because they don't start with man in sin.

Very well, you see, these are the great cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, and they cannot be understood except in the light of this matter. But let me be still more practical. There may be someone sitting in this congregation who's saying, "Oh, you're talking about your doctrines. I'm not interested in doctrines. I'm not one of your theologians. I'm a hard-headed man of the world, and I'm a man of affairs, and I I want to know something about life and how to live."

Very well, my friend, let me meet you. I am asserting that you cannot understand life as it is in this world at this moment, unless you understand this biblical doctrine of sin. I go further. I suggest you cannot understand the whole of human history apart from this. With all its wars and its quarrels and its conquests, its calamities, and all the rest of it, I suggest to you that there is no adequate explanation save in this biblical doctrine of sin.

So, really, the way to understand the history of the world is to understand the history of redemption in the light of this great biblical doctrine of man fallen and in sin. You read your books on the philosophy of history, and you'll find that they fumble. They don't know where they are. They can't give explanations. All their ideas are absolutely falsified by history.

That is because they never realize that this is the starting point. All right. Well, now then, there are some reasons why we must consider this. Because in the last analysis, there are only two explanations of why man is as he is, and why the world is as it is this morning, and why it always has been what it has been.

There is this teaching. There is every other teaching. Of course, over against this teaching is the popular teaching of today that man is as he is and things are as they are, because, well, man really hasn't had enough time yet to advance to perfection. He was once an animal. It isn't long ago. Millions of years are nothing, but just a few billions of years ago, man was an animal.

There he was in the forests, climbing trees, and so on. Well, you can't suddenly expect him to become perfect, they say. He is sloughing off these bestial relics and vestiges, but he hasn't done it all yet. He is doing it increasingly, of course. But you must give him time. The problem of humanity, we are told, is purely one of time.

They haven't very much comfort to give us who are alive now, because they say that in many billions and millennia of years again, well, men will probably have succeeded of arriving at perfection. It's a question of time, it's a question of knowledge, it's a question of growth and instruction, and so on.

Now, you either believe that or some variation of that. Or else you believe that it is what the Bible says about man that is true. And here we are told exactly what it is. And therefore it seems to me that the differences between this biblical view and all other views, the differences are these: This biblical view is so realistic.

You see, all those other views, they really don't face the facts. They gloss over a number of facts. They're so pleasing and they're so ingratiating. They want to make us think well of ourselves and to think well of man, so they should give man a chance, as it were. He's never had a full chance yet, nor a right opportunity, but give him time, and so on.

Whereas the Bible, with its stark realism, comes to us and tells us that man's a fool, and that man has brought calamity upon himself. That it's because man is, as Paul puts it here, "a child of disobedience" that he is what he is and his world is what it is. That there's nothing to excuse him at all. That he's got to admit it. He's got to come and face it. And there's no hope for him until he does. That's called repentance. It's realistic.

And if I had no other reason for believing the Bible and for believing that the Bible is the Word of God, that would be enough for me. It tells me what I know to be the stark truth about myself. And I know of nothing else that does. Your novels don't, your newspapers don't, your philosophies don't. They're all praising me, and all telling me not to think too hardly of myself. They're trying to boost up my morale. They're treating me psychologically. It isn't true. This is realistic.

Not only that, it's radical. It gets down to the depths. It doesn't merely face certain aspects of the problem of man and of the individual. It faces them all. And though it's painful, it takes up its scalpel, as it were, and it dissects and dissects until there the canker is exposed. It's radical.

And that is why I say, we not only preach this gospel, but it's extremely difficult at times not to be impatient with what the world is so ready to believe. There is the world with its ideas and its philosophies medicating symptoms, giving us its phenobarbital in a spiritual sense, and its anodynes, its aspirins, and so on. And our pain is a little better, and therefore we think we are well.

And the condition has never been diagnosed. It's never been exposed. It's not faced. The world doesn't like it. It's afraid of it, so it doesn't face it. It's not radical. This is very radical, as we shall see. And then the last thing I would say about it in general like this is this: that this biblical view is at one and the same time more pessimistic and more optimistic than all the other views.

Now, of course, the thing that's generally said about this biblical view is that it's pessimistic. "Ah," they say, "there it is. That old gospel talking about man as a miserable sinner, and condemning him to some despair, telling him there's only one hope for him, painting its dark pictures. How thoroughly pessimistic and revolting it is. Why don't you tell us something about beauty, and about goodness, and about art, and about all that lift us up?"

You see, it's regarded as pessimistic, whereas the other is optimistic. I think it follows from what I've already said that the criticism is entirely beyond the mark, so I put it in this form. Initially, this view is thoroughly pessimistic. It is the most pessimistic view of man in the world this morning, because it does tell us at the very beginning that man is so bad and so rotten that he cannot be improved. He must be born again.

Nothing less than a new nature is sufficient for man. Man, says the Bible, is as bad as this, that the Son of God had to come down from heaven to earth and even die on the cross in order to lift him up. Nothing else could do it. So that in the first instance, you see, it is profoundly pessimistic.

All the others say, "It's all right. Give man time," as I say. "Give him teaching." The prophet of that was H.G. Wells, of course, until the very end of his life when he came to see through the fallacy himself. But there it was. All we needed to be told was the horrors of war, and we'd never fight again. If only we were instructed about the bestiality of war, no nations would ever fight anymore.

And they believed that, you see, and they've been believing it for centuries, but the facts are crying out against it. Pessimistic in the first instance, but in the final view, gloriously optimistic, and the only view that is optimistic. Because how can you believe these other views when they've been proved to be wrong by history? The whole record of human civilization is just the demonstration of the falsity of every hope that man has ever given to man.

Man has always been reaching after Utopia. He's been doing it for centuries, but he never gets there. I say that's awful pessimism. There is only one optimistic view of life, and that is which tells us, the one which tells us that though man is down in the depths of sin, the power of God can come and take hold of him, and can raise him to the heights, and has done so in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Very well. Now there, I say, we take a general view of this position. But now let me come to the details, to the specific teaching. The apostle in these three verses summarizes in a most amazing manner, and perhaps in the most perfect manner anywhere in the whole of the Bible, the biblical doctrine, the scriptural view of man in sin.

He says four things about it. Let me give you the four headings immediately. He first of all describes man's state in sin. Secondly, he gives us an explanation of this state and why man is in this state. Thirdly, he tells us what this state and condition leads to in practice. And fourthly, he tells us how God views man in this state.

That would be my analysis of these three verses. The condition, why man is in it, what results in practice because he's in it, and what God thinks of it. It's all in these three verses. Well, now this morning, let us start with a consideration of that, and we start therefore with man's state in sin. What is it? Well, here is the answer.

"And you hath he quickened, who were dead." Now, certain words have been added here by the translators which are not in the original. The original reads like this: "And you who were dead." You've noticed in your verse, in your books, that the words "hath he quickened" are in italics, which means that the translators have added them, and rightly so in a sense, in order to help it to read more smoothly. But Paul, you see, was full of his matter and he said, "And you who were dead."

And not dead, remember, *in* trespasses and sins, but dead *on account of* them or *because of* them, which is again a better translation. But the word is, the word "dead." You were dead, says Paul. Well, what's he mean? Well, obviously, he is dealing with a condition of spiritual death. It isn't actual physical death, because he goes on to say immediately wherein he walked and in which we all had our conversation in times past.

In other words, the apostle's teaching is that life for the non-Christian is a living death. He is spiritually dead. Now, I go on repeating the term because it's obviously vital. You notice what a strong term it is. There isn't a stronger term than that. How categorically he is. You can't say anything beyond saying that a man is dead.

He isn't almost dead. He's actually dead. He isn't desperately ill. He's dead. There is no life there. Now, it's the apostle's word, it isn't mine. It's the word that is used everywhere in the scripture. And it is the word that is used about man in a state of sin until the power of God unto salvation in the gospel comes and does something to him. He's dead.

Well, what does this mean? Well, the best way I suppose to define death is to say this, that it's the exact opposite and antithesis of life. What is life then? Well, in the Bible, life is always described and defined in terms of our relationship to God. Take the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in John 17:3. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." That's life.

What is death? The opposite of that. God is the author of life. Who alone has life and immortality. He's the source of life, the sustainer of life. God is life and gives life, and apart from God there is no life. Very well, then, we can define life like this. Life is to know God, to be in relationship to God, to enjoy God, to correspond with God, to be like God, to share the life of God, and to be blessed of God.

According to the Bible, that is life. Therefore, as we come to define death, we must define it as the opposite of all that. And as we do so, I think you will see at a glance that what Paul says here about the man who's not a Christian is nothing but the simple truth. He's dead, says Paul. "You were dead." And those who are not Christian are still dead. What does he mean? Well, it means this: they are ignorant of God.

They don't know God. Now, the apostle puts it here in this very second chapter himself immediately. He says here that these people before their conversion, were in that very condition. Let me remind you. He says that in time past, "ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God."

You were without God, he says. You didn't know him. You were estranged from the life of God. You were not in fellowship with God. Oh, you may have talked about God, but God was some sort of a philosophic term for you. He was some imaginary being somewhere, someone to criticize, and you didn't know him. You were not in correspondence with him. You were outside his life.

Do we know God, my friends? I don't ask, "Do we talk about God?" Is God real to us? Do we know him? "This is life eternal that they might know thee." Can you say, "My God"?

The second thing about this condition, obviously, is this: that such a man is ignorant also of spiritual things and spiritual life. The apostle puts it in writing to the Romans in the eighth chapter like this. He says, "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, whereas they that are after the spirit do mind the things of the spirit."

Which being interpreted means this: they that are after the flesh, they that are not Christian, well, they're interested in the things that correspond to that. They are not interested in the things of the spirit. And of course, the sheer fact is that this is realistically true, as I've said. The man who's not a Christian knows nothing about these things, and he doesn't want to know anything about them. He's not interested in them. He thinks they're terribly boring.

And I needn't waste any of your time in proving to you that this is an accurate description today. The man who's not a Christian finds the Bible very boring. He finds expositions of the Bible very boring. He doesn't find films boring. He doesn't find the newspapers boring. He doesn't find the novels boring, but he finds these things boring. He doesn't enjoy conversations about the soul, and about life and death, and heaven and God, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

He can't help it, but he he just sees nothing in it, and he's not interested. He's interested in men and in their appearances and in what they've done, and in what they've said. The world and its suggestion appeals to him tremendously. Well, I needn't waste your time. It comes to that, doesn't it? It's perfectly simple. These are the spiritual things. These are God's things. And that man, he sees nothing in it. Why? Well, he's dead.

He's got no life. You see, you must have a nature that corresponds. Like appeals to like. Like attracts like. The child is born and it wants milk. Its nature demands it. But an inanimate object doesn't, you see. And there it is. Well, there is the second thing therefore about man in sin. He not only doesn't like these things, let's go on and put it really as the scripture puts it.

He even hates them. He literally hates them, because they are not only boring to him, he has a feeling somehow that the fact that he doesn't like it condemns him, and he doesn't like that feeling. He, of course, is prepared to have some sort of a religion, as long as he can control it, as to what is said and for how long it's said, and things like that. Ah, yes. There must be a time limit on God's things, but not on the world's things.

You see, that is hatred of God. The natural mind, says Paul, "is enmity against God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Well, let me go on. This kind of person, obviously, is unlike God, and doesn't share the life of God. In other words, to use a biblical term, this kind of life is corrupt. It's corruption.

God is holy, and all who are like God are holy like God. "Be ye holy," he says, "for I am holy." But these people are dead. They're outside His life. They're corrupt. They're a mass of evil. They delight in evil things. They gloat in them, because their nature is an evil nature. There is no righteousness in them. There is no truth in them. They believe lies. They are liars, says the Bible. "Hateful and hating one another." That's man in sin. Dead. Outside the life of God.

And the other thing, of course, is that such a life is not blessed by God, and therefore it's miserable. And the life of man in sin is a miserable life. Now, if you dispute that, I've only one thing to say to you, and that is that you're not a Christian. If you do not agree that the godless life, the life of the world, is a miserable life, and that the only happy life is the Christian life, well, you're just proclaiming that you're not a Christian.

To hanker after that sort of life, that sort of existence, is just a proclamation, I say, that you haven't a spiritual nature. Because the truth is about that life that it's wretched, it's unhappy. Look beneath the surface, and you see it. It's shouting at you.

You see the way of the world with all its changes. Its constant changes is a proclamation that they're profoundly miserable. That's why they have to go on changing. They get tired of everything. They must be seeking after something new. They're looking for thrills, and they run after them. Why? Well, because it's intolerable to them to spend a few hours with themselves. They find their own company so miserable that they must spend their lives in running away from themselves. That's the measure of the misery of a life of sin. No resources, no reserves. Because they're outside the life of God.

There is man in sin. He's dead. The apostle indeed sums it all up very perfectly in a well-known statement in the sixth chapter of his epistle to the Romans, in the 11th verse. He says, "Reckon ye yourselves therefore to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God." You were not alive to God before. You are now, as Christian, alive unto God.

My beloved friends, do we realize that man in sin is dead in that way? Do you realize that that is what you were by nature? Don't you see that this is the way to measure salvation? That is what we all have been, says Paul. And those who are in sin are still there. Have you no heart of compassion for the unbeliever? Do you ever pray for them? Aren't you doing everything you can to bring this gospel to them, whether in this or in any other land? That's their condition. Oh, miserable wretches. Dead. Outside the life of God.

Very well, let me hurry to a word on the second thing. The second thing he tells us about such people is that they are governed by this world. "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world." What a statement. "The course of this world." The actual word the apostle used was "the age of this world." What does he mean by that? Well, I think he means something like this. He says that this kind of life is lived under the control of the outlook and the mentality of this present world. This present evil world, as the scripture called it elsewhere.

Now, the trouble about the man in sin is that he's carried along. He's controlled. He's absolutely governed by that kind of life and by that kind of outlook. Again, you will recognize at once that this is something that is taught in the Bible from beginning to end. According to the Bible, the world is always against God. What is the world in a biblical sense? Well, you can define it like this, if you like.

It is the outlook and the mentality and the organization of life apart from God. That's what's meant by the world. It doesn't mean the physical universe. It doesn't mean the mountains and the rivers, and so on. The world is a mentality. It's an outlook. It's a view of life without God. God is shut right out. It's man himself viewing and organizing life and controlling life. It's this mentality that is described as the world.

Again, let me show you how Paul has put it, once and for ever, in this very second chapter that we are considering. Let me read that verse again. Wherefore, he says, "Remember that ye, being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision by the flesh made with hands, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." That's it. To be without God means that you are in the world.

And to be in the world means that you're governed by the outlook and the mentality of the world. Listen to the apostle again putting that to the Romans. Wherefore, he says, "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." As a Christian, says the apostle, "Don't be conformed to this world with its mentality and its outlook. You're in another realm. Be transformed. Have your mind renewed to correspond."

Or listen to the apostle John saying it very explicitly. "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the mind, and the pride of life." That's the world. "Don't love that," says John. "You don't belong to that. That's utterly opposed to God."

"Love not the world." Well, the apostle's statement here is this, that the man who's not a Christian is a man who's simply governed and controlled by the world. Its mind, its outlook, its mentality. And I know of nothing which at times strikes me as being more sad about a man in sin than just that.

You see it all again in your newspapers. Isn't it sad to notice the way that people are absolutely governed entirely by what other people think and say and do? Of course, they're sorry for those of us who are Christian. They say, "Fancy, shutting themselves down to that one book. Those narrow, miserable Christians." The broad-minded man of the world. Oh, how subtle the devil is to persuade people of that. For their little life is entirely controlled by the organization of the world.

They think as the world thinks. They take their opinions ready-made from their favorite newspaper. Their very appearance is controlled by the world, fashion. They all conform. It must be done. They dare not not do it. They're afraid of the consequences. That's tyranny. That's absolute control. Clothing, hair, style, everything. Absolutely controlled by the mind of the world.

Not to mention the subtle, almost devilish influence that it is that is displayed often even there in its fashions. Sex rampant. This sex-ridden age. It comes out everywhere. Photographs, pictures, suggesting it, and everybody being controlled by it, and governed by it. All their opinions, I say, their appearance, their language, the way they spend their money, what they want, what they desire, where they go, where they spend their holidays. It's all absolutely controlled. Governed completely.

Surely it was never more evident in the world than it is today. When people talk so glibly about emancipation, they're giving this absolute proof that they're governed and dominated and controlled by this world. The mind of the world. The age of propaganda, the age of advertising, the mass mind, the mass men, the mass individual. Isn't it tragic? But that's man in sin, you see.

He's dead because he's controlled by this mind of the world. Not only that, the apostle goes on to tell us that that in turn is governed and controlled by an evil principle that is in life. Listen to him putting it like this. "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air." Listen, "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." The spirit here means the principle.

There is an evil principle which he says is working in this world. And it's a strong word, that word "working." There is an energy. There's a force. There's a power about it. There is nothing more pathetic as to think of a life of sin as a passive life or a negative life. The fact is that there is a very powerful principle of evil at work in this world. And it's only the man who believes the Bible and who has had his mind and understanding enlightened by the Holy Spirit who can see that.

Do you suggest to me that all that you see in life today just comes to pass anyhow, somehow? Can't you see how organized it is? How perfect it is? How subtle it is? How it corresponds in every part? There is a principle of evil at work. In a very dark age, let us thank God for every indication of improvement. I mean by that that it is a simple fact that there were certain so-called philosophers who were honest enough to tell us that the last war actually convinced them of this.

A man who was well known once, called Dr. Joad, he admitted that in a book. He was an atheist, an unbeliever before the war. He came to believe in God at any rate, and he tells us why. He said, "When I saw this second war, I was convinced that the Bible is at any rate right as far as this, that there is a principle of evil at work." He said, "I can't explain it in any other way. It isn't accident. It isn't negative. There is a devilish evil power at work." And it's there. "The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."

And therefore it behooves us as Christian people to recognize that this morning, that these poor people who are without God in the world are being dominated and controlled by this evil principle. But let me go one step further back. The apostle says that in turn, of course, is governed by the devil and all his powers. "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air." What a statement.

But surely, says some sophisticated person, "You don't mean to say you still believe in the devil?" The simple answer is, I believe in the devil because I have to. And I say I have to, not merely because it's here. This is enough for me, but I believe it because I can't explain life without it.

And it's because the devil is ignored that the world is as it is. The devil is so subtle that he dominates men, and persuades men at the same time that he's not being dominated. Man even thinks he's emancipating himself, and here he is, controlled by the devil. You notice the term, "the prince of the power of the air." He is also called "the god of this world." The Lord Jesus Christ called him "the prince of this world." He is referred to as "Beelzebub, the chief of the devils." And it is he who is dominating it all. He hates God. He was an angel, created perfect by God. A bright seraph. And he stood up against God. He wanted to be God. And he hates him. And his one object is to mar God's creation, to ruin God's world. So he came into it, and he's been doing it ever since. And he dominates the life of man.

We are under the dominion of Satan by nature. And he has his forces, his powers. He's the prince of what? "Of the powers of the air." You notice how Paul put it in that sixth chapter of this epistle at the beginning. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood." If you think that the problem confronting the statesman today is just other men, oh, how ignorant you are politically, let alone religiously. If you think it's just a question of personalities, one man or another, you haven't started to understand it. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness." That's it. "The powers of the air," darkness, "spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places."

The Bible tells us that there are unseen powers. He's "the prince of the power of the air," and you can interpret that word "air" in those two ways. You can say, "of the prince of the power of darkness," or "the prince of the unseen powers." Not earthly powers. They belong to another realm. They're ethereal, as it were. They're spiritual. They haven't bodies, but they're there. And the tragedy of man is that because he can't see the spirits of evil, he doesn't believe in it. He can't see the Holy Spirit, so he doesn't believe in the Holy Spirit. He can't see God, so he doesn't believe in God. And he doesn't realize he's in a spiritual realm.

That's because he's dead, you see. It's because he hasn't got spiritual understanding. "The prince of the powers," oh, "the power of evil." The man who's not a Christian is absolutely dominated and controlled. He's dead in their hands. Yes, but Christian people, we are still confronted by them. That's what the apostle says in that sixth chapter. "We Christians have to wrestle against these." "Christian, seek not your repose. Cast thy dreams of ease away."

And it seems to me that many Christians are dreaming of ease, and are thinking and dreaming of some sort of a salvation in which there's no strife and struggle. Never in this world, because of these powers of evil, "the prince of the powers of the air," with all their subtlety and malignity, with all their cleverness, their chief transforming himself into an angel of light, in order that he may get us down. That's what's confronting us.

And the amazing thing is that any of us still stands in this Christian life at all. We are confronted by the one who didn't hesitate to come to the Son of God and tempt him and say, "If thou be the Son of God, do this." He did it with absolute confidence. He's the one who defeated all the patriarchs, and all the saints of the Old Testament. Every one of them went down. And he's opposed to us with all his might and strength and power. With all the forces that he commands, with the evil principle that he's put into the whole outlook and mind of the world. It's organized in visible form. It's in unseen form. It's everywhere.

How do we stand? I say, there's only one answer. It's the exceeding greatness of his power to us that believe. The God who saves us is the God who keeps us. And without him, we couldn't stand for a second. The glory therefore must be entirely his. "You hath he quickened, who were dead." Oh, that our eyes may be enlightened, that we may see the problem, appreciate its depths.

And then know that this power which holds us will never leave us nor forsake us. Amen.