I guess everyone in the world is aware that not all is right with either the world or themselves. If I were to ask you to name 3 things that were wrong with the world, I imagine that most of you would answer within a few seconds. If I were to ask you the same question about yourself you might take a bit longer depending on whether you were asked to admit it out loud or not. But let’s say all you had to do was think of 3 things you’d like to change about yourself. You don’t have to tell anyone, just tell yourself. - Well, have you all come up with 3 things? My guess is that it wasn’t very hard. None of us find it hard to come up with things that are wrong in our lives, whether it’s a bad habit like biting our finger nails, or talking too much, or not talking enough because we’re a bit shy, or whether it’s something a bit more serious like an addiction, or some sort of mild neurosis. We’ve all got something that annoys us or worries us about ourselves. But of course the problem is that as easy as it may be to identify our faults, it’s much harder to change. One of the growth areas of our world today is the field of psychology and psychiatry. More and more people pay more and more money to experts who offer hope of change and self improvement. Some manage to effect changes while others fail.
The Dilemma - Our Spiritual Death
But the difficulty becomes even greater when we think about our ability to please God; our ability to change sinful habits for good ones. What we find is that without God’s intervention, we can do nothing. Today’s passage from Ephesians 2 explains why. Paul says, "You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived." Well, of course you can’t change your sinful habits if you’re dead. You can’t do anything if you’re dead! That’s why it’s so important that we don’t put off doing important things until later in our lives. Because we don’t know when our life might end and then it’ll be too late. But Paul isn’t saying you’d better do something about living a godly life before it’s too late. No he’s actually saying the opposite. He’s speaking about a time when we weren’t Christians and saying that spiritually, before you became a Christian your life had never actually got started. He says that before you became a Christian you were dead. So what does he mean? Well, I think what he’s talking about goes right back to the beginning of time, to the very first act of rebellion, by Adam and Eve. What was it that God told Adam and Eve about the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? (Gen 3:3 NIV) "God said, ’You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, or you will die.’" But they did eat it didn’t they. And what happened? Did they die? Well, not physically. We’re told that Adam lived for 930 years before he died, and then, presumably, he died of old age. No, the death God warned them of wasn’t just physical death, although their eventual death was surely part of it. No, the death he spoke of was a spiritual death. It was a death to the ability to do what was right. A death to the ability to please God in all things.
As we read on in Ephesians we discover more of the reason for this. He describes their life as following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that’s still at work among those who are disobedient. That is, they were led by Satan rather than by God. Now you might think that’s a bit harsh. After all not many people actually deliberately follow Satan. But listen to how he continues (v3): "All of us once lived among them (those who are disobedient) in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses." That is, our desire was to please ourselves rather than God. That’s how we followed Satan. Our desires and passions ruled us. How many of us can say we’ve never been ruled by our passions. Perhaps that’s your normal experience. Our passions and desires are very strong forces aren’t they? Just think about how you act when you lose your temper: the things you say that you would never say at other times; the way you’re happy to hurt those you love the most. Yes, sadly we still find ourselves ruled by our desires and passions, far too often. And what was the result for those who lived like this?. "We were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else." That is, our very nature meant that we were under God’s judgement. This is the trouble with those people who claim to be good people; who claim to live a pretty good life. Although they do do things from time to time or even habitually that are good, even godly things, they can’t overcome their basic nature, which is flawed. We all know people who are really nice, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, whose mouths butter wouldn’t melt in. But even they, believe it or not, are ruled by their desires and passions if they’re not ruled by Christ. Even they get carried away by anger or desire or covetousness or a desire for power, or some other vice, from time to time.
So every person on earth has this dilemma. Because of our heritage as imperfect human beings nothing we do can please God. Even if we want to we can’t change who we are. Yet we read in chapter 1 that God’s eternal plan for us was that we should be holy and blameless in his sight. So what sort of omnipotent God plans such a thing if the objects of the plan are totally unable through their state of spiritual death, to achieve that plan? The answer is found in v4. Only a God of love and mercy could do such a thing.
The Solution - God’s Grace.
"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved." We can’t do anything about it, but God can. As we discovered when we looked at the first section of chapter 1, God deals with those he’s chosen as though they were incorporated into Christ; as though they were part of Christ’s body. So although we were dead in our sins, he says, God has raised us up with Christ. I was reading this week about Kerry Packer’s heart operation. It’s not the first time he’s had heart trouble as you probably know. A few years ago he had a heart attack playing polo and actually died. For something like 6 minutes his heart stopped beating. It looked like that was the end of one of our great media magnates. But then the ambulance arrived and they revived him. They raised him up, as it were and he lived to see another day, to go on and increase his fortune by another billion or so. Well, God doesn’t raise us up so we can make another billion, but he does raise us up so we can begin to live, and here we come to the thing that Paul wants to emphasise in this passage.
He says, "it’s by grace you have been saved." If you get nothing else out of this passage, make sure you understand this. God has saved you, not because of something you’ve done that makes you worthy of his mercy, not because you can give him something back. He doesn’t need you or me to be his children. No, he makes us alive as a free gift that comes out of his great love and mercy. That’s what grace means: free, totally unmerited, favour. And it’s a good thing that it’s free because by our own efforts we’d be like the person becalmed in a sailing boat trying to move the boat by blowing on the sails; expending a lot of effort with little effect.
But look what happens to those who are made alive with Christ. It’s as though we get caught up in his slipstream: "God raised us up with him and what?" "Seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Notice he puts it in the past tense: "God raised us up and seated us." That’s our current status. Those who are in Christ Jesus are already present in God’s throne room. We already enjoy the status of God’s sons and daughters. Not that we experience it fully yet. He goes on: "7so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." There’s God’s grace again. He seems to be saying that the grace we experience now is only a shadow of the gifts that God will give us in the end. Then we’ll experience immeasurable riches. Kerry Packer couldn’t imagine the riches we’ll enjoy as God’s sons and daughters.
Then just in case we haven’t got the message, Paul sums it up in vs 8 and 9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- 9not the result of works, so that no one may boast." He says it twice: we’re saved by grace: that is by God’s free and unmerited goodness towards us; and it’s not by works so that no-one may boast. If you’re ever tempted to think that God must be pretty pleased with you and that maybe he chose you because you had some gift or ability that he needed or that he chose you because you were more likely to fit into his plans than someone else, then go back and read this verse. No one can boast. No-one can think they have some characteristic that makes them more suitable to being a Christian. Not even the faith that Paul talks about makes you more worthy. What does he mean by this "by grace we’re saved through faith?" What is faith? We’ve looked at that question a few times this year and each time the answer has been the same: faith is trusting God’s promises. Faith is believing that when God says something will happen it will. So in this instance faith is believing God’s promise that he’ll forgive our sins. It’s believing Jesus’ promise that he’ll raise up whoever believes in God’s Son. It’s believing God when he tells us that if we confess our sin then he’ll forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And it’s believing God when he tells us that he’ll do this not because of any merit of our own but simply out of his great love for us.
Does that sort of faith or belief give you any merit of itself? Well no, not really. Let me give you an example. Imagine that your computer has failed as they do from time to time and you ring me up for help as some people have been known to do. I give you clear directions about how to fix the problem, and you follow my instructions and the problem is fixed. Can you take any credit for the solution? No. Does fixing it make you into a computer expert? No. It might mean that you’ll know how to fix that problem next time it happens, if you remember how you did it, but in any case the next time it’ll be a different problem and you’ll probably have to ring me up for help again. No, believing God’s promises is simply the prerequisite for receiving those promises. In fact even our faith, Paul says, isn’t our own doing, it is the gift of God. This says something to us about our attempts at evangelism doesn’t it? I mean if you’re going to share the gospel with someone, you’d better be praying at the same time that God would give them the faith to believe. You’d better be praying that God would raise them from spiritual death and give them new life, because unless he does that first their ears wil be deaf to the gospel. They’ll never hear the words you say to them. If you’re a person who’s searching for the truth about spiritual things, then it would be good for you to pray that God would open your ears, would give you spiritual life. Like the man who said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." God delights to answer those sorts of prayer.
Our Task - Good Works
But having said that our good works don’t help us to achieve salvation, we’re left with the question, "are good works of any use at all?" Can I just forget about being a good person?
Well, no, because Paul finishes this section with these words: "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." Far from forgetting about being a good person, now that we’ve been raised with Christ we have a job to do. Just like Kerry Packer getting on with making his billions, we have good works to do, because that’s what God made us for. Paul’s expression has the idea of God fashioning us specifically for this purpose. It’s like going into a mechanics workshop and looking at all the tools on his shelves. Some tools are general purpose tools that could be used for all sorts of jobs, but some are purpose built. They’re made for doing a particular job. If you weren’t fixing cars they’d be no use to you but to the mechanic they’re indispensable. Well, to God, we’re indispensable, because he’s made us to do his work in the world. What work? Good works, which God prepared beforehand for us, to be our way of life" or "that we should walk in them". In other words it’s as though God has already selected things for us to do. He’s got them ready for us. A bit like the TV chef who arrives at the studio to find that the kitchen staff have already chopped up the vegetables and the meat and got out all the utensils, all ready for the demonstration to take place. All we have to do is to be looking out for the opportunities that God has already prepared for us so we can do the things he desires. I guess at the same time we need to be looking out for the pitfalls that Satan will put in our way to stop us doing those good works.
Well, let’s draw this to a close. What we’ve found here today is in fact a good summary of the Christian gospel. By the way if you were in the Tuesday night Bible Study this week you may have noticed that this is the same message we found in Isaiah 55. You others might like to look that passage up later and see if its message is the same as that of Ephesians 2. That is, that those who are outside the people of God are in rebellion against Him and are therefore spiritually dead. But God makes them a free offer to bring them back to life. All that’s needed to receive all of the bounty that God offers is to believe his promise, to turn away from that rebellion and live. And for those who do that God has good works prepared for us to do, to make our way of life.
If you’ve never taken the step of believing in Jesus Christ then why not do it today. Pray to God and ask him to give you the faith you need to believe all that he’s promised you. If you’re already a believer then make sure you’re looking out for those opportunities to serve God and other people that he’s prepared for you. Remember that you’re God’s creation, purpose built to do his work in the world.
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