Our final word this week we are looking at two words that overlap. The words trespass and sin. In Ephesians 2:1, it puts these two words in the same sentence and says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” I think we often just couple those two words together and think of them as being synonymous terms. They are not quite synonymous. They give us a full picture of our sinfulness.
Let’s start with the fact that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. There is a spiritual death that we are born into. We are born sinners. We are born guilty. We are born in a situation in which we have no spiritual life or relationship with God and that is our original state. That is what we are born into. That is what he is speaking about in Ephesians 2 as he is talking about how we can get out of that situation through what Jesus Christ has done for us as we receive His grace by faith alone. He said we are dead in trespasses and sins.
What is the difference between trespasses and sins? When you understand the meaning of the words you will see how they complement each other. Trespass is the idea of a deliberate act of deviated from the law or will of God. Again, we are born that way automatically deviating from the will of God. That is our stated personhood. We are those that deviate from the will of God and the Word of God and the law of God. We do not want to be what God wants us to be by nature. That is who we are by nature. It helps us to understand the word trespass when we walk around somewhere, and we see a sign that says no trespassing. Recently, I was in a location in the countryside, and there was a number of places that I wanted to go trekking back into the woods and check it out and see what it was like, and I kept running into these signs that said no trespassing . . .
