Ephesians 2:1-10
Beginning last week, we set out
in a five-week study of the alone statements of the Reformation.
Last week, we looked at scripture alone, and we understand as Christians
that we have many sources of authority in our lives, but the
only infallible or the only source of authority that cannot make
a mistake is the Bible. And so we believe the Bible is
the infallible word of God, the inerrant word of God. We believe
that it is our only rule of faith, what to believe and practice,
how to worship and please the living and true God. And so we
thank God that he has given us our marching orders in the Bible.
But today we look at the alone statement, sola gratia, or by
grace alone. And there’s no better place to
go in the scripture than the second chapter of Ephesians.
And so hang on to your hats as we hear from God’s word. And
we also received the sacrament of the Lord’s supper today. Ephesians
chapter two, beginning at verse one, we read the words of the
apostle Paul, where he says, and you were dead in the trespasses. and the 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 our
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.
He’s raised us 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 and 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 as 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 us pray together. Oh God,
we thank you for your word. We pray that you would shine
the light of your Holy Spirit into our minds, into our hearts. Give us eyes to see, give us
ears to hear, give us minds that understand. And we pray most
of all that you would give us willing hands and feet to leave
this place and out of Out of gratitude for the great salvation
that is ours, we would go and serve in the world as new creations
in Christ, recognizing that we have been saved from your wrath
and curse. We have been saved under Christ,
and we have been saved for good works. And we ask and pray for
your help and grace. We pray it all in Jesus name.
Amen. How great is the grace of God?
How great is it? If you could measure it, what
would its measurements be? How great is the grace of God?
How great is the grace of God on paper? How great is the grace
of God in theory? How great is the grace of God
in your experience? How great is the grace of God
on the pages of scripture? You could ask that question.
You could answer it in a number of ways. On paper, we could say
the grace of God is great. In theory, we could say God’s
grace is greater than we could ever imagine. Experientially,
we could say God’s grace is amazing. He saved a wretch like me. I
was lost and found. I was blind, but now I see. But on the pages of scripture,
we find that when God speaks of how great is his grace, we
find an off the charts explanation of how great is the love and
the mercy and the grace and the kindness and the pleasure and
the joy and the mercy and riches of God. Now, when we ask a question
with our Children and we say, how much does that cost? And they don’t understand money
yet, sometimes it costs dollars and cents, it costs hundreds,
it costs thousands, and we get into millions. But you know,
the imagination of children sometimes they say, does it cost a million?
Does it cost a trillion? And then they start getting into
those made up names, kazillions and kabillions and on and on
it can go. And we have to ask the question,
how great is the grace of God? And we literally have to have
made up words like children to understand how great it is. We are incapable of understanding
how wide and how great and how deep and high is the love and
the riches and the mercy of God in Christ. But in the scripture,
every attempt is made. And so in Ephesians chapter two,
we understand by the words of the apostle Paul, that the grace
of God is great. And so as we take a small look
at grace alone, sola gratia, we want to see what Paul tells
the Ephesians in Ephesians 2, verses 1-10 about the grace of
God. And we’ll look at it in three
headings. The first, life without Christ. The second, life in Christ. And the third, life for Christ. Verses 1-3 speak of life without
Christ. We read, and you were dead in
the trespasses and the sins in which you once walked. You were
following the course of this world, following the prince of
the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons
of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions
of our flesh. We were carrying out the desires
of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath
like the rest. of mankind. How do we know this
to be true? It’s on the pages of scripture
that helps us. But think back to Genesis, to
the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve and the
wonderful creation God made. He put them in authority over
it. He gave them the opportunity to thrive and to flourish. We’re
reading chapter two of Genesis verse 17 of a probation. God told Adam and Eve, you may
eat from every tree in the garden, except from the knowledge of
the tree or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And if you
eat from it in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. And so Adam and Eve. had the
opportunity to trust God, to take him at his word, to live
righteously, to eat from every tree except the one he had forbidden.
And we know about chapter three of Genesis. It’s one of those
passages that starts out, it was a dark and stormy night.
Chapter three, verse one, it says, now the serpent was more
crafty than any other beast of the field. And so we know of
the sinister story, the destructive story of Satan entering in the
garden to thwart the glory of God and to stop his progress
and plan of mankind living gloriously in that wonderful garden. We
know that Satan tempted Adam and Eve, that Satan tempted.
Eve took the fruit. She saw that it was a delight
to her eyes. She ate it. She gave some to her husband.
Also, they were naked. They were afraid. They hid and
they sowed fig leaves as a covering to cover their nakedness and
their shame and their guilt. And we know from the rest of
that story that God came walking in the garden, looking for them.
He called out to Adam and Eve, where are you? He found them. They were naked. They were ashamed.
They were hiding. And he in his grace and mercy,
he sewed together or he killed an animal. He took its life and
he gave them out of sacrifice coverings of skin for their nakedness
and their shame. And then he spoke to each in
turn to Satan. He cursed to Adam. He cursed
to Eve. He cursed. But he also promised
the coming of a Messiah, one who could save them, one whose
righteousness could save them, one whose obedience could save
them. But we also know the terrible
effects of the fall. Oh, yes, it affected Satan. Yes,
it affected man and his work. Yes, it affected even women in
their childbirth. It affected leadership in the
home. It affected marriage. It affected
thorns and thistles and tough ground and gardens that will
not produce. It affected all that. But personally, individually,
speaking of men and women made in God’s image, it took that
image and it bent it. It broke it. It bruised it. It
damaged it. It made us totally depraved. It made us radically corrupted. And unless we are born again
of God, We remain in our sins and in our trespasses. And that
is exactly what the apostle Paul is speaking of to the Ephesian
church. He’s reminding them of what they once were, who they
once were, what their character was, when they lived life without
the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you may visit your doctor
frequently. And you say to your doctor, Doc,
I’m having some trouble. And you list your troubles. And
you wait for his diagnosis. And the words we want to hear
are, well, I know what’s going on. You’re sick, but it’s treatable. And this is exactly what we get
in chapter two. We get a diagnosis of the sickness
of mankind. And problem is it’s not a sickness,
a death has already occurred. And we must understand that we
are dead in our sins and trespasses. We are by nature, children of
wrath because we are born in Adam, because we have been born
in him. And that sin, which was of our
first parents was communicated to us through our parents and
through generation, we are dead in our sins and trespasses. And
in chapter two, verses one through three, we read a description
of what we live like because of that sin, because of that
brokenness. We were dead in our sins and
trespasses and our way of life was twofold. We followed the
courses of the world. We have walked in the way of
the devil. We have walked in the way of
our own flesh. And by nature, we are children
of wrath, destined for the wrath of God to be poured out on us
for our sins. We’re hopeless. We’re twisted. We are perverted. Our diagnosis
is one of terminal. We are dead. your children of
wrath. One of the questions that we
ask out of our form of government from the Associate Reform Presbyterian
denomination, one of the questions we ask, it’s the very first one,
I think is the hurdle. If you can’t answer affirmatively
to this one, you’re in big trouble. But it says, do you acknowledge
yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving
his displeasure and without hope, save in his mercy and his love? You see, brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus, we need to remember who we once were when
we were living life without Christ. We were dead in our sins and
trespasses. We were by nature children of wrath. We were following
the devil. We were walking in the ways of
the world. We were walking in the ways of
our flesh, our sin nature and life without Christ. It’s not
a life worth living. It is a life only worth pain
and punishment. Separation from God. It is a
life without hope. But the second thing we learn
from this passage is the good news, the good news of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. And it’s found in verses four
through nine, life in Christ. Look at verse four. It says,
but God being rich in mercy. because of the great love with
which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our
trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace,
you have been saved and raised us 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
and 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. People differ in how they do
evangelism. Some people say, well, I think
in order to tell the good news, you have to tell the bad news.
And some will in fact say, you got to tell a lot of bad news
so that the good news sounds really good. But there’s a better
way. There’s a biblical way. And it’s
to speak of the story of God at work in the world in the way
he does it in the Bible. And God speaks of his work in
the world in three ways. He created the world. of the
world fell in sin. And then God in Christ is at
work redeeming in the world. And so we speak of creation and
fall and redemption. And so we speak of how God created
the world and everything in it. He made man in his image. He
made them in knowledge and righteousness and holiness with dominion over
the creatures. And he made them for a purpose to bring him glory
and to serve his glorious creation. And before sin, things were great. God was worshiped. God was obeyed. He was followed. He was revered.
He was adored. Man lived within his limits of
righteousness. But then sin came in the world.
And so we understand what life without Christ is like. But then we get from creation
and fall to redemption. And we get a wonderful description
here in verses four through nine of what the redeemed Christian’s
life is like in this world. And so the good news of the gospel
of the Lord Jesus is that we are living under the great grace
of the glorious redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are
being renewed after the image of God. We are being renewed
after the image of Christ. We are being… repaired from
the ruins of the fall of man into sin. We’re living in days
of renewal. It is the story of the Bible
that God has come into the world to help helpless sinners be saved. Now you might be thinking that
first little point you made, life without Christ, it sounded
pretty bad. We’re dead in our sins. We’re children of wrath.
We follow the Satan. We follow the world. We walk
in our own flesh and sinful ways. And yes, that is exactly true.
But the good news of the gospel, the good news of life in Christ,
we find in the first two words of verses four, verse four, but
God, I mean, it may be true that we are sinful. It may be true
that we are wicked. It may be true that we are twisted and
perverted and we are dead. We are objects of the wrath of
almighty God. But then we come to these gospel
words, but God who is rich in mercy, but God who has from eternity
past covenanted within the Trinity to love a people, to redeem a
people, to renew a people and to bring them into his glorious
presence in heaven. And to do that, to show that
grace, to show that love, to show that mercy while we are
dead. To show that mercy and grace
and love to us while we are still sinners. To show that love to
us when we didn’t deserve it. To show that love to us when
there was no merit in us that could cause a wonderful God like
ours to love us while we were still sinners. Christ, because
of his great love, because of his great mercy, because of the
riches of his kindness, because of his covenant faithfulness,
because of all the glorious things we read of in the scripture,
he saved us. He’s made us alive. He has raised
us up with Christ. He has seated us in the heavenly
places. We were dead. We were walking
dead. We were under wrath. We were
without hope in this world except for Christ. The world and the
flesh and the devil were influencing us. No, they were ruling us.
And we were not making a pilgrimage to heaven, but we were making
a pilgrimage down. to the pits of hell. And Christ
and his love has come to us. He has raised us from the dead.
He has seated us with Christ and he has put us on a different
plane. We live spiritual lives now. We live not dead lives, but we
are spiritually alive in Christ Jesus. Remember the story of
the prodigal son. Told his father, give me my riches,
my inheritance that’s coming to me. And he went out, he sowed
his wild oats, as we call it. He partied, he did everything
a person shouldn’t do. He ran out of money. He came
to his senses when he couldn’t even eat the pig’s food. And
he said, I will arise and I will go to my father’s house. And
I’m asked to be a hired hand, a servant for even his servants
have provision and blessing under my father’s roof. Well, as he
approached home, his father saw him. He greeted him from afar,
he ran to him, he hugged him, he kissed him, he embraced him,
he put clothing on his back, a ring on his finger, shoes on
his feet, and he opened up a feast. And friends, that is what God
in Christ does for us, sinners. dead men and women, people who
walk in the way of Satan, who walk in the way of the world,
who engage in the passions of the flesh and are in utter rebellion
against God, God and his rich mercy, God and his grace, God
and his loving kindness. He comes to us and he raises
us from the dead. He seats us with Christ and he
gives us every spiritual blessing. And we live that way under his
grace, under his blessings, with the wonderful gifts of the church
and the Christian faith. We live that way until we make
it safely home to heaven, where we are made perfect. And you
see the depths, life without Christ. And you see the heights,
the life in Christ. And it’s a wonderful and great
gift of grace that God gives us. How do we lay hold of the
salvation that is ours in Christ? We simply receive it by faith. It’s not achieved by our performance. Nothing in our hands we bring,
but simply to the cross we claim. It’s not by our pedigree. I’m
a Presbyterian. I’m a covenant child. I’m a Hebrew
of Hebrews of the tribe of Benjamin. As regarding the law of Pharisee,
as the apostle Paul could say, it’s none of those things. It’s
not performance. It’s not pedigree. It’s also not our piety. How
early do we get up? How worn out are our knees because
of prayer? How bent up are the pages of
our Bibles? The gold leafing is rubbed off
because we read them so often and closely. It’s not by those
things. It’s simply by faith in Jesus,
recognizing that we are sinners lost in this world without hope,
except for the love and mercy of God in Christ. And we look
to Jesus and say, Jesus, I have broken your commandments. I deserve
death. But you, in my place, live the
life of obedience. You, in my place, died the death
of all deaths. You, in my place, suffer the
wrath of God, the curses due to me for my sin. But you, You
are the spotless lamb. You are the sacrifice pleasing
in the sight of God. You are the only one who could
take away my sin. And now I believe with all my
heart and with my mind and with my will and because of your great
grace that you have saved me. You have bought me at a great
price. And so now we who have lived
life apart from Christ now have life in Christ. And there’s a
third thing we understand from this passage. We find it in verse
10. Life for Christ. God has saved us for a purpose.
Oh, for his glory. Oh, for heaven. Oh, for many
wonderful things. But look at verse 10. We are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Some of you may
have been to the doctor and received a bad diagnosis. Maybe you took
some treatment. You came out on the other side
of that sickness, healthy. And so you said, I now have a
new lease on life, a new outlook. I’m going to live out of the
grace of being healthy. I’m gonna live out of the joy
of having been sick, but am now made well. And as Christians,
we have the joy, the privilege, even the duty to say, I was once
dead, but now I have been made alive by Christ Jesus. And I
will henceforth and forevermore endeavor by his grace to live
for him and to serve him. You see, when a person comes
to faith in Jesus, he is a new creation. The old is gone following
the devil. following the ways of the world,
living by the sin nature that is remnant in us, we are saved
to serve Almighty God. We are a new life, a new creation.
We have a new reality. We have a new purpose. We are
to serve the living God. We have been saved to serve.
And verse 10 tells us of that glory. We are the workmanship
of Christ. Not many of us work with our
hands these days. But think about a master craftsman
who has taken material and with his own hands and the tools in
his hands, he has created something. He has taken something that was
rough and unshaped and he or she has made it into something.
Yesterday I was in a store with Patrick and we saw these decoys,
these ducks. And they were made out of old
fence posts, old cedar fence posts from a ranch somewhere
out west. And half of the decoy was finished. It was well cut,
well shaped, and had a wonderful smooth finish on it. The back
end of the duck was still rough and looked much like the rough
fence posts, some even still having in it the brads that held
the fencing to it. But this was someone’s workmanship.
And by the way, they were getting a pretty good price for these
things. And that is what, that is what
Jesus has done. He has taken something rough,
something broken, something bent. something dead, and he has given
it new life, new purpose, new characters, new features. And
he has put you on display in the world for the world to say
that is what the gospel of Jesus can do. It can take what is dead
and make it alive. It can take what is broken and
bent and bruised and badly damaged. And it can make it useful again. Notice the words that are used
in verse 10. They’re like a lot of the words
in the rest of chapter two that we’ve read already. We are his
workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Notice our new
manner of life, our new way of walking. We do not walk any longer
in the ways of the devil. We do not walk any longer in
the ways of the world. We do not walk in the manners
of the sinful flesh, but we walk. We walk in the good works that
God has prepared beforehand. Now you’re scratching your heads
and saying, here’s that good works word I thought you just said.
And Paul just said, we’re saved by faith. And we understand good
works do not save us. Well, actually they do. The good
works of Jesus save us, but our good works can never save us,
but they can prove as the apostle James, the half brother of Jesus
says, good works can show that we are saved. Safe people do
good works for the glory of God, for the good of neighbor. But
you see saying as a new creation in Jesus, we must live a purposeful
life, serving the ends of God, which he has designed for us
before the foundation of the world. And so we should walk
in them. Now, in other places in Ephesians,
the apostle Paul is going to tell the Ephesians to walk or
to live in a certain way. Walk in a manner worthy of your
calling, your calling in Christ Jesus. Walk in a way that shows
that your life is an offering, a sacrifice, pleasing in the
sight of God. Walk as children of light and
not children of darkness. Walk as wise and not unwise. You see, it is our duty. It is
our duty to live for God, for his glory. It is our duty to
live for God and his glory in the spheres where he places us,
in the home, in the workplace, in the church, and out in the
marketplace. We live life, new life, given
to us by Jesus as he raised us from the dead. We live that life
for the glory of Christ. How do we get that? It’s by faith.
It is free. It is by grace alone. It is sola
gratia. It is something we could never
earn. So back to the first question.
How can we measure God’s grace? How can we measure it and say
what it’s worth and what good it is for us? How great is the
grace of God? Well, scripturally, we just explain
that. But let me ask you this. How would you measure the grace
of God experientially? Do you understand that you were
dead? You’re terminal. There was no hope for you, but
Christ came and he raised you up. He seated you in the heavenly
places and he has given you new life. You’re his workmanship. You’re his pride and his joy.
And he has saved you to do great things for his glory and the
good of the neighbor. I don’t think any of us could
ever explain how great the grace of God is. It’s so great. It’s
so amazing. It’s so wonderful. Just think
of John Newton. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now
I’m found. Was once blind, but now I can
see. He also wrote another wonderful
hymn. Let us love and sing and wonder. Let us praise the Savior’s
name. You see, God’s grace is great
and it makes us want to serve, but it also makes us want to
sing. And so let us think great things,
wonderful things about the grace of the Lord Jesus. Pray with
me. Our Lord and God, we thank you so much for this day that
you’ve made. We thank you that you’ve set it apart for our rest
and worship, but also that we might grow in grace and in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Thank you for the book of Ephesians
and how the apostle Paul’s desire that we might know God and know
the great salvation that we have in Christ is ours. And we pray
that we would know it. We would love it. We would live
it. We would think about it. We would dwell upon it. And most
of all, that we would go tell the watching world how great
is the name of Jesus. Help us in this. We pray in his
name. Amen.