Transformed In Christ - Death Valley of the Soul

Grace and peace be multiplied to you, dear readers, as we turn our hearts and minds toward the profound, life-altering truths revealed by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, as faithfully expounded upon by Pastor Sam Merigala in his powerful sermon series, "Transformed in Christ". It is our spiritual duty to meditate deeply upon the foundations of our faith, for only when we comprehend the dreadful gulf from which we were rescued can we truly appreciate the glory of the salvation extended to us.

Pastor Merigala initiates this profound meditation with a vivid geographical analogy, contrasting the majestic heights of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental United States, with the terrifying lowlands of Death Valley, a mere eighty miles distant - the lowest and hottest spot in the land. This stark opposition - the top of the world looking down versus the bottom looking only up, the perpetually cool versus the relentlessly hot - serves as the perfect frame for Paul’s method. Paul takes us, first, down to the “Death Valley of the Soul” (Ephesians 2:1–3) and then, by a demonstration of God's surpassing power, raises us up to the "heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (verses 4–7). This journey, moving from death to life, from Hell to Heaven, and from bondage to freedom, is designed to enhance our appreciation for what we possess in Christ and radically influence how we live our lives.

The Apostle’s purpose, as Pastor Merigala reminds us, is to paint an inescapable contrast between the desolate condition of mankind by nature and the glorious potential available only by God's sovereign grace.

The Dreadful Condition: Absolute Spiritual Death

To begin this essential lesson, we must, as Paul does, descend immediately to the absolute bottom of our spiritual diagnosis. Pastor Merigala drives us to the unvarnished statement: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” (v. 1).

Brethren, let us not misunderstand this declaration. It is not hyperbole; it is not a figure of speech meant to merely suggest danger, as if the unredeemed soul were simply sick or mortally wounded. No, Paul means that every person outside of Christ is in a state of “real and present death”. As the sermon clarifies, this is the unique and unwavering biblical perspective on the human condition: Man is not well, and he is not merely sick; he is dead.

Lest any among us imagine that this dire description pertains only to a particularly wicked tribe or the most degraded segments of society, the sermon emphatically clarifies that this diagnosis is universal. Pastor Merigala highlights how Paul uses comprehensive language: though he begins with the "emphatic you," addressing his Gentile readers, he quickly moves to include himself and his Jewish brethren by saying “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,” and concludes by encompassing “the rest of mankind”. This estimate, therefore, applies to every person without God, serving as a powerful condensation of the doctrine of sin meticulously argued across the first three chapters of the Book of Romans. The bottom line, tragically, is that when Paul declares us "dead," he intends the application to be absolute and without exception.

The Meaning of Spiritual Corpse

For those who stand outside the sanctuary of grace, how can this be? We see around us physically robust individuals, brilliant scholars with quick and active intellects, and magnetic personalities brimming with charisma. Are we truly to declare such vibrant human beings dead?

Yes, we must affirm this terrible truth. The answer, as Pastor Merigala reveals, lies in the sphere that matters supremely: the soul. In the spiritual realm, they possess no life. They are profoundly unresponsive, "blind to the reality, demands, and glory of Christ," and tragically deaf to the insistent voice of the Holy Spirit. The precious cry, "Abba, Father!", which is the hallmark of the Spirit’s work in adoption, has no place in their vocabulary.

Pastor Merigala drives home this absolute incapability with the peculiar, though sobering, example of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Though his body is preserved and wheeled into board meetings, he remains utterly unable to raise his hand or submit a motion - he is dead. Spiritually, those apart from Christ are just as incapable. A life without God, regardless of physical or mental vigor, is a "living death". All human self-help avails nothing; you may sound the reveille in the cemetery for a year, but the dead will not rise.

Paul traces this spiritual death to our “trespasses and sins”. These two words, carefully chosen, give a comprehensive account of human evil.

A trespass (paraptōma) involves a false step, such as crossing a known boundary or deviating from the right path. These are our sins of commission. A sin (hamartia) means missing the mark or falling short of God’s perfect standard. These are our sins of omission.

In summation, Pastor Merigala teaches that before God, we stand condemned as both rebels (trespasses) and failures (sins). The inevitable result of this constant wrongdoing is spiritual death, described elsewhere as being "alienated from the life of God" (Ephesians 4:18). True, eternal life is fellowship with the living God, and sin introduces the separation that hides His face from us.

The Threefold Captivity

Paul is not content merely to state that we walked in trespasses and sins; he reveals that this former existence was not a pleasant, free "walk," but rather a "fearful bondage" to forces that held us captive. These three oppressive influences - the World, the Devil, and the Flesh - constitute the terrible dynamics of spiritual death.

1. Domination by the World (From Without)

First, we are described as following "the course of this world". The term “world” (kosmos) is used in the Greek New Testament almost universally with an evil connotation, referring to “the present evil age” (cf. Galatians 1:4).

This “world” is a social and value system organized entirely without reference to God - a secular framework hostile to Christ. It permeates and dominates non-Christian society, holding people in a cultural bondage. The spiritually dead, lacking internal vitality, become "willing slaves" who surrender their minds to the prevailing ideas, the pop culture of the media, and the “group think” of the age. They simply drift along the stream of this world’s conception of life. The World, therefore, dominates the spiritually dead from without.

2. Domination by the Devil (From Beyond)

Our second captivity is to the Devil, identified as “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” and the spirit that is actively at work “in the sons of disobedience”. Scripture bestows upon him titles that should strike fear into the unredeemed heart: “the prince of this world,” and the sobering title, “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

As the ruler of the air, he commands innumerable unseen hosts, creating a wicked, pervasive atmosphere - a cosmos diabolicus. In his dark wisdom, he knits "just enough good with evil" to ensure the success of his nefarious purposes. He is the source of all evil, error, and violence - a murderer.

A truly chilling detail emphasized in the sermon is that the verb used to describe the Devil's active work in disobedient people (energeō) is the very same word used to describe the "surpassing greatness of God’s power" that resurrected Christ from the grave. This tells us two things: first, that this evil spirit truly dominates and energizes the spiritually dead, and second, that only the unparalleled energy of God could possibly rescue us from such a mighty dominion. The Devil dominates the spiritually dead from beyond.

3. Domination by the Flesh (From Within)

Finally, the spiritual dead are corrupted from within by the "passions of our flesh". Here, "flesh" does not refer to the physical skin and bones, but to our fallen, deeply self-centered human nature.

These passions are defined as carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind. Pastor Merigala is careful to clarify that natural bodily desires (for food, sleep, procreation) are not inherently evil, for God created them. They only become sinful when they are perverted - when the desire for food becomes gluttony, or the desire for sleep becomes sloth.

Crucially, the "passions of the flesh" extend far beyond these popular "sins of the flesh" to include the wrong desires of the mind. This is the home of intellectual pride, false ambition, the willful rejection of known truth, and all malicious or vengeful thoughts. Indeed, the sermon teaches that wherever "self" rears its ugly head against God or man, even under the most respectable public guise (such as pride in ancestry or religious righteousness), there is the flesh. Our ingrained self-centeredness constitutes a horrible bondage. The Flesh, this fallen nature twisted with self-centeredness, dominates the spiritually dead from within.

Thus, before the Good Shepherd found us and set us free, we were subject to oppressive influences from without (the World), from within (the Flesh), and from beyond (the Devil).

The Total Depravity

This dark portrait concludes with the devastating consequence of such profound bondage: "and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind".

As Pastor Merigala stresses, we were not merely victims of these outside forces; we were termed "sons of disobedience". We had voluntarily rebelled against God’s loving authority and, in doing so, had placed ourselves under Satan’s dominion. As a result, every soul, Jew and Gentile alike, is a sinner “by nature” and is justly counted as an object of God’s settled wrath. The wrath of God remains on those who reject the Son.

This truth leads us directly to the doctrine of Total Depravity. This does not mean that every person is equally depraved, reaching the depths of evil they possibly could; there is always "room for deprovement". Nor does it mean humans are incapable of any good toward one another, for man is still the imperfect bearer of the divine image. Rather, total depravity means that no part of the human being - not the mind, the emotions, the heart, or the will - remains unaffected or untainted by the Fall. All of us are corrupted - totally.

So profound is this spiritual death that Paul confirms in Romans 3: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God”. We hear people speak of seeking God, but if we are to trust God’s sacred Word over sentiment, we must acknowledge that any movement toward salvation is prompted by the Holy Spirit Himself. The biblical doctrine demands the acceptance of man’s absolute spiritual death.

The Essential Truth

Brothers and sisters, why must we dwell upon such hard, hard words? Why must we insist upon this desolate image of the "Death Valley of the Soul"?

We look to the prophet Ezekiel, whom the hand of the Lord led out into a valley "full of bones," and behold, they were "very dry". The Lord asked the prophet, “Son of man, can these bones live?”. This vision of hopelessness perfectly encapsulates the human condition outside of Christ.

Though many pulpits today are silent about this crucial doctrine, it is absolutely foundational to our faith. If we fail to understand the depth and absoluteness of our death - that we were captive to the world, the devil, and our own fallen flesh, and were therefore children of wrath - then the glorious intercession of the Son of God "does not make any sense without it". The reality of Christ’s atoning death is incomprehensible unless we grasp that we were absolutely lost.

A proper view of the Death Valley of the Soul is the necessary prerequisite for a proper view of the Heavenlies. Only by acknowledging the profound tragedy of our existence - that we, created by God and for God, were living utterly without Him - can we fully appreciate the astonishing truth of God’s boundless mercy that rescued us. We were dead, enslaved, and condemned, until God, in His powerful love, had mercy on us. May we, therefore, never cease to give thanks for the divine energy that raised us, who were dead, and exalted us with Christ. Amen.