And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1-3)... the definition of "dead" became important. Just what did Paul mean when he said, "You were dead"?
It seems silly, but I first must point out what Paul did not mean. He clearly did not mean "stone-cold dead, not breathing, not functioning, completely lifeless." He couldn't mean that with his descriptions of "you once walked" and "following" and "carrying out the desires of the body and mind." Those are doing things, so this "dead" is not "not doing anything."
So what did he mean? I think he laid it out there for us. When Paul says that "you" (natural human beings) "were dead," he explains it. This "dead" is walking in trespasses (transgressing known commands) and sins (willful violation of God's will)1. It is following the course of this world. It is following the prince of the power of the air. (Note the structure of those two -- they are intended as parallels, where one expands the meaning of the other. Following the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air are the same things, where the course of this world is set by the prince of the power of the world.) He describes natural man as "sons of disobedience." That is, we are, in our spiritual DNA, disobedient. Dead. He goes on to explain that this kind of "dead" is operating in "the passions of our flesh," where our prime directions come from our sin nature (the flesh). These "dead" people carry out "the desires of body and mind." It is an image of a purely humanistic, materialistic base of operations. What I feel and what I think is God. Nothing else matters. The motivations and directions are purely "my body" and "my self." Dead. Paul's final characteristic of this "dead" is "by nature children of wrath." Note first that it is "by nature." Not something learned or acquired, but something that is natural to us. What is natural to us? Our heritage is that we have incurred God's wrath by our "dead" condition.
This "dead" condition is a universal condition for all human beings. It isn't negotiable. It isn't variable. We are without hope and rightly subject to God's wrath. Dead men may tell no tales, but dead people also can't fix themselves. Thus, that "But God" that follows in the next sentence ...
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:4-7)... is huge! He acted "when we were dead" -- that dead Paul just described. He operated that same immeasurable power that raised Christ and seated Him in the heavenlies above all (Eph 1:19-23) towards us and made us alive, raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in heavenlies. It is hardly possible to overstate the magnitude of that good news given the magnitude of the bad news that we were dead.
If you're not amazed that you are a believer, saved by grace, then you likely aren't aware of what you were -- dead. Really, badly, completely, spiritually dead. Without hope; without options. And it was only God -- His mercy and His "great love" and His grace in conjunction with His power -- that changed that because without His action you'd still be ... dead.
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1 Think of Genesis 1-4. Adam had one primary command -- "Don't eat of that fruit." He violated that one primary command. That would be a trespass. In the next chapter, Cain killed his brother. There was no command not to murder, but Cain still knew it was wrong (he hid the body and denied any involvement). That would be a sin. All trespasses are sins; not all sins are trespasses. For instance, "That which is not of faith is sin" (Rom 14:23)
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