Ephesians 2:13

Ephesians 2:13

Sin the Separator.

I. Sin has broken the beautiful chain of the material universe. When man fell, nature fell; and the links were severed by the Fall. And worse than this, man is divided from man, every one from his fellow. The very Church is broken up, Christian from Christian. The lust of pride, the lust of an opinionated mind, the lust of prejudice, the lust of jealousy, the lust of a worldly ambition these are the fabricators of all discord. These make foes out of hearts which were meant to love as brethren.

II. Sin separates a man from himself. I question whether any man is at variance with his brother till he has first been at variance with himself. But sin takes away a man's consistency. A man is not one, but he is two; he is many characters. What he is one time, that is just what he is not another. Passions within him conflict with reason, passions with passions, feelings with feelings; he is far off from himself, and this the separation does.

III. If you wish to know how far sin has thrown man away from God, you must measure it by the master link which has spanned the gulf. The eternal counsel, the immensity of a Divine nature clothing Himself in manhood, is love to which all other love is but a drop in the fountain from whence it springs. A life spotless; a work so finished that it admits no adding touch; sufferings which make all other sufferings a feather's weight in the balance; a death which merges all other deaths into its one intensity; an eternity of priesthood; an eternity of the intercession of the Son of God all this, and far more than this, has gone to make the return possible. That is the reason God so hates sin, because His dear Son had to travel all that way so painfully to bring us back.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 145.

References: Ephesians 2:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xv., No. 851; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 190. Ephesians 2:14; Ephesians 2:15. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 206.