Is there sense, let alone doctrinal truth, in such a rendering? NO. Again shall we read:

We cannot conceive of anything more shocking than such a statement, and we are sure

every reader repudiates with horror.

Alas, we have no need for such reckoning, our natural condition is most evident but

how can the believer, looking at His Lord, say "likewise I will reckon myself to be dead

IN SIN". Surely the only translation that is true is as the A.V. gives it. The context of

Peter's reference to "being dead to sins" illuminates the expression. He tells us that

Christ's sufferings leave us a "copy" (hupogrammos, a copy set for a pupil) with the

object that he may "follow His steps", "that we being dead TO sins, should live unto

righteousness" (I Pet. 2: 21-24). When "example" is introduced into the Scripture 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 Eph. 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 mishap; hence a falling from right and 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 few of us can say that we have never sinned rashly even thou "unwilling to do

an injury"? Well, 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 Col. 2: 20 and Heb. 11: 4, or nekroo as in

Rom. 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 Eph. 2: 1.

Eph. 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 Col. 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.