In the first chapter of his letter, the apostle Paul has told the Ephesians that he is praying for them. One of the things he has been praying is that they might clearly see what has happened to them. But he doesn't just pray this for them. He decides to tell them– and this is what chapter 2 is about.
If you are a believer at all, it is because something has happened to you! Once you were dead, but now you are alive (2:1-10). Once you were cut off, but now you have been brought near (2:11-22). It is the first of these sections that we come to look at now. The apostle will tell you what you were, what you are, and what made the difference.
What you were (2:1-3) I. You were dead (2:1)You 'were dead in trespasses and sins'. Think back to your unconverted years. Every day God spoke to you through his creation. The sky above your head and the ground beneath your feet declared the eternal power and Godhead of the invisible Lord. In addition to this, God spoke to you through your conscience. You had a sense of right and wrong, a sense of law. You knew in your heart of hearts that there was a Lawgiver and, therefore, that there would also be a final judgement. You could not escape the speaking voice.
God spoke to many of you even more directly than this. You heard his Word in Sunday School, or church, or elsewhere. He spoke and spoke, but you did not hear. That was the experience of us all before we were converted. We trespassed, repeatedly violating God' s law. We sinned, constantly failing to come up to his standard. And we didn't care. It meant nothing to us. We were dead in trespasses and sins.
I shall never forget the day when one of my best friends died. I was a late teenager at the time. Others came running up from the fields to tell me that he had dropped dead there. A Land Rover took his body to his home, where it was laid down in the front room. The family asked if I would like to go and see him. Two nights earlier I had spent a whole evening with him, talking of the ways and work of God. Now I was alone with him again. My first reaction was to speak to him, but the prostrate body did not answer. I spoke again. There was no reply. He could neither see, nor hear, nor talk, nor move; nor could he even want to. He certainly could not bring himself back to life. He was dead.
This is precisely the picture that Paul uses. God spoke to us, and spoke to us again; but we were dead. We did not listen to him, and we did not want to listen to him. We did not hear him, desire him, or choose him. We could not do it. The truth was announced to us but it was impossible for us to see it. It was as if there were no divine voice at all. And this is how it is with all unconverted people. Even when they are exposed to all the external influences to which Christians are exposed, it means nothing to them. God's Word meets with silence. There is no response. I was like that, and so were you. You were dead.
2. You were disobedient (2:2-3)With shame we remember how we 'once walked'. Although spiritually dead, we lived our lives in active opposition to God. Dead and unresponsive as far as he and his Word were concerned, we walked in a certain way, and our lives were going in a definite direction. We 'walked according to the course of this world'. We were going the same way as everybody else. God was not in our lives 'and we did not want him to be. We walked with the crowd, but we didn't walk with him.
We lived as we wanted to. But why did we want to live that way? It was because of a spiritual power which is still making people disobedient to God today. When we look at the unconverted, we cannot have a 'holier-than-thou' attitude. We used to be unconverted, all of us. We were once non-Christians. 'We all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.' 'The flesh' means fallen human nature. It is the word the Bible uses to speak of abject selfishness. It was that which once governed us completely. All that mattered to us was our own self-centred world of indulgence, ambition and pleasure. Our bodies did what they wanted to do, and our minds thought what they wanted to think, whether God was pleased or not. He was not in all our thoughts. We were godless and subject to another power. The devil motivated us without drawing attention to himself, just as he still does with unconverted people everywhere.
The Christian church often speaks of 'the world, the flesh and the devil'. Now we see why. 'The world' refers to human society operating without reference to God. We were previously in the world. 'The flesh' is human nature in rebellion against God. We committed widely varying sins before our conversion, but human nature was behind them all, so we were not as different from each other as we sometimes think. 'The devil' is the sworn enemy of God. We were on his side, rejecting God's rule over us. I was disobedient. You were disobedient.
3. You were damned (2:3)You 'were by nature children of wrath, just as the others' 'Wrath' is anger in action. Angry outbursts were a sad feature of our unconverted days. Bad temper is always found where people live for themselves. But that is not what Paul is talking about here.
When a sinner is angry, his sin will always taint that anger. God is holy. His anger is therefore pure. He is furious with all that is impure. Of course he is, for sin is a contradiction of his nature and, besides, it is sin which has spoiled his creation. Everything was good, so very good, until sin came along.
Sin does not exist in the abstract, and God is not angry with sin in the abstract. It is sinners who sin. They do what they do because they are what they are. God is angry with sin and he is angry with those who commit sin. He is actively angry with sinners. Living under his wrath is such a marked characteristic of their lives that they are described here as 'children of wrath'. It is the distinctive feature of their lives. They live the whole of their life with God's anger hanging over them. They wake in the morning, pass through the day and go to sleep at night with God's wrath over them. Because of their sin he is never for them and always against them.
'We were like that,' says Paul. '"The others", that is non-Christians, are still like that. But let us not forget that we were previously like that. And we were like that by nature.'
Paul is reminding us that we were born that way. We did not become sinners. We have always been sinners, which is why we sin. Our parents were sinners before us. Only our first parents knew what it was like to be without sin. But when they sinned, we sinned in them; and when they fell, we fell with them. Nobody may say that he is less guilty than they were. Our nature is corrupt and we have repeated their sin every day of our lives. This corruption of our nature is called 'original sin' and it is a fact of human existence. Even babies are often selfishly angry. From birth we have lived for ourselves. All that humanity is today, we once were.
How we should tremble as we think about this! For how many years were we disobedient, unresponsive and hell-bound? At any moment God could have stopped our breath and sent us screaming into conscious everlasting punishment. But he didn't! It was what we deserved. We daringly provoked him as our rebellion and unbelief increased by the minute. He did us good, 'gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness' (Acts 14:17), but we did not lift our hearts to him. How kind he was! How rich in mercy! There was no wrong in his anger. All the fault was ours. I was damned. You were damned.
What you are (2:4-7) 1. You are alive! (2:5)'Even when we were dead in trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).' If you are a Christian, you have experienced a resurrection– an event of such significance that the Bible calls it 'the first resurrection'.
That day when they laid my friend's body on his living-room floor, I would have given all I possessed to be able to speak a word which would have raised him to life. I spoke to him, but my words had no power.
How different it is with God! Chapter 1 showed us that his power wrenched his Son from the grave and raised him to an endless life. That very same power is what reached down to bring about our conversion. It was a resurrection indeed! The Word we had heard a thousand times before, we heard as if for the very first time. Others had often spoken to us about the glories of Christ, but now it meant 1 something to us. They had warned us of our danger, but we had felt no danger. They had pointed out our sin, but we had no sense of sin. But then everything changed! Our souls sprang to life.
If I could have been heard by my dead friend that day, he would have got up and come to me. He would have left the room to embrace his wife and family. It would have been wonderful to see such movement. Movement is the evidence of resurrection. When spiritual resurrection takes place, we move to Christ and embrace him as he is so plainly held out to us in the gospel.
Verse 5 tells us that God made us alive together with Christ. Union with Christ is a central part of the gospel's teaching. If you are a believer, I have something wonderful to tell you. When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, his death was reckoned to be your death, which is why all your sins are considered to have been punished. Not only so, but his resurrection was reckoned to be your resurrection. You were reckoned to have risen from the dead at the same moment. This is already seen in your spiritual resurrection. It is only a matter of time before it will also be seen in your bodily resurrection at the end of the world. Such resurrection comes to you through your union with Christ, in whom you were chosen. You are alive.
2. You are accepted (2:6)'[God] raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' Where is the Lord Jesus Christ now? After his resurrection he walked the earth for nearly six weeks, giving his disciples further teaching. Then, while they watched, he physically ascended and a cloud received him out of their sight. He returned to the right hand of majesty, and that is where he is now.
But we who believe are united to Christ! Where he is, we are! Raised with him, we are seated with him 'in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus'. That is why you can pray. You are not reckoned to be an outsider – you are in Christ, and all that God sees Christ to be, he reckons you to be. You are on the inside, with immediate access to the throne. This is also why death does not hurt the Christian believer. It has lost its sting. We are already spiritually seated in heaven. When we die, our spirits have no voyage to make. They are already in heaven. That is where they belong, by virtue of their union with Christ, and they cannot be turned away.
This leads us directly to the next point.
3. You are assured (2:7)God has raised and accepted you, 'that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus'. Soon this earth and universe, as we know them now, will be gone. The devil, and all who have remained on his side, will be in hell. There will be a new heaven and a new earth in which only righteousness will be found. This renewed universe will be inhabited, not only by God and his holy angels, but also by Christian believers. We are talking about certainties. Where Christ is, there he has promised we shall be also.
By nature we are sinners, defiled in God's sight. What we used to be will never be forgotten. Nor will it be forgotten how sinners come to be in a place where only holiness is found. It is all through Christ and their union with him. Throughout endless ages the universe will be in perpetual astonishment – sinners are with God in his home! All that God is and has done will be admired in that everlasting glory. But shining brighter than all will be his abounding grace, seen in the kindness he has shown, through Christ, towards sinners.
God's purpose in redeeming us is to exhibit his own glory. If just one redeemed sinner fails to arrive in God's dwelling-place, God's glory will be tarnished. When a creature seeks his own glory, it is a sin, for he is only a creature. But God must glorify himself, because he is God. He cannot glorify himself in the way that he has decreed, unless he brings to heaven every person whom he has chosen, redeemed and called. Every true believer will be there! God will 'show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus'.
What made the difference (2:4-5,8-10)You have seen what you were. You know what you are. What made the difference? Three words will help us to remember.
1. God (2:4-5,10)There you were in your spiritual deadness. Who gave you life? It was certainly not yourself. It was God. This work is a divine work, a work you could not do. You could not even choose God, because the will is the servant of your nature, and your nature was fallen and spiritually dead. God was not compelled to give you spiritual life. But he did: '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)' (2:4-5). What love– undeserved and unsought; what grace!
Why are you today what you are? Because God has been at work. 'For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them' (2:10). All men and women are his creatures. You are his new creature, made anew in Jesus Christ. It is God's everlasting decree which has decided that your life should be changed right round, that you should live differently, that you should spend your days doing things which God considers pleasing. As long as he has been God, it has been his will that you should be a new person in Christ, and that you should live accordingly. You know what you were and you know what you are. You can take no credit for the change. It was beyond your power. 'But God ...'
You were just the same as others, as we have seen. The reason for your salvation, then, does not lie in anything you are, but in what he is. It is 'because of his great love with which he loved us' (2:4). It was nothing in us, but what is within God, that moved him to save us. He is 'rich in mercy' (2:4).
What is mercy? And what is the difference between mercy and grace? An illustration told by the great children's evangelist Hudson Pope will make it clear. Some boys broke panes of glass in his greenhouse and he was able to speak to the culprits. He explained that he could deal with them by law or by grace. To deal with them by law would mean taking them to the police station, to be prosecuted and punished. But he had decided against that. They deserved punishment, but they would not be getting it. That was mercy, he said. Instead, they would receive from him what they did not deserve. He would treat them with kindness, give them his friendship, and pay for the glass himself. That, he said, was grace.
Mercy is not receiving what you deserve. Grace is receiving what you don't deserve. God's anger has not fallen on us, for he is 'rich in mercy' (2:4). Instead, he has heaped upon us blessing after blessing – spiritual resurrection, unreserved acceptance into his presence and a certain place in heaven. He has not simply pardoned us and left us in a neutral condition. He has adopted us and called us his. 'By grace you have been saved ... for by grace you have been saved' (2:5,8).
3. Gift (2:8-10)In order not to miss the full impact of what the apostle is saying, we need to meditate more fully on verses 8-10: 'For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.'
All that Jesus Christ has done for his people becomes theirs in experience by means of faith. Faith, as we have seen more than once, is knowing, believing and trusting. These are things that men and women do. When they receive salvation, they are not passive. They are active. But this does not mean they have contributed something to their salvation.
There is a lot of misunderstanding on this point today. Every repentant sinner knows that he has no good works to bring to God. He can do nothing to earn or deserve God's favour. But sometimes preachers give the impression that although we cannot satisfy God's demands, he is pleased when we come to him with our faith. The idea is left that Christ has done everything to save us; we must just contribute faith. Everything else is represented as coming from God, but faith is spoken of as if it came from us.
This is not the way it is at all. It is true that we exercise faith when we receive the gospel, but from where does that faith come? Verses 8-10 tell us. The whole grace-through-faith experience, in its entirety, is God's gift to us. None of it has its origin in us. If it did, we would have at least something to congratulate ourselves on. We would not have much to be proud about, but we would have something. But Paul rejects this completely. There is nothing at all on which we can flatter ourselves. The grace-through-faith way of saving us, all of it, is 'not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast'.
Imagine offering a corpse a present. The corpse comes to life, stretches out a hand and dances away, clasping the gift. Could the former corpse congratulate himself on that? Would he feel he had made any contribution to his joy? Would he not, rather, give all the credit to the one who spoke the life-giving word? Would not his praise be doubled when he found out that the life-giver and the present-giver were one and the same person?
Salvation and faith are not two separate things The act of trusting Christ is part of salvation. Salvation in its totality is God's gift of grace to us. It follows that faith is his gift. How is it that you could not believe, but you do now? You neglected him for years and years, but then you came to trust him. What made the difference? Did you suddenly improve? No; God was gracious to you. He gave salvation to you. It was sheer grace that brought you to believe and receive.
And how is it that you have a completely changed life? How we all love to repeat it: 'We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them' (2:10). Other people think that we live good lives in order to be saved. How wrong they are! We live good lives because we are saved. We hold out no hope of being saved by works. But one of the reasons for which God has saved us is that we should live differently on this earth. He has put each of his children in a certain set of circumstances where there are a whole series of good acts to be done. He wants them to set about doing them. This is as much part of his eternal plan as all the other things we have spoken about. He has made us new; and he has done it that we might live as new people in the very place where we find ourselves today. He who has decided our eternal destination has certainly decided our earthly route.
As we close this section, may I speak very pointedly but affectionately to every reader of this book? Is there an unconverted person who has read this far? You have seen that salvation is entirely God's work. Man has no part in it. It must be clear to you now that you cannot save yourself. Only God can do that. Nobody but the Lord Jesus Christ provides all that you need. Salvation is complete, but it is entirely in the hands of God. You cannot stay as you are without perishing, and there is nowhere to go except to God. Fall before him now and cry, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner!' If you do that, it will be because God has already given you faith. You will know that you are spiritually alive, accepted by God, and assured of final glory!
And what shall I say to those who are already believers? God has done his wonderful work in you and you cannot take one ounce of credit for it. You were once unresponsive, ungodly and damned. You are now resurrected, seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and about to begin an eternity of perfect praise where your theme will be the mercy and grace of God. Thanks be to him for ever remembering the dust of the earth!
We shall praise him in heaven, so shall we not praise him on earth? But our words are so poor. Yes, but we may also praise him by our lives. We have been 'created in Christ Jesus for good works'. Let us get on with them. Is there a better way to show that we who were once dead are now alive?