News sources often inform us that So-and-So was indicted on x-number of criminal counts, each representing a particular violation of the law and therefore adding to the potential guilt and severity of consequences should the person so charged be convicted.  Where God is concerned, the charge is always accurate and the conviction arising from it is automatic because God is just.  It should therefore be cause for great alarm to read God’s unequivocal, devastating assessment of the human race as recorded in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians.

                1.  “You . . . were dead in trespasses and sins” (v. 1).  The very first statement is a knockout punch.  Truly, nothing more need be said for man to know that his situation is hopeless.  Dead—due to conscious and deliberate sin.  By this means, Paul makes clear that man is helpless before God:  a dead man can do nothing for himself or for anyone else.

                        2.  “Ye walked according to the course of this world” (v. 2).  The “course of this world” is one governed by Adam’s fall through sin, God’s curse upon him and his progeny, and man’s consequent complete separation from God.

                3.  “[Ye walked] according to the prince of the power of the air” (v. 2).  Paul further explains that this “prince,” who is Satan, is the same “spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”  Not only are all men citizens of a world separated from God and under His condign curse but they are also governed by a malevolent dictator who wishes them ill and against whom they have no recourse.

                4.  “We were by nature the children of wrath” (v. 3).  If the first statement contained a knockout punch, this one delivers the death blow.  “Nature” speaks of man’s constitution, his unchangeable essence.  In other words because of sin, every person enters this world under God’s wrath, which is His holy attitude toward sin, and under a sentence of eternal damnation.

                As if that were not enough, Paul adds to the hopelessness of the Gentile condition these additional indictments.

                5.  “Ye . . . were without Christ” (v. 12).  The Messiah came through Israel and was promised by covenant to the Jewish people.  Christ is the only means of salvation; to be without Him is to be without the means of salvation and without any hope of obtaining that salvation.

                6.  “Aliens [i.e., “excluded from”] the commonwealth of Israel” (v. 12).  Since every covenant God made was with His chosen nation, Israel, exclusion from that nation meant that no promise of God pertained to such a person.  The next two phrases are appositional elaborations of this fact.

                7.  “Strangers from the covenants of promise” (v. 12).  A stranger, or alien, is one without legal rights or protections.  Not one good thing that God could or would do did He covenant to do for a Gentile.

                8.   “Having no hope” (v. 12).  The two essential elements of hell are eternal punishment and no hope of any reprieve.  Though fictitious, Dante’s imagined inscription on the gates of hell is appropriate:  “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”  Paul declares the plight of the Gentile to be that he was lost in sin, deserving of and headed to hell, and headed there without any hope of deliverance.

                9.  “Without God in the world” (v. 12).  Gentiles had no promise from God because God had made His covenant promises exclusively with Israel.  Here, Paul pulls the rug from under the last remaining shred of hope.  Not only did the Gentiles have no covenant, and consequently no promise from God, they were without God.  That is, they were unaware of His existence and incapable of approaching Him.

                It is impossible to imagine a more desperate situation than this nine-count indictment delivered by inspiration of the Spirit of God.  But this infinite bleakness is punctuated by two statements, one following each passage cited above.  “But God . . . hath quickened us together with Christ. . . . For by grace are ye saved through faith.  But now in Christ Jesus ye . . . are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (vv. 4, 5, 8, 13).