Ephesians: Finding our Identity in Christ
Ephesians 2:1-10
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
3-08-2026
Present but not Voting
The philosopher Jeremy Bentham left a vast sum of money to a hospital in London. He had but one stipulation - he had to be present for the hospital board meetings.
For nearly 100 years, his embalmed body would be wheeled out for the annual meeting. He would be listed as “present by not voting.”
He no longer is brought out for the meetings but was put on display some time ago, with his head that had fallen off, sitting at his feet.
When it comes to our salvation - we are present but we don’t vote!
From Scripture alone, we learn that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.
This morning, we will see that it is grace alone that saved us. It is not grace plus something else.
Review
Last week, we studied Paul’s pray for the Ephesians.
He thanked God for their love for Jesus and love for other Christians
He asked God to give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation that they may know God better
He asked God to give them the spiritual antennae to understand
the hope that God has called them to
The treasure that they are to God
And the incomparable great power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, that is available to those of us who believe
Today, we are going to see the results of that power - none other than a changed life!
Please turn with me to Ephesians 2:1-10.
Prayer
To Ephesus with Love
Chapter one is a description of salvation from God’s point of view. Chapter two, where I will be camping today, is a description of salvation from our point of view.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)
Before we begin, let me remind you of three definitions:
- Justice - getting what you deserve
- Mercy - Not getting what you deserve
- Grace - Getting what you don’t deserve
I’ve told this story many times, but Joshua used to put a pen in the fan and broke the fan. I had told him not to do it and he ran out to the car and said, “Daddy, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to do it.”
Justice? He deserved it. He had been warned and put the pen in the fan anyway.
Mercy? Instead of punishing him, I simply gave him a hug and said I loved him.
Grace? Instead of punishment, I took him to DQ for a Blizzard. Did he deserve a treat? Absolutely not! But I chose, out of my love for him, to show him what grace looks like.
Terry Johnson defines grace as the “determination of God to look upon us with favor and deliver us from our folly.”
Let’s look at verses 1-3. Paul, like a lawyer laying out a case, is methodical in his reasoning. He wants to show that it is by grace alone that we are saved.
This is Us
We were:
Dead
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”
Paul begins by affirming that we are spiritually dead. We were born into sin (original sin), we have no capacity to respond to
God, obey God, or seek after God:
“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-11)
We have no righteousness at all, we have no spiritual eyes or ears, and we didn’t want to submit our will to God.
The Scriptures describe us before our salvation as slaves of sin (John 8:34), blind (I Cor 2:14), and completely unable to come to God unless the Holy Spirit draws us (John 6:44).
We were imprisoned by our sinful desire. “Transgressions” means “acts of sin.” The word sin means “to miss the mark.”
“There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…(Romans 3:22-23a)
We are actually going to come to the rest of this verse in a minute.
* We are held captive by the “ways of the world.” The Apostle John wrote:
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world…” (I John 2:15-16)
The world system wants to squeeze us into their mold. Daniel and his three friends, refused to eat the place food. They said you can change my name but you can’t change our identity.
Paul wrote the Romans:
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
We were held in chains by the “ruler of the kingdom of the air.”
This is a description of satan and his evil forces.
Paul wrote this warning to the church at Ephesus:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
He uses temptation, condemnation, deception, and accusation. He only has power that we allow him to have.
He hates God and he hates us. His hobbies are stealing our hopes, killing our dreams, and destroying our souls.
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)
We aren’t “mostly dead,” like Wesley in The Princess Bride. The spiritual deadness was pervasive. As Ezekiel wrote, we were dry bones. We were hopeless and helpless to save ourselves.
Defiant
We not only were dead in our sins but we were actively rebelling against God.
“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.” (Ephesians 2:3a)
Paul wrote the Galatian Christians that there is a battle going on and before Christ we lost the battle every time:
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” (Galatians 5:16-18)
The phrase “live among” means to “walk with.” This rebellion against God wasn’t just an attitude, it was the very disposition of our souls.
Jesus described it this way:
“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)
In describing the Gentiles in chapter 4 of Ephesians, Paul makes it clear that before Christ, our hearts are hard toward His love, mercy, and grace.
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” (Ephesians 4:18)
Doomed
Paul couldn’t be more clear:
“Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:3b)
?We were spiritually dead and incapable of saving ourselves. But, more than that, we didn’t want saving, particularly by God.
We are doomed. Judgement is coming and because of our sin and rebellion, we deserve the full brunt of God’s wrath.
We often tell people that they need to be saved. But have you ever asked yourself, “Saved from what, or who?”
You have to understand the bad news of the Gospel before the good news makes any sense.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 3:36)
We need to be saved from God! God is just and because He is just, sin must be punished. He is well within His rights to send everyone of us to hell. We are not good people who do bad things. We are cosmic rebels who have not just broken God’s rules but also broken His heart, time and time again.
We can never do enough good deeds to make it right. We cannot hope high enough for his holiness.
Even our best works are “filthy rags.” Imagine you get a job at a t-shirt folding factory (Guzik). You fold more t-shirts that anyone ever. You think you should get a raise. Your boss fired you. You didn’t realize that you had ink on your hands and every t-shirt was ruined.
We are helpless, hopeless, and hell bound. We have no hope of saving ourselves. If rescue is going to come, it will have to be from the outside.
Something had to happen. We needed to be rescued.
To the Rescue
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 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.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)
In the context of death, rebellion, and doom, God did something completely extravagant. He rescued us! He saved us.
Why? Because we were so amazing? We were so lovable?
Because of His great love for us.
“For God so loved the world that He have his only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly… But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6,8)
Why? because of His rich mercy:
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:8-12)
* Made us alive with Christ
What did He do? “Made us alive” while we were dead. This isn’t a behavior modification plan or trying to become a better person. This is what Jesus meant when He told Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” (John 3:3)
Jesus didn’t die on the cross to make bad people good. He died on the cross to make dead people alive and completely new:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17)
Why? Simply because of his grace. We didn’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it.
Why did He do this? To show humans a part of His character - his kindness expressed through grace.
"Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)
I promised we would come back to this verse in Romans:
“There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…(Romans 3:22-23a)
The rest of the verse reads:
“and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23b)
Louis Berkhof defines grace as “the unmerited goodness or love of God to those who have forfeited it, and are by nature under a sentence of condemnation.”
This is what Paul was writing about in chapter 1:
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” (Ephesians 1:7)
God initiated our salvation and it only by grace alone.
The great theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote:
“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”
* Seated us with Christ
God not only made us alive in Christ but He raised us up with Christ, seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms, and will give us the incomparable riches of His grace forever to us in Christ.
Apart from Christ, we are spiritual dead. United with Christ, we are spiritually alive forever more.
He made us alive in Christ. This word is where we get our word “sync” from. We were synched up with Christ. His life became our lives.
* Raised us up with Christ
Union with Christ, means that we are not only made alive but we are “together raised with Christ.”
This is incredible! Even though we spit in his face and committed cosmic treason, God not only performs spiritual CPR on us and revives us but He also give us the same resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead.
“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:3-5, see also Colossians 2:11-13)
We now have resurrection power over guilt, shame, and condemnation. When Christ died on the cross, we died with Him. When He was raised from the grave, we were raised.
It’s like those infomercials on late night tv - but wait, there’s more!
He also has “seated us with Christ in the heaven realms.” This doesn’t mean “heaven” but the realm of “spiritual realities.”
Jesus has been exalted to the highest place above all powers and spiritual forces. We are joined with Him so we have power over those forces as well.
All Christians clearly have the status of the Son. All that is due Christ is given to us as well. Forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal glory is mine because of my union with Christ.
No human effort, no good deeds, no performance, no right doctrine can unite us with Christ and make us right with God.
Bryan Chapel wrote:
“We are too dead to be the source of our salvation. We are too weak to be the maintainer of our salvation. We are too finite to be the eternal stewards of our salvation.”
In the hymn we sang earlier, we proclaimed these words:
“Oh, to grace how great a debtor / Daily I'm constrained to be / Let that goodness like a fetter / Bind my wandering heart to Thee / Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it / Prone to leave the God I love / Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it / Seal it for Thy courts above”
Grace through Faith in Christ…Alone
We end this morning with one of the most powerful summaries of Paul’s understanding of grace.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Again, Paul proclaims that it is pure grace that saved us. Grace alone. But there is a human response - faith. In the chapter before this:
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)
Faith is the means by which grace is received. But notice carefully - it is a gift. Grace, faith, the whole process is a gift of God. Even the faith to respond to Him is a gracious gift of God.
Paul makes it clear again that salvation is not by works. If it was by works, then we could brag about it:
“God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” ( I Corinthians 1:29-31)
Paul describes us as God’s symphony, masterpiece, poem that are created to show the world His love through our good works.
Jesus said it best:
“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)
Application - What can we learn?
Chuck Swindoll summed it up with a nursery rhyme:
Jesus Christ came to our wall,
Jesus Christ died for our fall;
So regardless of death and in spite of sin,
Through grace, He might put us back together again.
Terry Johnson lists three applications that I think are very helpful for us today:
1. Humble worship
Several times in his writings, Paul becomes so overwhelmed by the goodness, grace, mercy, kindness of God that he breaks out into worship.
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out. “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)
Let’s make it a mark of our church that we respond to His grace with worship and praise.
B. Humble Thankfulness
Sometimes “thank you” is really the only thing we can say. He had every right to let us go to hell but He rescued us.
“For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (I Corinthians 4:7)
Friday night, I went to a store that I don’t go in very often. I simply can’t afford anything in it. But I got to pick out a couple of shirts. When I went to pay, there was a credit on my account put there by someone else. It was a gift.
What if I got my wallet out and demand that I pay them back or said that I would work off the debt. This would be rude. The only appropriate thing to do and say is “Thank you!”
C. Humble service
If it is true that we are saved completely by grace, that we are saved not by good works but for good works, then we need to rely on His power to do anything for His kingdom:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” wrote this near the end of his life:
“I am not what I ought to be - ah, how imperfect and deficient. I am not what I wish to be - I abhor what is evil, and I would cling to what is good. I am not what I hope to be - soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was, a slave to sin and satan, and I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
Jacoby Shaddix is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and TV presenter. He is best known as a founding member and the continuous lead singer of the California-based rock band Papa Roach (20 million albums sold) since the band's formation in 1993.
Their biggest hit is called “Last Resort” and you can hear the darkness in the lyrics he wrote that are about cutting, suicide, and hopelessness.
The chorus is a cry for help:
'Cause I'm losing my sight, losing my mind
Wish somebody would tell me I'm fine
Losing my sight, losing my mind
Wish somebody would tell me I'm fine
What happens when a rock star who has everything realizes he’s an alcoholic and nothing gives him hope? Watch this.
