“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” (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). HMM III