By Nature Children of Wrath

Ephesians 2:1-3

2:1 • And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 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 —

3 • 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.

Here is a world of dead men walking, as the vivid expression from the condemned cell block has it. Where there is life there is hope, but these are without hope and without God in the world because unlike their death row analogues, these are really dead. Not dead in the flesh as is anticipated in the sentence of death which has been passed but spiritually dead to God and thus condemned to walk in the trespasses and sins which mark such a death until the sentence is carried out.
In the condemned cell block of the prison there is a sharp difference between the uniforms worn by the warders and the uniforms worn by the prisoners. Not only so, every attempt is made to make sure that the prisoners never think themselves to be free rather than condemned men but in the world of dead men walking who is to warn the condemned and who is to help? The authority in this world is himself condemned to stir up disobedience among his charges and there are by nature none at all who are not caught up in the same condemnation.
There is no hope within this cycle of sin and death; none whatsoever

… But God.