Ephesians 2:1-10 • From Death to Life
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you turn in your Bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter 2 as we celebrate what the choir has just so beautifully sung that we could be hidden in the holiness of God, not put off by it, not threatened by it, but in a wonderful act of God's grace wrapped in the holiness of God by the work of Jesus Christ.
That is an unnecessary action of God we will see this day.
The reason in response to what we studied last week is that God must do something in our behalf.
As we studied the end of Ephesians 1 last week, we were reminded of the immeasurably great power of God at work in those who believe.
Now we need to discern why is such great power needed in our behalf.
Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 10, let me ask that you stand as we honor God's word and consider why His immeasurably great power is so needed.
The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2 verse 1, "You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom
we all once lived, in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, thank You for these wonderful words of life that we who were dead in trespasses and sins spiritually separated from life with You were nonetheless by a wondrous act of grace Your work and our behalf made right with You and saved from death at His eternal.
Help us this day, Father, to rejoice in that and we would pray even some who don't understand all that I've just said that there is a work in their behalf that would nullify and even overcome all the works that they would seek to do to be right with You, that there is something greater that You have done, wondrous and loving and merciful. Help us to understand it that we might have true joy in You this day, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Please be seated.
March 2012 was playoff season in England.
Two powerhouse soccer teams met in conflict and a promising young star, Fabrice Muamba,
from Zaire playing for one of the teams suddenly collapsed and fell to the ground.
No obvious explanation. There wasn't a collision. He hadn't been blindsided, hadn't played long enough to be fatigued, but there he was on the ground, first writhing in agony and then suddenly, ominously still.
Not moving at all.
The crowd grew silent.
A sense of dread filled the stadium not only as one team's medical techs went to help, but then as the medical technicians from both teams went on to the field.
Everyone knew something was awfully, terribly wrong. Just to give encouragement, a section of the stadium began to chant, "Fabrice Muamba, Fabrice Muamba," and then all the stands, 30,000 plus people by voice trying to encourage the will, the enthusiasm, the life into this young man lying on the ground, "Fabrice Muamba, Fabrice Muamba, rise!"
He did not hear.
He did not respond. He could not.
His heart had stopped. He was dead on the field.
As that reality began to sweep across the crowd, the camera also began to pan the audience, and you could see some begin to cry and others just shudder and others just cover their faces with their hands. They did not want to face the reality that one so able, one so strong, one so capable could not help himself at all. He was just dead. He could not respond.
And as awful as the image is, it's actually the nature of the image that the Apostle Paul is borrowing to tell us of a heart defect, not of an athlete, but of all people everywhere, apart from the work of God. That heart defect of Fabrice Muamba was something relatively rare, but the heart defect that affects the spiritual life of every human being is not rare at all. The Apostle Paul says, "This heart defect we all carry." And the reality of it, he expresses in the opening verses when he says to those who are reading this letter and to those who will hear it, "You were dead in trespasses and sins." There is a heart defect that has a spiritual reality that the Apostle Paul is making clear to us first by describing the course of the disease in our lives and then the companions who share it so that we will recognize it.
After all, the course of disease we all recognize has symptoms that can be observed. If you're an asthmatic, then you avoid allergens and the outdoors certain times of years. If you're a diabetic, you get thirsty and you need water a lot. If you are arthritic, you stop the exercising and move as little as possible. There are signs of the disease and there are signs of the heart defect. The Apostle says, "You were dead in trespasses and sins," verse 2, "in which you once walked following the course of this world."
You were walking after a path that was away from God. We've talked about the nature of trespass before. It's not going into forbidden territory. It's going out of sacred territory. That there was a life with God described in His word of living in obedience to the holiness of God. And yet the Apostle Paul says simply that you walked away from that life that God had designed by His holy laws and commands, that it was typical of all of us, that we went outside the boundaries.
He walked away from spiritual life and that meant we became the dead men walking away from spiritual life. And it was not true only of us, he says, verse 2, "You were following the course of this world."
It's what other people were doing. Just drawn away by enticements, by desires, by personal longing of some sort, whatever it was, you just went the way other people were going.
But the shocking words are the ones that follow in verse 3. After he says that you were following the course of this world, he says, "You were actually following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived."
We were following a course that seemed to be just the way of the world without consequence of what everyone else was doing. And yet the Apostle then says, "With a stark reality, you did not know it, but you were actually following a path designed by the prince of the power of the air by Satan himself." He had designs on your heart, he had designs on your eternity, that what God was forbidding you to do to walk outside the boundaries was actually what Satan was enticing you to do. And while you may not have perceived it, because it was just following your own passions, you're just going the way of the world was actually the plan of Satan to take you into an eternity of hell it was his actual intent. We don't like facing it. We don't like even thinking about it, that the sin that I indulge, that the trespass that I allow in my life is actually playing into the hands of one who intends my harm.
He wants my eternity to be one of suffering and awfulness. And the Apostle cares enough about us to warn us, but sometimes we will not heed the warning.
John Glass is the name of a Christian leader. Some of you will recognize he was not always a Christian.
He talks about following the passions of the world for a time in his life where drugs and sex became the dominating interest. And he actually ended up in Thailand at one point, and some of you know that in Thailand there are areas in which the red light districts are the sex trade of the whole world, where everything you could possibly imagine goes forward and is allowed if you just have enough money.
John Glass ended up in the red light districts of Thailand, but he had not abandoned the drugs at that time.
And there was a point at which in the red light district he was almost arrested for the drugs he had on his body.
And suddenly the stark reality hit him that while the sex trade might have been allowed in Thailand, drugs were not tolerated at all. And had he actually been arrested, he would have spent the rest of his life in absolute misery in a jail in Thailand.
It's sobering just for the moment. Enough so that he was listening to a street preacher who was trying to dissuade men from going into the brothels. And the street preacher simply said, "To go into those brothels, to engage in this life is to go to hell."
This is the path Satan intends, and it was the voice of warning. And John Glass listened to it just long enough to be so startled by it that he knew he had to ignore it.
He shrugged it off.
I'm just not going to listen to that.
But something had happened as the street preacher had seen his first reaction. And so while Glass was kind of walking away from this warning that if you continue in this path, you will go to hell.
That the street preacher began to follow him down the street as he was leaving, saying, "You must repent now.
You must turn now.
Another time will not come your way.
You must turn now. Satan wants your soul forever. Turn away from it." And it was the reality of Satan himself being the lion who was waiting to devour him in the sinful lifestyle that he was pursuing that finally woke him up.
I do not want to go this path anymore. The warning got through, but still it doesn't often for so many of us. Paul says that, right? Verse 3, he says, "We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
Why is it that we don't hear the warnings? I mean, for a lot of us, we're in Christian culture, if not in churches themselves. We know that there are paths of immorality, of drunkenness, of those things which are unhealthy for our lives, and we pursue them for the moment because others do it.
Right? So we have on our college campuses what we talk about the walk of shame. And we recognize that we can live the party life, and we can, all of us, even in adults, pursue after people who seem to be finding happiness in the things of the world and wonder why we're doing it when time after time we go to the party, we have the experience, we have the relationship, and instead of feeling happy, we feel empty.
And we wonder what's wrong with us. I mean, other people seem to be being fulfilled by this, but it just makes us feel worse and want more or different or something that's going to make us happy. And the Apostle is simply saying, "Do you not recognize that what's happening is you are declaring who you really are, you are remarkably, unhesitatingly, irretrievably human."
And, therefore, you're just like everybody else. It doesn't fulfill you, it doesn't fulfill them, but we're on the course of the world. We're just trying to find something.
Ray Bradbury, the science fiction writer, who, though he writes science fiction, got read by so many of us because he seemed to understand the human spirit so much, not from a godly perspective, but from a darkness perspective, seemed to be able to speak in science fiction so much about what we experience in reality.
And in "The Tattooed Man," he talks about the experience of a younger man who is teased by an older, about not really being a man yet, not really having the sexual experience he has had and could have until he visits a brothel.
And finally, in "Exasperation," the younger man says to the other, "Do you not recognize that there are simply young men who, in nobility, vomit at the notion of a brothel, only to be disgusted with himself when a few weeks later he finds himself in the brothel, just
like everybody else, not more noble, not different, not separate at all, just like the rest of humanity."
It's that notion that the apostle is trying to warn us to. Don't you recognize that when you just follow your own course, you're just dead men walking, just dead people, that everything that hopefully would give you life and fulfillment and happiness is not doing it, that the course your own is designed by Satan to hurt you and to stay on that course is simply to be like the rest of people, to be sons of disobedience, children of wrath, experiencing the consequences of your sin, the justice of God, as He would seek to turn you in an entirely different direction. What doesn't make us turn is that we feel like we've got such good company.
It's what everybody else is doing.
And the apostle Paul is simply reminding us here there is no safety in numbers.
Just because other people are doing it, just because it seems to make them happy, is not the message of the gospel to you. God has alerted you by your emptiness, by your unhappiness, by the lusting for more and different and again, is that this is not the answer. And the fact that others are doing it is not really in any way justifying or saying it will work for you.
When Kathy and I visited Noah Ellenwood's parents a few months ago, we had opportunity to go with them to Auschwitz, that awful place where over a million were murdered in the gas chambers.
And I've heard the stories for so long as all of you have of people assuming in innocence that the places they would go after the long train trip, the showers, would somehow be giving them opportunity to get clear of all the filth and into a better life.
Not recognizing that even as they were crushed by the hunters into those small shower rooms, what was actually igniting the pellets of poison was the body heat of everybody together.
That everybody being together was actually the cause of the death.
And we sometimes gather with others thinking, "This will be okay because other people are doing it because it seems to be okay for them." And Paul is simply saying, "Do you not recognize that that is the path of death and Satan and hurt and misery and the fact that other people are doing it is no reason to believe it will not hurt you."
This is the heart defect, that we are sinners by nature, says the Apostle, by nature, children of wrath. We are not sinning, simply become sinners. We are sinners who sin that there's a defect in us by virtue of our birth, by being children of Adam, that God has somehow alerted us to by the graciousness of the gospel to say, "If you just follow this path, misery and hell are ahead of you."
And as much as he warns us of that heart defect then, he tells us what antidote it is. The antidote, of course, is what he says in verse 4, "But God, having recognized these great defects of humanity, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transbases, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved."
What is the great mercy of God that is in response to the great heart defect?
He makes us alive.
That while we were spiritually dead, walking in the paths of sin, that God does something to make us alive. What is that something? Verse 4, "Being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead, He made us alive together with Christ." What's the path to life?
The great love of God was expressed in a great mercy, which was the provision of Christ.
It takes us aback at times that we who had walked away from God would have the walking of Christ into our lives, that He would provide something for us that we could not provide for ourselves. And the reason for that is not anything in us. "By grace are you saved," says the apostle. Not what you did, not what you believe, but ultimately God came in by His love doing something for Christ Jesus, which was necessary. He — verse 6 — "raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." There's a process.
Love ignites mercy and sends the grace that's in Christ.
And what happened then?
A price was paid.
God raised up Christ.
If He has raised Him up, that's resurrection language, that means He died.
He died taking the penalty for our sin upon Him. Not what I did to make things right. What Christ did to make things right is He took the penalty for my sin and your sin, for the sons of disobedience.
He took it upon Himself. And the evidence that the penalty was paid is that the consequence was removed, that death itself was ended for Christ and all who unite themselves in Him, who trust in Him, who put their hope in Him, that this process would make those of us who have been dead alive spiritually forever.
That death would no longer have dominion over us. That the physical reality would not be the ultimate reality. That God Himself would bring life to us and there would be a spiritually rich consequence.
That's actually what verse 6 says. God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I've mentioned this before. It seems so unlikely to us that God is saying past tense, that those who have put their faith in Christ are already seated in heavenly places, that there is a place of favor, a place of affection that God has reserved in heaven.
And we're already by status there, that because Christ is there and we're united to Him, that God, knowing the path which we had gone, the death that we had acquired, had nonetheless said, "By Christ, I will make you alive and I will not only give you life, I will give you riches of my mercy, which is the place of affection."
I've mentioned to you before there are two pieces of the gospel and sometimes we only hear one piece. That fact that our sin is put away, that our debt is removed. That's wonderful. That's necessary. But the other half of the gospel is that the riches of the mercy of God expressed in being seated at His right hand are ours as well. That God has not only removed the debt, He has given us His affection, the riches of our inheritance in Christ. That is ours too. And it doesn't make sense at times if we have offended Him, if we have hurt Him, if we walked away from Him, why would He care so much for us?
I had a bit of an answer of that this past week when a long-term friend of mine and some others in this church had to explain, as an elder, like men that we just ordained here, had to explain to His church His heart toward His Son who had just been sent to prison.
And the elder, my friend, stood in front of His church and he said these words, "I love all three of my children very much.
Becky and Josh have so much going for them, but when I think of my son Andrew, because of his mental illness and his bad choices, he does not have much going for him.
I love all three of my children, but even though I have been on the receiving end of Andrew's rage and he has hurt me and I have sometimes been angry with him, but I can tell you honestly that for Andrew I have an even more special love for him."
Now some of you parents understand this more than others.
You understand what it means to have a child in adolescence or young adulthood who is so difficult and so trying that you pour all of your heart and your emotions and so much in trying to rescue them and help them and turn them from self-destructive paths. And later in life, even to your own surprise, you find that you've got a special bond with that child, the one who gave you so much trouble, the one that you wrestled with so much. Why is that? Because you invested so much in them, so much of your heart and your emotions and your tears so that later on when there is a relationship it's almost more precious, almost more dear and deep.
And what God is saying through His Apostle here is even though we were dead in our transgressions and sins, even though we walked away from Him, even though there has been this great consequence of hurt, not only to our life but our relationship with Him, that to turn to Him, to trust in Him is to experience the wonder of being at the right hand of God as precious to God as Christ Himself. And the reason for that is He invested so much in you.
And that's why His love for us is so great. He gave Christ for us. Why would He not hold us precious now?
And what that's saying to you and to me is always if we will stand before God and say,
why should you love me? None of us should ever say, because of what I did, because of how good I am, because of how much I have done. When we will stand before God, we will say, God, I was a dead man walking. I was by nature a child of wrath. I was going my own way following the passions of my mind and heart and Christ rescued me.
And that becomes the claim of the heart of those who recognize what verses 8 and 9 say. Remember, "For by grace you have been saved through faith," and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of work, so that no one may boast.
Whether we understand that question is answered by telling you of an old, old question in the life of the church. Many of you will know it.
What would you say?
If you were to die tonight and stand before God in His heaven and He were to say to you, why should I let you in?
What would you say?
I hope you recognize that one of the liabilities in being in a historic church like this one is that there will be some who think that the reason they should be there is because they have been here.
Well, why should you let me in? Well, I was a member of an historic church.
And you know, I did my best, lived a pretty good life, you know, tried not to hurt too many people, tried to be honest not all the time, but you know, pretty much did the best I could.
All which are answers of saying, "Look what I did.
Look how good I am, at least compared to other people."
But the answer of Scripture is something quite different.
By grace are you saved through faith. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, any form of boasting.
I've done enough. I've served enough. I haven't been as bad as.
Are all forms of boasting.
When you come before God and His heaven, you must leave all that boasting at home.
And ultimately we are taught even by the language of these verses. I know many of you know this so well. Verse 8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith." What is faith? It is confidence in another.
Not confidence in us.
It says, "Though faith is the channel," not the means, "it is the channel by which grace itself travels." My faith is in what you provide. That's what grace is, the provision of God in our behalf. I'm not trusting in my faith. I am trusting in God's grace. Now, I know that sounds hard, but I want you to actually look closely. Those of you who want to go a little bit deep today, all right? Look at verse 8, "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing." Now, you must know that everybody wonders what is the "this" referring to, right? Is this referring to faith, or is this referring to grace? Little hint to you here. It said we go deep, right?
Faith and grace in Greek are both feminine terms.
This is a neuter term.
The "this" is not referring exclusively to the grace or to the faith. It is referring to the process that God provides, as though the faith as well as the grace are gifts. Think of that. If faith is the canal over which grace now travels, then you must understand every disappointment,
every trial, every sense of inadequacy, every evidence of weakness is God's digging away at our heart's sufficiency.
So that ultimately we would say what God is doing is He is making the path of faith in our hearts so that we will say, "God, nothing in me. I simply depend upon the freight that is coming down this canal, which is Your great grace toward me." Why do we so struggle? If faith is something I express out of me, how could it be the gift of God?
Well, for the moment, I just want you to think about why God would even say such a thing.
Because He's helping us avoid the trap of thinking the reason we are saved is because of the quality or the quantity of our faith.
I have enough of it. I've got better than you of it. Whatever it is. No, listen, faith is this depending, it's this collapsing upon God. It's not saying, "God, I stand before You in Your heaven and the reason You shall let me in is I have enough faith." No, that's the boasting again. I have really good faith. No, that's the boasting again. I ultimately say, "Nothing in me. My faith is entirely in You.
I'm depending not on me. I'm emptying myself of self.
I depend entirely upon the work of Jesus Christ that when I stand before God in His heaven and He says, "Why should I let You in?" The answer is because I have good enough faith.
No, because Jesus' grace was sufficient.
Because He has made the way, because He loves me, because He loved me when I was a dead man walking, because He brought life to my heart, because He did what I could not do. My faith is not in my faith. My faith is not in the sufficiency of me. My faith is entirely in what Christ has done and that relieves me. Don't you know how that relieves you from thinking, "How much of this faith stuff do I have to have and how do I get it?"
No, believe in the grace of God.
Christ unto Christ. When the ancients tried to say what this faith was, they said it's receiving and resting upon Christ alone for our salvation. Isn't that neat? It's not doing something. It's not mustering something. It's resting on Christ.
I receive what He has done. I rest upon Him. And the beauty of what happens as a consequence of that is verse 10. What happens then is we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We've been dead men walking toward death and hell.
And now by God's workmanship, God's workmanship, we are walking in a path of great blessing. You know why I love the word God's workmanship? We are now God's workmanship. It's actually work in Greek that means a work of art.
And I know some of you just think you're a piece of work.
But by the grace of God, you are His work of art. What He has done, He has made you beautiful to Himself. He has made you a child of His affection. He has given you the wonder of being like Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ covering you and making you right before Him. And it's not because of what you have done. It's not because of the adequacy of your faith. It's because you collapsed onto Christ, and when you did, Christ held you up.
It's His work. It's the wonder of what He has done. And that's where we're always pointing. I want you to think, even before we end today, if you were to stand before God in His heaven and He were to say to you, "Why should I let you in?"
Please please, do not say, "I tried to do pretty good. I'm not as bad as the next person. I belong to this church. I was baptized as a child." None of that will be an adequate answer, all that is some form of boasting.
Ultimately, the answer that is beautiful and wonderful is, "I simply trust I'm a work of art that I could not have made, but Jesus did.
It was His work. I just rest on Him. I'm not trusting anything in me. I'm just resting on Christ."
And that is the life-giving power of the gospel.
You know how I know about Fabrice Mwamba?
It was two years ago that he lay on that field dead.
And for 78 minutes, his heart did not beat again in its own strength.
And then through the medical things that some of you in this room will know far better than I, whatever was the adrenaline and the electric shock and all those medical means, means outside of him, he was made alive.
And he has now become the world spokesman for heart disease, telling people of the heart defect that he had, which they may share, and therefore he says, "You must check for yourself and for your children." Now, do you have this heart defect?
I'm not speaking to you about a heart defect that is physical.
But this morning, I ask you to consider this.
Do you have a heart defect that is spiritual?
Are you a dead man or a dead woman walking?
That you know that what you are claiming would make you write eternally is something in you, something that you perform or some way that you're better than someone else, or something that makes you write with God by what you have done, or even the faith that you have pumped up into you. Or have you simply said, "I am going to rest on Christ.
He's sufficient. I trust him alone. I collapse on Jesus."
Because that being your profession is the assurance of the gospel that you are alive to God forever.
Why should He let you end this God?
Because I rest on Jesus alone.
He made me right, nothing in me.
He made me right. I trust Him.
We're going to sing now in Christ alone.
And as we're singing, I want you to consider again, just if you were to stand before God in His heaven, and He were to say to you, "Why should I let you in?"
If before this day you would say, "Because of my faith, because of my works, because of my background, because of my church membership," if any of those would be your claim, "If
I'm going to ask that you reconsider your answer."
And if you would like to talk to some of us after this service, we are going to wait for you right down here, and we're going to say, "What is the answer that would actually be life to you?
Real life spiritually with God forever.
What would it mean to say, "I collapse on Jesus?
I just rest on Him.
I know now by grace I am saved through faith, and that not of myself. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."
If you want to know what it means to collapse on Christ and have a new life, let's talk.
Let's stand and sing.