Get A Life!
Text: Ephesians 2:4 – 7
By: Ken McKinley
(Read Text)
Someone once said that the English language has more clichés and slogans than any other language, especially the English used in the United States. We use all sorts of catchy phrases to get our point across and sometimes those phrases mean more than what they actually say. Take for example the phrase, “Get a life!” If you say to someone “Get a life!” Probably what you’re saying to that person is that they need to grow up and stop indulging in insignificant, meaningless, thoughts. You don’t actually mean that the person needs to somehow come back from the dead. But in our passage this morning Paul is telling us that believers already have a life. We have been “born again.” But sometimes we as believers can also spend way too much time living a life of fantasy; we can believe the lies of the devil, the world, and even our own flesh. And we chase after those fantasies rather than living the life we already have.
Now last time we looked at the life of delusion that we used to live under when we were without Christ. We heard the bad news, that we were dead in trespasses and sins, but then we heard the good news – that we “got a life,” that God has made us alive in His Son Jesus Christ, so this morning I want us to take a look at what this life is supposed to look like.
So… last time we looked at verses 1 – 5 and we saw that sin and God’s wrath are very real, but Paul also began to shift his focus in verses 4 and 5 and we finished up talking about how we had been made alive together with Christ. So I want to look at 3 aspects of the life we have received, and for each of these aspects Paul uses a different word to give us a picture of what our Christian life is supposed to be about. In verse 5 he says, “We have been made alive.” In verse 6 he says, “God has raised us up,” and also, “we have been seated in Christ Jesus.”
When Paul says we have been made alive, this new life that Jesus gives contains everything that is included in salvation. When we were dead, we were under the condemnation of God’s wrath; we could only look forward to the coming judgment. But now that we are in Christ, and now that we have newness of life, we have forgiveness, regeneration, sanctification, and hope. Now I want you to notice here, “we’ve been made alive,” by grace, “we have been saved,” “we’ve been raised up,” and “we’ve been made to sit.” Do you notice anything about all of these? They are all past tense. These aren’t things that we have to work for, or strive for, they aren’t things we have to earn… we’ve already received these things by God’s grace.
So what does all this mean exactly? How is all of this relevant to you and me? Well for starters; it means we have been given a fresh start. The sins of our past may still haunt us, we may have memories of the bad choices we made, we may even still see the weeds from the seeds of yesterday’s schemes, but the Good News is that the final punishment for those sins has already been paid. Because of God’s grace, we need not suffer the guilt and shame that of our past, because of God’s grace we can walk in newness of life.
Sometimes we can forget that it’s only by grace. Sometimes we get to thinking that the changes in our lives are by our own hard work, and we forget about the state we were in before we were saved.
The Bible tells us that it’s by God’s grace that we’ve been made alive, and it’s by God’s grace that we have been raised up with Christ. Now I want you all to get this, so pay attention. Being raised with Christ means that we should cease from our selfish, sin nature; what that means is that sin no longer has dominion over us. Remember sin used to be our master, but Jesus has redeemed us. That’s why the Bible tells us “Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, for you have been bought with a price…”
Does that mean you will stop sinning completely? No, what it means is that by our NEW nature, we no longer have that irresistible pull towards sin. Turn with me to Colossians 3:1-10 (read). See if you’re a Christian then you are in Christ, His death has become your death, and His resurrection has become your resurrection, sin should no longer have dominion over you. So the duty of the Christian is the putting to death of sin… the old time preachers used to call it mortification. We are to put on the new man, who is renewed in knowledge. It’s the same thing we read in Romans, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your minds…”
In our text Paul tells us that we have been raised with Christ… he also tells us that we are seated with Him.
When I was in the Army; sometimes they would make us stand at attention for hours. I couldn’t wait until I got to sit down. Being seated is a position of rest. When we read about Jesus being seated at the right hand of the Father, what we are seeing is that all the work Jesus had to do in order to secure our salvation was done. On the cross He said, “It is finished.” And so Paul; by saying that we are seated with Christ, is saying that we too should enter into His rest. There’s nothing we can ever add to what the Lord has done for us. My dad, Ken McKinley Sr., is one of the hardest working people I know. He gets up early in the morning and goes to work, he does a job that men half his age have trouble with, after work he’ll take care of everything around his home that needs to be done, and then he will go to the nursing home and spend the evening with my mom. When he finally takes a seat in his recliner, then and only then, is he done working for the day. If you are in Christ, you are seated. There is nothing left for you to do in order to secure your position with God.
Hebrews 4:9-10 says, “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from His works, as God did His.”
Paul wrote 2/3rds of the New Testament, and in those letters he talks about our union with Christ, us being in Christ, and Christ being in us, over 160 times.
Before we were in Adam. In Adam; all men die because all men have inherited his sin nature. But when you become a Christian you are placed in Christ. Because Jesus is justified, we are also justified; because He is raised, we are raised; because He is righteous, we too are the righteousness of God in Christ.
A few Sundays back I told you all that you would be blessed if you would go through your Bibles and take note of all the places where it says, “In Him, In Whom, By Him, By Whom, in Christ, etc…” All of those blessing are yours if you are a Christian because you are in Christ Jesus.
Now if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably sat in awe and wonder of the awesomeness of this. The blessings we have in Jesus are incredible, the promises of God in Him are “yes and amen!” But why? Why did God go to such an extreme for me? A wretched sinner, why would God do this for me of all people?
Well our text says in verse 7 that one of the reasons was to show the exceeding riches of His grace. God’s grace is endless, it’s immeasurable. God’s grace never runs out. When we receive God’s grace, we can never use it all up. Not now and not in eternity.
And so in a sense, we are an eternal billboard, advertising God’s grace. Not so much now, but in eternity we are going to see the exceeding riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
Think about it like this: Have you ever seen those weight watchers commercials where the guy or gal stands up and says something like, “I lost 250 lbs. using weight watchers.” And it shows the before and after picture? The reason that person is being used for an advertisement isn’t because they started out with an amazing body, no it’s the exact opposite of that, but the commercial uses that to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product. I don’t think the actors and actresses who do those commercials realize that… that weight watchers, slim fast, Jenny Craig and all the others are using them because of how overweight they were. Everyone watching TV gets to see how overweight those people were. But the thing is, those people know that they needed it, and so they used the product and the product worked. Now if they said, “Hey you know what? I don’t need this, I don’t need to loose that 250 lbs., I’m perfectly healthy being 250 lbs overweight.” Then the message of the Gospel is probably meaningless to that person. But once you’ve seen your sin for what it is, and you’ve seen how wicked your heart is, above all else, the offer of the Gospel becomes something that you desperately want.
And that’s what grace is all about. God sent Jesus to the world, to suffer and to die in our place. He did this not because we were in perfect shape, but because we were in terrible shape. He did this so that He could demonstrate His grace and power in transforming a person who was dead in trespasses and sins to one who will live for all eternity.
The question I want to ask you this morning is: Does knowing all that God has done for your make a difference in how you live your life? Does knowing that God has offered all of this to you make you want to know about it first hand, rather than just hearing a bad preacher stand behind this pulpit and talk about it?
You can by faith, by trusting that Jesus’ death on the cross was sufficient for you, so that you could have a new life. A life in which you are raised and seated with Him. Our passage today should motivate us to believe, to trust, and to give the praise and glory that is due to God. And it should motivate us, if we don’t have one already, to “get a life.” It’s not a life you can ever earn or deserve, it’s a gift.
INVITAITON AND PRAYER
