Several years ago, about two million Facebook users logged on and found a banner attached to their profiles declaring them dead. Facebook was introducing new wording for the pages of users who had died, converting their profiles into online memorials. Only the company made what it later admitted was a “terrible error,” announcing the death of two million people who were still very much alive. They learned of their sudden passing the way I suppose we would all like to get that news—on Facebook.

The platform has always struggled with what happens after a user dies. Loved ones have complained when Facebook reminded them to wish Grandma a happy birthday, even though Grandma had been gone for two years. I still get an occasional friend request from my own mother, who died in 2023. There is something unsettling about being reminded how easily a computer can confuse the living and the dead. Ephesians 2 begins with a similar shock, only this time the announcement is not a computer error. Paul writes to living, breathing people and says, “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.”

To understand how the Bible can describe us as dead while we are still walking around, we have to go back to the beginning. According to tradition, Genesis was written by Moses for Israel after God delivered them from slavery. They had lived for generations among Egyptian gods and creation stories. They did not merely need an explanation of how the world began; they needed an introduction to the God they were now being asked to follow. Who is this God, and what is he like? Genesis answers that he is the God who exists before everything and calls everything else into existence. He creates because he wants to, because it pleases him, because even before the world began he already loved the dream of you and me.

The world God creates is not merely adequate. It is abundant, beautiful, and lavish. There is light and water, oceans and shore, plants and trees, a sky full of birds, and a world alive with creatures. It pleased God to create it all and give it all away to us. We did nothing to deserve any of it. Creation itself is grace.

Within that world of overwhelming beauty, abundant food, deep pleasure, and satisfying purpose, God gave one rule. In a perfect world full of trees, he placed the fruit of one tree outside the boundary. The command did not come from a stingy God trying to keep everything good for himself. It came within a world of lavish generosity from the God who had already given the man and woman everything they needed. One rule—and we broke it. That is sin.

Even then, God’s response reveals his grace. He curses the serpent and the soil, but not the people. He names the consequences of their rebellion, then clothes them and removes them from the garden. Their banishment is not merely punishment. If they had eaten from the tree of life in their fallen condition, they would have lived forever in shame and separation. God was not willing to leave them forever without him. Sin drove us from the paradise of God’s presence, and the rest of the Bible tells the story of how God brings us home. In the meantime, however, sin brings death. That is why Paul says, “Once you were dead.”

Paul is not describing a feeling. He does not say that people apart from Christ sometimes feel lifeless, empty, or discouraged. He says they are spiritually dead. Since this is the condition shared by the whole world, it seems normal to us. If death is all you have ever known, how would you recognize it as death? Still, we often sense that something is wrong. We never quite measure up, even to our own expectations. The things we want never satisfy us as completely as we imagined they would. When the noise dies down and we are left alone with our thoughts, we discover things inside ourselves we cannot fix. We struggle to trust, to forgive, and sometimes even to believe there is anyone listening when we pray. The inside part of us is dead, like a switch that has never been turned on.

Paul also tells us that spiritual death leaves us under the influence of powers we cannot see. We live within an entire spiritual dimension, like the air around us, mostly unaware of either God’s activity or the work of evil. We imagine that we are simply doing what we want, but Paul says we have been following “the commander of the powers in the unseen world.” The devil acts as if this world belongs to him. He is like a bill collector who wants everything but will take whatever he can get. Whether we realize it or not, we give him plenty. We do not know what holds us, and we cannot free ourselves.

That leaves us under what Paul calls God’s anger. God is fiercely opposed to everything that harms his creation, including sin, evil, suffering, and death. We sometimes ask why God does not do something about all the wickedness in the world. The Bible’s answer is that he will. God is going to make everything right. The frightening part is that apart from Christ, we are on the wrong side of what God is making right.

Then the whole passage turns on two words: “But God.” We were dead, but God gave us life. We were under the power of sin, but God raised us with Christ. We belonged to this fallen world, but God seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now at work in those who belong to him. Paul says, “It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!”

Whenever someone invites me to lunch and says they intend to pay, I still bring money. I suppose grace always feels like a gamble to me. What if I misunderstood? What if they forget? What if the meal ends and I still have to pay? We approach God the same way. Jesus says, “I paid it,” and we still reach for our wallet. We keep trying to earn his approval, prove our worth, or contribute something so that we will not have to admit how completely dependent we are upon him.

Salvation is by grace alone. Jesus gave his life, and that is sufficient. Anything added to grace poisons the gospel. It is not grace plus keeping the Ten Commandments, attending church, or staying inside the cultural boundaries of whatever religious group we happen to belong to. We prefer a grace-plus gospel because it puts us back in control. We get to make the to-do list, obey the parts we are best at, and then show the list to everybody else. It gives us a way to compare ourselves with other people and feel a little better about ourselves. But as soon as we add something to grace, it is no longer grace.

Faith is not the part of salvation we contribute. Faith is the empty hand that receives what Jesus has already done. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves alive. Dead people do not cooperate in their own resurrection.

Verse 10 brings us back to creation: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” The God who once called light out of darkness now calls life out of death. He does not merely forgive the old you and send you back into the world patched up and slightly improved. In Christ, he creates you anew. Paul begins this passage with you as a corpse and ends with you as a living, breathing work of art.

That does not mean good works have no place in the Christian life. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved for them. Good works are not the price of grace; they are the life grace produces. You do not work in order to become God’s masterpiece. You are God’s masterpiece, created anew in Christ, and now you begin living the life he brought you out of the grave for.

Facebook accidentally posted an obituary on the pages of two million living people. Facebook was wrong about them. Paul is not wrong about us. Apart from Christ, we were dead. But that obituary is not the last word God has written about you. God, rich in mercy and great in love, gives life with Christ. He takes what sin has ruined and creates it anew. He turns an obituary into an announcement of new birth.

Stop reaching for your wallet. Stop trying to pay Jesus back, earn his approval, or prove that you deserve what he offers. You do not deserve it. That is why it is grace.