we are not dealing with `sin' but `sins'.  We are never exhorted to put off the

old man; what the Scripture says is `put off the old man with his deeds' or as

regards our former conversation.  So we return to Ephesians 2:1 not only

convinced that the apostle is emphasizing the most gracious fact that the

members of the church of the One Body died to sin, but died to sins, `trespasses

and sins' to be exact.  Trespass (paraptoma), `a falling when one should have

stood upright, a misfall, mishap; hence, a falling aside from right, truth, or

duty, the particular and special act of sin from ignorance, inadvertence, or

negligence; sin rashly committed by one unwilling to do an injury' (Dr.

Bullinger, Lexicon).

How many of us can say that we have never sinned rashly even though

`unwilling to do an injury'?  To all this, in Christ we have died.  The A.V.

reads `who were dead'; the Greek reads humas ontas `you being', using the

present participle.  The apostle had the choice of four terms to express `being

dead'.  He could have used the verb thnesko as in Acts 25:19, or apothnesko as

in Colossians 2:20 and Hebrews 11:4, or nekroo as in Romans 4:19.  He uses none

of these but the present participle `being' and the word nekros, `a dead

person', `you being dead' is the literal and true rendering of Ephesians 2:1.

Ephesians 2:1 reads in the A.V. `were' dead, which of course is the past tense

of the verb.  The original reads ontas, the present participle of

the verb eimi, and should be translated `being'.  Now obviously the apostle

could not be represented as saying `And you being dead in sins' when addressing

saints, so we see that the one error, namely the addition of the preposition

`in' led to another, the substitution of `were' for `being'.  Two wrongs,

however, do not make a right, and nothing can justify robbing the believer of

his present position by grace.

A parallel passage is Colossians 2:13.  Lightfoot's comment is `The en of

the Received Text, though highly supported, is doubtless an interpolation for

the sake of grammatical clearness'.  En is not found in either the Vatican or

the Sinaitic manuscripts.  The whole context is against the idea that the state

by nature is in view; it is his state by grace.

`And you, being dead (here the A.V. translates ontas correctly) in your

sins (to trespasses) and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He

quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses' (Col.

Instead of Paul turning from the heights of heavenly places and the

glorious calling of the church, to remind his readers that they were once dead

in sins like the rest of the human race, he reminds them of the miracle of grace

that has happened, that in Christ they were at the moment of writing not only

dead to sin as a root (this is the foundation doctrine of Romans 6), but to sins

as the every day fruit, a line of teaching to which he returns in Ephesians

4:22-25 where he speaks of the putting off concerning the former conversation,

the old man, and the putting on of the new man.

Shorn of all explanatory additions, Ephesians 2:1-5 reads `Even you ...

hath He quickened together with Christ', but the necessary parenthesis holds up

the actual statement, so that we may perceive what a need there was for this

quickening, and how it fulfilled the reference to the power to us-ward who

believe, for we are now to read of a mighty spiritual power in direct antagonism

to the working of grace.  The apostle's primary intention is to place in

correspondence with the raising and seating of Christ, the raising and seating

together of the believer, but as in Ephesians 3:1 and 14, the main argument is