You presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness unto lawlessness.
— Romans 6:19b
We also all conducted ourselves once among the sons of disobedience in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
— Ephesians 2:3
The Bible tells us that we were slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness. Before we knew the Lord, we were just slaves. That was our position. What were we enslaved to? We were slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness. We had no way to free ourselves. We probably tried many times. We often made up our minds to change. There were things about us that we knew were wrong, and we decided, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” Yet there was a power within us that enslaved us to those unclean things. We may have known what was right in our minds, but in ourselves we had no ability to change. We were slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness. This was our hopeless position before we were born again.
Finally, before we were born again we were children of wrath and sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:2-3). Who were we before we were born again? We were just children of wrath and sons of disobedience. This was our nature and position by birth. Even when we were young, we had a propensity towards disobedience. We were disobedient to our parents and disobedient to our teachers. Then when we grew up, we were disobedient to God Himself. Before we believed in the Lord we probably reacted every time someone talked about Jesus. We could talk about philosophy and religion in a general way, but if someone said, “You need to believe in Jesus,” we would say, “Don’t talk to me about that!” Because we were disobedient to the Son, we were also under God’s wrath (John 3:36).
Adapted from Born Again, pages 30-31.
Tomorrow: “Now We have a New Position!”