Scripture: Ephesians 2: 1-10
1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ —by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 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.
Good morning…
We are still in the Lenten Season. Every year we remind ourselves again of the journey Jesus took in order to prove to us today, the reality of God’s Love for us. That journey was a journey of arrest, trial, mockery, shame, torture and eventually death upon a cross.
And for what purpose…? So that we might know the amazing Love and Grace of God.
Sing…
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind but now I see.
These powerful words are known throughout the Christian world. Wherever these words are sung, or the tuned played to this old hymn, everyone sings because everyone knows this song. It is the most sung Christian hymn in the world.
We sing the words and hear the tune, but do we ever stop to think about the meaning? What is the idea behind this amazing grace that we sing about?
Our scripture this morning is sometimes called the ‘Magna Charta of God’s grace, Ephesians 2: 1-10. This scripture, in ten small verses reminds us the great work that God and Jesus have done in the lives of those who believe. I can’t speak for you…but for me, it’s amazing the work He has done in my life…and I know He’s not done yet! Just like Jesus, I have my own journey to walk, too.
Lent, for each of us, should be a yearly journey from death to life. It challenges us to take the deepest possible look at our lives…a look so deep that only God can reveal what we might see. It is a time of confirming our own progress in becoming more Christ-like.
I’m sure you are aware of the popular advertising tactic of “before” and “after” pictures? They are probably most common for diet products, but I’ve also seen them for hair and make-overs. The “before” picture is almost always the least flattering picture possible – no doubt altered at least a little in photoshop to make it look even worse. And the “after” picture is the exact opposite – the most flattering possible. The goal, of course, is to get you to spend your money on the subtle assumption that you too can purchase the improvement that you see comparing the two pictures.
Well our scripture today from Ephesians, also gives us two pictures…one ‘before’ Christ (vss 1-3) and one ‘after’ Christ (vss 4-7). But then Paul brings it all together in verses 8 through 10 and tells us why we need to see these comparisons.
So, let’s begin by looking at the before picture.
Before…
The “before” picture is not a very flattering one. In fact, it is hard to imagine it being much worse! The first word Paul uses is “dead” – it doesn’t get much worse than that! Apart from Christ, in our pre-conversion state, we are spiritually dead. That is the result of sin – sin kills. It destroys. It annihilates.
Charles Swindoll spoke of sin, and what it does…
Because of sin, man has taken…
The deity out of religion,
The supernatural out of Christianity,
The authority from the Bible,
God out of education,
Morality and virtue out of literature,
Beauty and truth out of art,
Ethics out of business,
Fidelity out of marriage.
Yes, sin kills, destroys and it annihilates.
Pause…
The second part of the picture is described as in slavery – though that word doesn’t appear, that is certainly the sense of how we are described in “following the world” (vs. 2), the spirit “at work in those who are disobedient” (vs. 2), and in our slavery to our own “cravings” (vs. 3). The picture being painted here is of us subject to the control of these three things, of us enslaved to them.
It is worth stopping to notice that Paul includes all three of those in describing our sinful nature.
A. The World.
Our environment, our culture, work against God to keep us in sin. You name the sin, I can probably give you an example of how society glamorizes it and makes it look appealing and normative: lust – look at any billboard. greed – look at what has happened in our economy. self-centeredness – almost every movie/TV show/self-help book has as a theme someone trying to get what they want. I could go on, but you get the picture. I love how JB Phillips paraphrases Rom. 12:2 – the familiar verse that in the NIV says “do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world” Phillips says “Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.”
B. The Devil.
Ephesians talks more about the spiritual realm and the forces therein than any other New Testament book, so it is not surprising that Paul mentions it here. We’ve all heard the phrase, “the devil made me do it”, and we all know that it is no excuse – it does not make us any less responsible for our actions. But this little phrase is based at least in part on something that is true – the devil is active in our world, and is working to keep us from God.
C. The Flesh.
And vs. 3 lists the third thing to which we are enslaved – our sinful nature. It is our “old self”…with its desire for evil and self-destructive tendencies. It seems strange to describe ourselves as slaves to our own desires – our culture defines freedom as basically the ability to do anything we want. But the problem is that in our sinful state, the things we want are sometimes ultimately self-destructive. Ask anyone who has ever struggled with addiction if they understand what this verse means. True freedom comes when we are no longer subject to fleshly desires that become obsessive and harmful to our own lives and to those around us.
We tend to try to pick one (the world, the devil, the flesh) to blame when we sin, but in fact all three are operating to keep us in sin and death. All three work to conspire to keep us from God. Even Jesus had to confront the world, the devil and the flesh during his forty days in the wilderness. We, too, need to confront each of these temptations in our battle for holiness – remove ourselves from worldly influences that cause us to sin, stand up against the devil, and rely on God to remove our old flesh and replace it with His Spirit.
Paul sums up the “before” picture with what may be the most uncomfortable description in the passage. He says, “we were by nature objects of wrath”. Our old self, prior to coming to Christ, was by nature the object of God’s wrath. That is a pretty helpless place to be! Wrath is a strong word, it means God’s holy anger against sin and the judgment that results – and that is the word Paul uses to describe God’s response to our sinful state prior to coming to Christ.
We don’t talk much about the wrath of God – it must be politically incorrect or something. Perhaps it is because we tend to see the wrath of God in opposition to the love of God, and so, feeling forced to choose, we opt to focus on God’s love. But in fact the two are not opposites, they need each other. God cannot be completely loving if He does not hate the things that rob us of knowing the experience of full and abundant lives; similarly he cannot be wrathful if He didn’t care about us…because if He didn’t care, He would be ambivalent.
Only the person who understands something of the greatness of God’s wrath will be mastered by the greatness of his mercy. And the converse is also true: only the person who has experienced the greatness of God’s mercy can understand something of how great his wrath must be. (O’Brien, p. 163).
Before Christ, God’s Word says we are dead – enslaved – “by nature objects of wrath”. But that doesn’t mean without any value – if lost people weren’t valuable to God He wouldn’t have sent Christ to die for us! No, it is because of how valuable we are, how really worthy, that this state of death, this slavery and this wrath so needs the power of Christ!
So understanding the true state of people without Christ needs to motivate us to share the good news with them. The harsh reality is that outside of Christ, people perish eternally. People we care about, people we love, desperately need to know exactly what Paul is about to tell us in these next few verses.
After…
Verse 4 begins with one of the great words in Scripture – “but”. Don’t you love how we can be reading along, starting to feel hopeless and helpless and discouraged – overwhelmed by how far we are from God’s standard – and then we come to this little word: BUT! “All I have just said is true, BUT you are not without hope! BUT there is more! BUT God has made a way.”
The next three verses describe the change that comes through Christ. This is the “after” picture, contrasting and demonstrating the change that takes place through Christ.
The focus is once again all on God. Heart change can only come from the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. One of the images in the Bible to describe this change is the image of re-birth – the old dies and something completely new is born in its place, and this is the magnificent work of God.
The first verse in this “after” section, vs. 4, places the focus squarely where it needs to be – on God. Paul mentions both God’s love and God’s mercy, and each are emphasized with adjectives – “great” love (in fact the original language places even more emphasis on this love of God than we have, reading literally “because of the great love with which He loved us,” emphasizing this through repetition) – and “rich” mercy.
And because of those two amazing characteristics of God, two things have happened to us:
A. Made alive:
This takes us all the way back to verse 1, where Paul begins by describing us as “dead”. It is only natural and logical then that the first thing we have in Christ is life. We were dead, now we are alive. That is our testimony – that is our witness – once we were spiritually dead, but now we are spiritually alive. This incredible truth jumps Paul ahead to verse 8, to the point he is building to…about how this entire salvation thing is about the grace of God, so that it overflows here as a brief taste of what is to come: it is by grace you have been saved.
B. Raised with Christ:
We are saved by grace and then raised with Christ. God raised up Jesus and seated him at His right hand…and in the same way, Jesus having been given power over everything, exalts us…through grace.
What a lofty view of us as God’s children. God has raised us up with Christ, and all of the power that Jesus controls is ours to access also. It is no wonder that Paul began this picture with a focus on the great love and rich mercy of God! Who are we to sit with Christ around His throne? We are God’s children. We have been raised up, because of God we belong there – that is where our citizenship is – that is where our loyalty and life and worship belong – seated in heaven with Christ.
Why would God do such a thing? The answer is in the next verse: (in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus).
God did it to show the world what He is like.
Let me ask a searching question: when the world looks at you, do they see the “incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”? When people look at us, is that what they see?
When we claim to be God’s children, what people need to see in us is “the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in kindness.” My prayer for all of us is that others would see God through us, taste something of His goodness and grace, and seeing that they would want his grace for themselves.
3. FOR: by grace through faith
Another part of the ‘after’ picture is that by grace through faith, we are saved. This brings us to the heart of the gospel, and what is often seen as the heart of the book of Ephesians. Verses 8-9 are ones many of us have memorized, and with good reason – they succinctly and powerfully state the incredible message of salvation.
It really is simple: salvation is by grace through faith. What more needs to be said? God’s grace offers it, we receive it in faith. And lest we go off and think that we are something great because of the exercise of our faith, the verse continues quickly to say it is not of ourselves, and it is nothing we have earned. It is simply a gift, to be believed and accepted. That is the incredible simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: because of His great love for us, God offers us the gift of salvation by His grace. All we need to do is have faith…and believe.
And once again, the truth that we have confronted over and over in Ephesians is front and center here also – it is all about God and what God did…and what He is doing. The focus is on Him – He is the central character, He is the one who pours out grace and saves us.
I don’t understand why this is really so hard for so many people – why we can’t just accept the gift. Maybe it is part of that ‘before’ picture. We think we have to earn it – we have to work for God’s love and approval rather than simply accepting His gift by faith. Do you struggle with that? Do you find your service to God becoming an attempt to earn His love and acceptance – in essence trying to earn your salvation? If so, meditate on this verse this week. Memorize it, write in on your fridge, make it your screen saver, whatever – but seek to immerse yourself in the truth that it is by grace through faith that we are saved.
4. FOR: we are God’s workmanship…
Finally, Paul gives us the assurance that we all are God’s workmanship. All too often we memorize vss. 8-9 and leave out vs. 10, but then we only get the first part of the thought and miss the rest of what Paul is saying.
The idea here is one of pride in something you have made – you know that feeling? Creating something, doing it very well, and stepping back to admire the beauty of what you have created. It is the idea of “craftsmanship”. And that is what we are – the craftsmanship of God.
Everything is created for a purpose – maybe it is simply to beautify a room – and Paul moves on to describe the purpose for which we are created – “to do good works”. There is a wonderful balance here – almost a tension – between vs. 9 and 10, and that is why we need to memorize vs 10 along with vs. 8-9. The topic of Christian works could occupy a series of sermons, but what is essential for us to know is included in these two verses. Works don’t save us – they don’t make us more holy or more spiritual or more important to God…but, works flow naturally out of who we have been made to be by the craftsmanship of God. We are not saved BY works, but FOR works. So your works are important – they are crucial – but they do not earn us salvation.
Our works flow out of who we are created to be. They are a RESULT of salvation, not a CAUSE of salvation. It is critical that we grasp this differentiation, because it is extremely important for us to be motivated to do these “good works” because of who we are as saved children of God and not out of some frantic sense of trying to work our way into heaven.
We come to the last line, which is incredibly reassuring – God has prepared all these good works in advance. I don’t have to create them, go looking for them, rely on my own strength. God has them all prepared. He has the opportunities all laid out in front of us.
I have prayed that God would lead people to our door here at the church. He has begun to do that. Through the work of our Food Bank, the people come. And through the Christmas Baskets, the people we help, I have been able to extend an invitation to worship here. Slowly and surely, I’m certain that some will eventually accept my invitation.
That is how God works – He prepares these opportunities in advance for us to live out the purpose for which we are created.
As we end this morning, the first question I need to ask is whether your spiritual life is the “before” picture or the “after” picture. If it is before, I want to challenge you to read these verses, particularly 8-10, every day this week. Highlight those words, and read them every day. My prayer is that God’s Holy Spirit would reveal to you what they mean for your life.
The second question is whether you know this grace that brings salvation. And when I say “know” I mean in your heart as well as your head.
Finally, anticipate the “good works” which God has prepared for you this week. Take your focus off of yourself and look around to see what opportunities God has for you to “show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” For Christ lived, died and rose again…just for you.
Let us pray…
Our most merciful Father,
As we come closer this year to again hearing of the great sacrificial act to which Jesus, Your Son, submitted himself for our sake, we are greatly humbled that You would still see us worthy of Your amazing grace and loving kindness. Forgive us, we pray, that we continue to fall short. We ask for, and seek Your abiding touch in and on our lives…the wonderful assurance that You are with us always, until the end of the age. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
