FROM DEATH TO LIFE IN CHRIST
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on October 30, 2022 under 2022 |
Bethany Bible Church Sermon Message; October 30, 2022 from Ephesians 2:1-7
Theme: Joyful Christian living comes from knowing who we once were, what God did for us, and why He did it.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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This morning, we continue our study of the Book of Ephesians. And we come to one of the most important passages in that book. In fact, I would say that it ought to be considered one of the most important passages in the whole Bible. It’s so important that you can’t rightly interpret the Christian faith—or experience true joy in it—unless you understand the glorious truth that it declares to us.
What’s more, I love it because it tells my story. And I sincerely hope it tells yours too.
This passage is found in Ephesians 2:1-7. The apostle Paul had been telling a group of Christians about the eternal blessings that they have received from God the Father through faith in Jesus Christ. And he wrote;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-7).
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Now; in this passage, the apostle Paul began by telling his readers some bad news.
You might not have thought that sharing ‘bad news’ is the way to lead people to joyful Christian living. But it is. He started off by reminding them about who they once were. They were people who were dead in their trespasses and sins. They may have walked around, and talked, and worked, and had all the outward appearance of being alive. But they had no life in them toward God. There was nothing that they could do to please God or make themselves acceptable in His sight. They were spiritually dead in trespasses and sins—separated from any relationship with God their Creator—destined for eternal judgment.
That’s the bad news. It was bad news for them; and it’s also the bad news for you and me. And before anyone can appreciate the good news of God’s grace, they first have to face the bad news about the seriousness of their need.
But then, after telling his readers the bad news of what they once were, Paul went on to tell them the good news of what God did about it. It’s summed up in two wonderful words that are found at the beginning of verse 4—“But God …” That combination of two words is the greatest and most hopeful combination of words that there ever could be! Paul’s readers were dead in their trespasses and sins; but God the Father, who looked upon their spiritually lifeless and hopeless condition, did something for them that dead sinners could never do for themselves. He made them spiritually alive with Jesus Christ, and spiritually raised them up together with Him, and spiritually seated them with Him in heavenly glory. Those two words, “But God”, truly sum up the whole glory of the Christian faith.
And then, after telling his readers who they once were, and after telling them what God did about it, Paul finally told them why it was done. It was not done because they—in any way—deserved it. They were dead in their trespasses and sins, and the only thing that they deserved was eternal judgment. But as it says in verse 5, “by grace you have been saved”. It was all done as a gift of God’s favor—from out of His great love. And as verse 7 tells us, it was done so that the riches of God’s grace toward them would be put on display throughout eternity.
And knowing about all this—and knowing that it’s true of them—would lead them to joyful Christian living.
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Now; it might seem to you as if I have just preached the whole sermon from this passage. And I suppose I have. But before we get into the details of it all, I felt that it was important to lay the basic points of this passage out to you first. Altogether, it tells us something crucial about the nature of our Christian faith.
You see; a lot of people think that the Christian faith is nothing more than a kind of philosophy—a set of beliefs. They think that embracing the Christian faith is simply a matter of embracing its doctrines and affirming its truths. ‘Just believe the right things, say the creeds, learn your catechism, and you’re a Christian.’ And it’s absolutely true that embracing the right beliefs—as they are laid out for us in the Bible—is key to the Christian faith. We can’t be saved without faith in the truths the Bible tells us. But as this passage shows us, embracing a set of beliefs all by itself is not enough to define what the Christian faith is.
A lot of other people might think that the Christian faith is mostly about living out a set of highly-refined ethics—a pattern of right conduct and proper morals. Some people even say, “I just embrace the simple ethics of The Sermon on The Mount, and try to follow the ten commandments, and obey ‘the golden rule’.” And obviously, the Christian faith does require a certain kind of Christian conduct from us. In Luke 6:46, Jesus said, “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” But as this passage shows us, just embracing a set of moral principles alone is not enough to define the Christian life.
And still more people think that the Christian faith is basically a ‘religion’; and that living the Christian life is about embracing certain religious practices—attending the right church services, observing the right rituals, giving the right offerings, celebrating the right holidays, praying the right prayers, and doing the right good deeds. And obviously, many such things are genuinely a part of the Christian life. But as this passage shows us, not even that is enough to define what the Christian faith really is.
In fact, to think that the Christian faith is a matter of doing those kinds of things all by themselves is an idea that would lead someone to eternal loss. In The Sermon on The Mount, the Lord Jesus said that—on the great day of judgment—that many would come to Him boasting in such things; but will be surprised to discover that they had never actually done the will of God at all. He said;
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:22-23).
As this morning’s passage shows us, the true nature of the Christian faith isn’t found in anything we do. In fact, it makes it very clear to us that there isn’t anything that we can do. Someone who is dead cannot embrace the right set of beliefs, or follow the right set of ethics, or observe the right set of religious rituals. They’re dead in the sight of God; and the dead can’t do anything! But as this morning’s passage reveals to us, the most basic experience of the Christian faith isn’t found in anything that we can do for God. Rather, it’s found in something that God did for us.
And that means that the most basic response of our experience of the Christian life should be joyful gratitude! It comes from realizing that, as people who were spiritually dead before God, He made us alive in Christ as a free gift of His grace; and has, therefore, lovingly poured out upon us all the eternal blessings in Christ as a gift of His immeasurable goodness and kindness.
The joyful experience of the Christian life doesn’t come from trying to live up to it in our own power. That would only lead to frustration and misery and loss; because, as people who were dead in our trespasses and sins, we had no power to do anything at all. Instead—as this passage shows us—joyful Christian living comes from knowing three things: (1) who we once were, (2) what God did for us, and (3) why He did it.
And the best reaction to it all—the true and only proper response of our experience in the Christian faith—is gratitude! Joyful gratitude!
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My hope this morning, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is that our own personal experience of joyful gratitude to God our Savior will grow from what we’re told in this passage about these three things. So then; let’s look at these three things one at a time.
The first thing that the apostle Paul tells us—as it’s found in verses 1-3—is …
1. WHO WE ONCE WERE.
This is ‘the bad news’ that must come before ‘the good news’. And the bad news is that we were dead. We were nothing more than spiritual corpses—as incapable of making ourselves acceptable in the sight of God as any spiritual corpse would be of rising itself up out of the grave.
Paul said;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (vv. 1-3).
In the particular translation of the Bible that I’m using—which is the New King James Version—verse 1 begins by saying, “And you He made alive …” That’s also how it’s put in the old King James Version. But if you’re using that translation, do you see how those words “He made alive” are in italics? That’s because they are not found in the original text of Paul’s words. The translators added them in an effort to help us better understand the ‘good news’ of where Paul’s words are leading us. But really, in the original language of Paul’s letter, he simply says, “And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins …”
To really understand the significance of this, please look back with me to what Paul had just told his readers in Ephesians 1:15-23. What he had told them was the glorious truth of all the riches that God has poured out upon them in Christ—along with the expressed desire that they would truly ‘know’ these things. He wrote;
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:15-23).
What great blessings these are! They have been given to us in Christ! How rich we have been made in Him! And that’s when the words of our passage come along and surprise us with the shocking reminder of our past: “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins …”! It’s as if Paul was saying, “All these blessings in Christ have now been graciously given to you—you, of all people!—who were completely undeserving of them, and who didn’t even have a capacity to take hold of them, because you were formerly dead in trespasses and sins!”
We could never have earned these great blessings for ourselves! We could never have made ourselves worthy of them! We were utterly dead. We were put into a state of spiritual death before God because of the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. And we went on to prove the reality of our deadness to Him by our trespasses—which are those many times that we kept putting our feet over the line into God’s moral “No Trespassing” zones—doing those things that He said not to do. And we were kept in a state of death by our sins—which are those many times when we failed to do the things that He said to do—missing the target and falling short of the mark. The Bible tells us, in Romans 6:23, that the wages of sin is death. And so, we were spiritually dead. We had no life before God, and no capacity to have a relationship with Him.
But the bad news gets more intense. It’s not just that we were dead. We were making things even worse for ourselves by the fact that we were ‘the walking dead’. As Paul told his readers in verse 2, they were dead in trespasses and sins, “in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience …”
Our “walk” is Paul’s way of describing our daily course of action—our way of daily life. We ‘walked’ in accord with the sinful principles of this fallen world. We were conformed to the philosophies and ideals of the ungodly principles all around us. We—as it were—got our values and priorities from off the Internet. But we didn’t do this alone. We were also doing so under the deceitful influences of the devil and his demonic forces.
In Ephesians 6:12, Paul said that all around us are spiritual forces at war with us; saying that
… we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).
In this sense, Satan is the prince of the power of the air. He’s the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience through the spiritual forces of evil that operate all around us. As it tells us in 1 John 5:19, “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” People who are in a dead spiritual condition before God aren’t really laying there on the ground doing nothing. No! They are the devil’s helpless victims—his walking-talking, spiritually dead playthings—who he turns into “sons of disobedience” against God. They may not believe that the devil has any influence over them at all. But they only think that way because they are deceived by him.
And we ourselves were once among them. As Paul puts it in verse 4, these “sons of disobedience” are those “among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” We were once ‘right in there’ with them! Paul described what our former condition looked like in Ephesians 4:17-19;
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:17-19).
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; that was where I was once. I had no life toward God whatsoever. I had no relationship with Him except one of hostility. I was a walking dead man that the devil pulled along by the nose into one sin after another. I was—by nature—a child of wrath; destined for eternal judgment in the lake of fire. And I could, in no way, do anything to rescue myself or make myself worthy before God.
That’s all bad news. It’s very bad news in fact! But it was the absolute truth. And can you say that it was also true of you? Unless you can, you can’t possibly appreciate what God did for you … and you can’t experience the joy of your Christian life that God wants you to have. Denying it only leads to more misery.
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So; that’s the first thing we need to know … who we once were. And now, in verses 4-6, Paul tells us the good news of …
2. WHAT GOD DID FOR US.
And just think, dear brothers and sisters—after hearing the bad news—of how sweet those first two words are! “But God …!”
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (vv. 4-6).
First, we’re told that God took us who were dead in our trespasses and sins and made us alive. That had to come first. Back in 1973, I first heard the message of the gospel and believed. But as a former spiritually dead man, I couldn’t have responded to it—or even heard it—unless I had first been made alive by God. And that’s what God did by His amazing grace. He united me to Jesus by grace, so that I came to life spiritually. As Jesus said in John 5:25-26;
“Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself …” (John 5:25-26).
Spiritual life is in His Son. When God the Father graciously united me to Jesus through the saving ministry of the Holy Spirit, I came to life with Him. But then, after that, the Father didn’t just leave me in the place of death. He raised me from my dead circumstances. He pulled me up out of the spiritual grave, helped me to leave all my grave-clothes behind, and enabled me to walk in the newness of life. With each passing day, by the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work in me, I turned further away from the old sins of the past; and I began walking more and more in a new walk of obedience with Jesus. I was transformed from a dead man to a man who lived in unity with Christ. The thing that Paul described in Ephesians 4:22-24 became true of me;
that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24).
And it gets even better still! Not only did God give us life in Jesus; and not only did He raise us to a new walk of obedience with Jesus; but He also seated us spiritually in a position of glory in heavenly places in Jesus. As a formerly dead man, I can now rejoice that Jesus’ death on the cross has been made my death, that His resurrection to life has also been made my resurrection, and His ascension to the right hand of God the Father in majesty and glory has also been made my ascension. I am now 100% accepted in the sight of God my Creator. He holds no sin against me; and instead, He sees all of the righteousness of Jesus applied to me. He has put me—positionally—at the right hand of glory in Christ my Savior. And now, I am guaranteed—one day—to be fully glorified in both my body and my spirit, so that I can share in the rich inheritance of Christ forever.
That’s a pretty wonderful outcome for someone who was formerly dead! And it wasn’t by anything I did. It was all done by God the Father; “who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses …”
That’s the good news that stands in sharp contrast to the bad news. And can you say that it was also all true of you also? Unless you can, you can’t appreciate what great a thing it is that God did for you … and you can’t experience the joy of your Christian life that God wants you to have.
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So then; the bad news is that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. That’s who we were. And the good news is that God has made us alive in Christ as a gift of His abundant grace—from out of His great love with which He loved us. That’s what God did for us.
And that leads us to one more thing we need to know; and that’s …
3. WHY IT WAS DONE.
Verse 7 tells us that it was
that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (v. 7).
Do you notice that Paul doesn’t say that this will happen in the ‘age’ to come?—singular? Instead, he said that it will happen in the ‘ages’ to come—plural. From one age to another, and then to another, and then to another, He will endlessly display the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us … on into eternity … time without end … forever and ever. And before whom will this exceeding kindness to us be put on endless display? It will be shown to the angelic hosts of heaven, who will eternally marvel at what a wonderfully gracious and kind God He is toward us. As it tells us in Ephesians 3:10, God will display the mystery of His grace to us in Jesus Christ;
to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians 3;10-11).
All this blessedness will be to us through Jesus Christ; and all the glory and praise of it will go to God the Father who gave it all to us!
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And so you see; the Christian life isn’t experienced by embracing a certain philosophy, or by living according to a certain moral code, or by following a set of religious principles. It’s experienced by our having once been dead in trespasses and sins, by our having now been graciously made alive through Jesus Christ, and by our forever being made into eternal trophies of God’s wonderful grace. And the proper response to it all is a life of deep gratitude for all that God has done for us in Jesus.
Do you know these three things? Have you experienced them personally? I truly hope and pray so. Because joyful Christian living truly—and only—comes from knowing who we once were, what God did for us, and why He did it … and all to the praise of His glory.
AE
