And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

Now Paul turns his attention to us. He says, “And you.” Who is he talking to? He says you who were dead in the trespasses and sins. That includes all of us, doesn’t it?

He uses the past tense of dead, which means we were dead, but are no longer dead. According to the Bible, we are born dead, spiritually dead.

Trespasses have to do with moral failures great or small. We are sinners. We fail to live up to the holy standards of our creator and so we are dead in them.

Sins has to do with our offenses against God and the resulting guilt. To what degree were we involved in trespasses and sins? How bad were are moral failures and offenses against a holy, righteous, and loving God? For that, we need to go on to verse 2 next time.

But in the middle of this verse is the phrase “He made alive.” Some translations don’t include this phrase but the meaning is still there when we get to verse 5. We’ll deal more with it when we get there, but for now the truth is stated that even though we were dead, God made us alive. He is the life-giving God.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 5:03 PM October 18, 2020.