But God
That's right! This is the message I shared with St. Timothy Lutheran Church I preached the same message at St. Mark Lutheran Church with minor changes. The text is Ephesians 2:1-10. Humanity has a problem. That problem is death. Our situation was desperate. We too were dead. However, in today's reading from Ephesians, Paul is not speaking about physical death, but spiritual death. Paul's imagery is vivid concerning our former condition without Christ. We have the images of the corpse, the slave and the condemned prisoner demonstrating how bad things were. Each image portrays a devastating predicament which they are powerless to change. Helplessness pervades these first few verses. We followed the course of this world and the ruler of the power of the air, in other words, Satan. Paul has a solution to our spiritual death. It's summed up in two words: But God. It is upon these two words that everything hinges. But God is the game changer for u...