Paul opened Ephesians 2 with a grim picture. We were dead. Not spiritual zombies who could not respond to God, but people walking a road that ended in judgment and death. We followed the flesh. Not a sinful physical body, and not an inherited corrupt nature, but a capacity for sin that every person carries and acts on by choice. We were “by nature children of wrath.” Not because we inherited guilt at birth, and not because we inherited a corrupt or sinful nature, but because a life spent chasing selfish desire naturally leads to wrath.

Then Paul writes two of the most important words in the whole letter: “But God” (v. 4). Mercy steps into our story and changes where it was headed. Verses 5 through 7 show us how.