the power of sin. In Ephesians 2:1–3 the figures—“dead through trespasses and sins”; “we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else”—are different but are certainly just as devastating, making plain not that we have become passive (the rest of the passage allows no such thought), but rather that we are past the point of no return so far as our own strength is concerned. And we have already commented on the way Paul links the universality of death to the universality of sin (Rom. 5:12–14;