We live in a world that is perishing and all around us people are perishing. Increasingly more people are born and raised in our society who are without any knowledge of salvation. These people live and die without Christ. This a most solemn thought. Many of us were born and raised in Christian homes and churches and we cannot even imagine what it is like to be without any knowledge of God.

The Lost Are Without Christ⤒🔗

The apostle Paul describes the plight of these people in Ephesians 2:11, where he describes the past of the Ephesian Christians. Most of them had been pagans. They had lived without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, hav­ing no hope, and without God in the world.

That is a horrible but true description. The lost are without Christ and without Him there is no salvation. Christ is the only Saviour, for He arose from the dead. Sin can only be forgiven through Him. To be with­out Christ means to be without forgiveness of sins and without the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, they have no happiness either, for true happiness is only received through Christ. To be without Christ means to blindly grope in the darkness of the filth and despair of sin. Such people are without life, and without forgiveness. They are lost in misery. They are slaves to sin and on their way to everlasting damnation. Their condition is unspeakably wretched.

Besides being without Christ, the lost are also without a home. Paul describes them as being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. That means they have no part with the peo­ple of God; they are outside and will not receive everlasting life. The people of God are made up of Jews and Gentiles from all nations. They are the spiritual Israel of God. But the lost around us have no share with them. They have no place where they are welcomed; they have no home.

The lost are also without the promises. Paul describes the lost in Ephesians 2:12 as being strangers from the covenants of promise. They do not have the Word of God and they do not know the promises of God. The covenant of grace is full of promises that are extended to sinners. But the lost in the world are outside the covenant; they have no promises. Church people can plead the promises that are given them. They can hear the promise of God extended to them. But the lost outside the church never hear a Gospel message. They have no Gospel, no covenant and no promise. Multitudes live like that — without any promises. They don't know what they are living for. They are ignorant, lost and miserable; they feel this to some degree but there is nothing else. They are lost, as sheep without a shepherd.

The Misery of the Lost←⤒🔗

In Ephesians 2:12, Paul also describes the lost as being without hope: having no hope. Imagine that: no hope — never having true hope that things will change and will be alright. That is how the lost around us live. They are without Christ and so they are without redemption. Therefore they really have nothing to hope for. What they do have is false hope, unreliable hope, but not true hope. Their lives are filled with despair, dismay, fear and hopelessness. People living in 2005 live in a hopeless world.

In Ephesians 2:12 we read that they are without God: without God in the world. This sentence contains all the darkness, misery, curses, and hopelessness of a world fallen in sin. To be without God is the darkest of all nights; it is the misery of all miseries. To be without God means to be without His caring and sustaining grace. It means to be without His saving grace. It is to have nothing: no love, no joy, and end up in the place where God is no longer present — hell.

Many people live without God in this most miserable condition. They become sick and have no comfort, no relief, no light, and no strength, nothing but the night of despair that leads to eternal death. Such people have nothing. They went to bed like that at night and they got up the next morning the same way. They know that God exists but He is an unknown God to them. They live and die without the knowledge of God.

The Great Benefits of Grace←⤒🔗

What great benefits God has given you when you may know His salvation and grace! He has loved you, He chose you, and He embraced your soul. He had compassion on you. Think for a moment how it would have been with you if God had not made a difference! If the Lord had not stepped into your life, where would you be now? Do you ever sit down and think what might have been if the Lord had not saved you? What would have become of you if God had let you go your own self-chosen way? What kind of character would you have been? What kind of company would you be keeping? What would be your thoughts of life and death? How would your family have fared?

Never forget where you came from — from a lost, ruined life. Never forget what God has done for you. He showed you your wasted life and you saw that Jesus had to be your Master and He alone could save you from the power of sin. He entered your life and what a difference it made. What grace and what mercy! Why? Because He loved you. He loved you from everlasting! Remember these things and dwell on them. Never forget them.

Calvin comments that we must recall these things and think on them. We must magnify the grace of God. If we do not consider the plight in which God found us before He stretched out His hand to draw us to Him, we shall never know how much we are indebted to Him. Let God's people recall their slavery under Satan and how the Lord has drawn them out of the abyss into the kingdom of heaven. By doing that we will adore His great mercy toward us.

Jesus Preaches to Us←⤒🔗

Remember that Jesus preached to you. Yes, Jesus came into your life and He preached His Word to you. Ephesians 2:17 says that Jesus came and preached peace to you.

But you say, Jesus never visited Ephesus and the Ephesians never saw Him in the flesh. Yet He preached there. He did it through the preaching of Paul and those who came after him. Where the word is preached and faithfully proclaimed Christ is speaking. The preachers are His messengers and they represent Him.

Jesus preached at Ephesus. But He also preached to you and to me. Jesus preached peace to you by way of His faithful ministers. When your eyes were opened to see the beauty of Christ and your own defiled life, you could not continue living as before. Something happened. Your life was changed and you bowed down before Him. Remember how His peace flowed into your heart and all things were made new. You became a new creature in Christ Jesus and He became your Saviour. When love to the Lord flows into your heart then the same Spirit will also cause you to have compassion on the lost around you. You will desire that others also become recipients of this grace.

Jesus Is Filled With Compassion←⤒🔗

That is exactly how the Lord Jesus looked upon sinners who gathered around Him. One of the most moving matters of the Gospel is that Jesus was filled with compassion for the lost. He felt sorry for them. He came to seek and to save the lost. Mark writes: And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things (6:34). The same is recorded in Matthew 9:36: But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. The Lord Jesus saw the multitudes and He plumbed their misery as none other. He was deeply moved. He preached and witnessed to them. He patiently bore their unkindness. He wept over them. He truly had compassion for the lost.

Do We Have Compassion?←⤒🔗

What about us? How do we view those around us? Do we have compassion on them or do we despise them? Do we consider them unwelcome outsiders? That is how Israel viewed the Gentiles. The Jews despised the Gentiles and gloated about their own self-imagined privileges. We too, are prone to fall into that same snare. Do we seek to speak a Word of Christ and His saving grace to those around us? Do we pray for them? Or are we cold and harsh? Maybe we are not interested in others. There are too many who don't want to get involved and seek their strength in isolation. They don't care about those around them and just live on.

But when the Spirit of Christ lives in us, we will become like the Master. We will also be filled with compassion. And if we have no compassion — what could be the cause? Could it perhaps be that we ourselves have never been touched by the love of Christ? For, it was the elder brother in the parable who did not want to come in and be joyful. That was because he himself had never known the love of his Father. He remained outside. Let us be moved with compassion for those around us.