`Alienated from the life of God' (Eph. 4:18).  The condition of

all men by nature.

`Your life'.  `our life' (Col. 3:3,4).  Here Christ is revealed

as our life, this life is hid with Christ in God, and our

manifestation with Him in glory will not take place until He

Himself is manifested.

So far we have attempted to catch the outstanding characteristics of

this word, we must now come closer to its contexts in Ephesians and

Colossians.  The translation of Ephesians 2:1 -5 found in the A.V. and the

R.V. robs the believer both of the intended association of this passage with

Romans 6, and of the fact that Paul here is not speaking of the sinner's

state by nature but of the believer's standing in grace.  He is not speaking

of death In sins, but of death To sins.  This we must now examine and

establish before we can proceed.  First let us set out the Greek original so

that it can be referred to by the English reader, and give a word for word

literal rendering:

kai humas ontas nekrous tois paraptomasin kai

to the

to the

The words that demand particular attention are (1) ontas `being' and (2) tois

... tais `to'.  There is no hesitation noticeable on the part of the apostle

in his employment of the preposition en `in', wherever its use is needed,

this preposition is employed, and that repeatedly.  It occurs 28 times in

Ephesians 1 translated `at', `with', `in', and `wherein'; and 28 times in

Ephesians 2 where it is translated `wherein', `in', `among', `through', `at',

`by' and `thereby'.

The fact that Paul employs the preposition so frequently in these

passages when set over against the other fact that he does not use the

preposition in Ephesians 2:1 and 5, should at least make us pause.  When the

Lord desired to speak of the state of `being dead in sins' the preposition en

is used (John 8:21,24), and when the apostle uses the hypothetical argument

of 1 Corinthians 15:17 he uses the preposition en.  The reader may ask, what

warrant is there in Ephesians 2:1 to use the word `in' in the translation?

The answer is, that the dative case, indicated by tois ... tais can sometimes

indicate the need of the preposition to make sense.

It may be that not every reader of these lines will be clear as to what

is meant by the `dative case', and we are sure that those who do will be the

first to join us in our desire to make this feature as plain as our limited

space will permit.  First the word `case'.  This word is not to be confused

with a word of the same spelling which is derived from the Latin capio `to

hold', and so a case, as in the word `suitcase'; it is derived from the Latin

casus `a chance', from cado `to fall'.  When we use the term `dative case' we

must remember that the nominative, or the subject of the sentence, was

conceived as being upright and that other relations indicated by the

genitive, the accusative and the dative, were thought of as deflections from

the upright and hence called `cases'.  It will be perceived that to speak of

the nominative case is rather like saying `the upright deflection'!  The word

`dative' from the Latin word dativus `giving', is so named because when we

say, for example `give me the book' we actually mean `give to me the book'.

`The fundamental conception of the dative case is juxtaposition ... hence the

dative is diametrically opposed to the genitive' (Farrar).  So, the dative is

employed with en `in' whereas the genitive would be used with ek `out'.