WE ARE GOD’S WORKMANSHIP
Text: Ephesians 2:1-10
There is a story that I once read when I was in my freshman year of college. There was a man in a mental institution that had the delusion that he was dead. His counselor got sick of the ongoing routine of this man’s delusion. "Eureka," he thought to himself of the solution to cure this patient of his delusion after several failing attempts. He thought that he would prick the finger of this delusional patient and prove to him that he was alive. During his next session with this patient, he pricked his finger in much the same way they do in the field of medicine when they need a small sample of blood for the purpose of running tests. After he pricked the finger of this patient, he thought he might possibly be cured of his delusion as he exclaimed something like "look at there, you are not dead because you can still bleed". To his surprise, the patient responded, "That only proves that dead people can bleed." It is sad that there are many who cannot be cured of the delusions of false beliefs or opinions any more than this man.
We laugh when we hear about the kind of non-sense that this mental patient had---thinking he was dead. In the physical sense of being dead, he was very much alive. He was breathing. He was conscious. He obviously had a pulse. In spite of his delusion of being dead, he was able to speak and reason as well as all of these other signs of life. Yet, in the spiritual sense, if he was in his natural state---in the nature of the flesh, then we could say that he was speaking truthfully.
Before we knew Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we, too, were among the living dead. Before we knew Jesus, we were alive physically, but spiritually we were dead. The world is full of people who are physically alive, but spiritually they are dead.
THE SPIRITUALLY DEAD ARE DEGENERATES
If we call someone a degenerate, then we are saying that they are corrupt. To call someone a degenerate in the general sense is to say that he or she has fallen below what is morally appropriate and proper. To call someone a degenerate in the spiritual sense means that he or she has fallen from their normal condition. If we go back to the story of the Garden of Eden, then we can make sense of the fall of humanity. The fall of both Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden sheds light on how we ourselves had a fallen nature before we knew Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Before they fell, they were created in God’s image. But, when they disobeyed they fell, they fell because the covenant (the bond of their relationship with God) was broken by their disobedience (Hosea 6:7, cf. Romans 5:12, 5:14).
The nature of the flesh is corrupt because of disobedience. Ephesians 2:1-2 tells us about this kind of disobedience: "… 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" (NIV). To live in sinful disobedience is to therefore live in death. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. "Sin kills innocence, … ideals and … the will". (William Barclay. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Letters To The Galatians And Ephesians. Revised Edition. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, pp. 97 - 98). If there was an acronym for sin and what it does, then we would do well to say that sin spells disaster in a progressional way. We could say that the "s" of sin stands for subtle. We could say that the "i" of sin represents how sin is invading. And finally, we could say the "n" of sin represents how sin is nullifying. Sin separates us from God and each other. (quoted from my sermon "Called To Reconciliation And To Reconcile").
IT IS BY GRACE THAT WE ARE SAVED
Grace is God’s gift to us that is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son. Consider Ephesians 2:6 - 8: "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. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (NIV). God demonstrates and lavishes the gift of His unconditional love and grace upon us through the life and example of Jesus Christ who gave of His riches. It is a gift, because we did not earn it: "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:23-24 RSV).
Without God’s gift of grace, we would all die with sin being the wages of our death (Romans 3:23). There are some who think of God’s grace as a myth. "A lady lecturer in a Lancashire town, decried the Gospel, and declared it a "myth." A mill worker stood up at the close, and said, "You all know that some years ago, I was a curse to this town, a terror to my wife, and a bad example to my family. The temperance folks tried to reclaim me: the police, the magistrates tried to raise [catch] me, but all was vain. The Gospel reached my soul, it saved me, and grace has kept me these ten years." Looking the lady full in the face, he added - "It is a mighty myth, madam." (John Ritchie. 500 Gospel Illustrations. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1987, p. 134). Obviously, this man was being sarcastic to this woman who appeared to be an aetheist.
This man was talking about how his faith in God’s grace had saved him when he was beyond help and reform by anything that human efforts could ever have achieved. The man was talking about the wretched life that he once lived being dead in the old sinful nature of the flesh. Having experienced the joy of God’s gift of saving grace, he seemed also to be alluding to the fact that it was grace that would lead him to his home in heaven. He had embraced God’s gift of grace as a new creature in Christ.
FAITH IS OUR RESPONSE TO GOD’S GRACE
God’s grace is free to us but it was costly to Jesus who paid the price on the cross for our freedom. Jesus was obedient even to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8) to demonstrate just how great God’s love is for us (Romans 5:8) even when we were God’s enemies (Romans 5:10). Jesus paid the price for us! We are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ (Romans 5:24). "The righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Romans 5:22 NIV). That is why without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). That is also why the Bible says that the righteous live by faith (Hebrews 10:38, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11).
"A legend tells of a liberated slave who went to see President Lincoln and assured him that he would not accept his freedom as a gift, that he proposed to pay for it. He threw a silver dollar on the President’s desk. The kindly Mr. Lincoln tried to show the man that he could not pay for his liberty, that the fact that he thought he could indicated that he did not fully appreciate the priceless gift. When the freed man insisted, the president took him to the window and showed him the row of soldiers’ graves across the river in Arlington. He asked him how his money could pay back the lives that had been given that he might live in freedom. When the man asked what he might do, he was assured that he must walk the world with gratitude and live like a freeman. Jesus Christ died and paid the price for our new life. [We must] Live, then, as one showing the gratitude and freedom His undeserved gift has bought". (William P. Barker. ed. Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide. 88th Annual Volume. Elgin, David C. Cook Publishing, Co., 1992, p.315). That is where faith comes in.
To paraphrase John Wesley, it is our faith in Jesus that saves us from both the guilt and the power of sin. (Paraphrased from John Wesley’s sermon, "Salvation By Faith"). The power of sin comes through the unyielding burden of guilt from which nobody can save himself or herself. Again, "The righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Romans 5:22 NIV). That is why without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). That is also why the Bible says that the righteous live by faith (Hebrews 10:38, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11). It is God’s mercy and grace that removes our misery and guilt (Paraphrase of John Wesley’s Notes On The New Testament on Ephesians 2:4). It is God’s grace that is freely given to all who will believe and receive by faith that compels them to be fruitful in their faith, witness and work as Christians!
It is through our "grace awakening" that we have the ability to become God’s handiwork. How often do we recite the words of the Apostles’ Creed and pay close attention to the words "… he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" ? Consider Ephesians 2:5 and 8 from the King James Version: "Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) … (8) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: " (KJV). The word "quicken" means "to make alive". God has given us spiritual life where we were once "dead in sins" through our faith in Jesus Christ.
God has work that He has prepared in advance for us to do as both our work and witness. It is through both our work and witness that we boast about our faith in God’s saving grace that has "quickened" us. "An old Scotsman operated a little rowboat for transporting passengers. One day one of the passengers noticed that the good old man had carved on one oar the word "Faith," and on the other oar "Works." Curiosity led him to ask the meaning of this. The old man being a well-balanced Christian and glad of the opportunity for testimony, said, "I will show you." So saying, he dropped one oar and plied the other called Works, and they just went around in circles. Then he dropped that oar and plied with the one called Faith, and the little boat went around in circles again---this time the other way around, but still in a circle. After this demonstration the old man picked up Faith and Works, and plying both oars together, sped swiftly over the water, explaining to his inquiring passenger, "You see that is the way it is in the Christian life. Dead works without faith are useless, and ’faith without works is dead’ also, getting you nowhere. But faith and works pulling together make for safety, progress, and blessing." (Walter B. Knight. Knight’s Master Book Of New Illustrations. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986, p. 195). Both our faith and our works go together (James 2:17) as we continue to be a "work in progress" in God’s worksmanship. God enables us to become "living illustrations" of how it is that He "quickens" us. We become living illustrations to those around us as God continues to seek to work in us to will and act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:13) and the forwarding of His kingdom here on earth.
