The topic that has been assigned
to me is the necessity of grace. And so, I want you to take your
Bible and turn with me to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians
chapter 2. And this seems to be the right
passage for us to look at tonight, Ephesians chapter 2. And I want
us to look, Lord willing, at verses 1 through 10, and I want
to begin by reading this passage. And I want to set it before your
eyes and before your hearts again, and we'll spend our time working
our way through this very important passage on the necessity of grace. Beginning in verse 1, and this
is God's inspired, inerrant, infallible Word, the Apostle
Paul writes, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. in which you formerly walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in
the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly
lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even
as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He loved us, even when
we were dead in our transgressions, 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 ages to come He might
show forth the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward
us in Christ Jesus. for by grace you have been saved
through faith. And that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no man can
boast. For we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
so that we would walk in them. In these verses, we very clearly
see that we will never know how great God's love and God's grace
is until we know how great our sin is. In other words, we will
never fully grasp the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. until we have come to see the
bad news of our condemnation in sin. The darker the night,
the brighter the light. And the darker we see what we
once were, the more the grace of God will shine brighter than
ten thousand suns in the sky above. It is seeing the darkness
of our depravity that causes the brightness of the grace of
God to shine forth so brightly. We will never even begin to scratch
the surface of understanding the grace of God until we know
the depravity of our sin. And that is Paul's case that
he is making here. And I just want to lay out basically
the outline that we'll be walking through as we look at these ten
verses. In verses 1 through 3, we will
see what we were. The pit in which we in which we once lived and where
it was that the Lord found us. It's not just that He found us
at a church camp. It's not just that He found us
in a Sunday school room. It's not just that He found us
in a worship service or in your bedroom with your parents reading
Bible stories to you. No, verses 1 through 3 is the
spiritual understanding of where we were when the Lord found us. We were hopeless. We were helpless.
and we were doomed. And then in verses 4 through
6, we will see what God did. As the grace of God and the mercy
of God and the love of God did a dramatic divine intervention
in our life and literally resurrected us from the grave of sin. And
then in verses 7 through 10, third and finally, we will see
why God did it. Why did God intervene in our
lives? So, let's walk through this passage
together tonight, and the grace of God is…in fact, the word grace
is mentioned in verse 5, by grace you have been saved. It's mentioned
in verse 7, the surpassing riches of His grace. It's mentioned
in verse 8, by grace you have been saved. So, what is grace? I'm sure that all of us here
tonight could define what it is. It is the free gift of God
to those who are so undeserving, those who could not save themselves,
those who could not merit or earn acceptance with a holy God,
those of us who were under the wrath of God. God chose to show
mercy and to show love to those who were so unlovely. And so, let's walk through this
text together tonight. Roman number one, what we were.
We can never understand the full magnitude of God's grace until
we grasp the full depth of the sin in which we once lived. And this is across the board
true for each and every one of us. And I want to give you six
words right now that will line up and help us understand where
we were. And if you're a believer in Christ
tonight, these are your BC days, before Christ. It's true of each
and every one of us. The first word is dead. Paul
writes in verse 1, and you were dead. and your trespasses and
sins. And down through the centuries,
different Bible teachers and theologians have taken different
perspectives of where was it that God found us? And some like
Pelagius said, well, we were good, we were well. And then
others who are like semi-Pelagians have said, and Armenians have
said, well, we weren't good, we were just sick. with a little
ability in ourselves to grab hold of and raise ourself up. And the only other option is
the third, which is we were dead. And when you're dead, you have
no life in you, you had no moral ability, you had no mind that
could think, you had no heart that could desire, you had no
will that could choose, you were dead. And very clearly here in
verse 1, which is kind of like a topic sentence over a paragraph,
and everything else that will follow in verses 2 and 3 really
hang under this and more carefully define, we were dead. If you're dead, you're unresponsive. If you're dead, you have no desire.
If you're dead, you have no ability. That's where we once were. I
remember the day in seminary when my entire theological framework
just came crashing down, the professor throwing one little
pebble into a large window glass, and the whole window was shattered
and came tumbling down with this one question, what can a dead
man do? And at that point, I was right
there in the middle, man's just kind of sick, and it became deathly
silent in class. And I was waiting for one of
my fellow students to answer the question, what can a dead
man do? And from the back row, one student yelled out, stink. That's all a dead man can do. And that's what we once were.
Even if you grew up in church, even if you had joined a church,
even if you were baptized, whether as an infant or an adult or whatever,
before you became a Christian, no matter who you are, where
you live geographically, you were spiritually dead. You could walk up to a corpse
and put a pin into the foot of the corpse. It's not even going
to move. You could play music for the
corpse. There is no capacity to respond. You can witness to the corpse.
You could talk to the corpse. You could preach to the corpse.
There is no response whatsoever. And that's your spiritual biography.
And that is mine as well. And Paul says, and you were dead. He's referring to the elect believers. You elect believers. You were
dead in your trespasses and sin. And that little word, in, I-N,
is very important. Large doors swing on small hinges,
and that little small word is very important because it indicates
the realm and the sphere in which we once lived. We lived in a
world of sin, just like a fish lives in water Before our new
birth, we lived in a world of sin. Here, trespasses, which
is a departure from an appointed path, and sins, which is a failure
to hit the mark. Every one of us, we have all
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So that's the first
word, dead. In fact, that's the only word
we really need. But Paul now builds his case
as a master theologian, and the second word is deviant. He says
in verse 2, in which you formerly walked according to the course
of this world. You were a dead man walking.
You were a spiritual zombie. You were a walking corpse. And
when he says, according to the course of this world, you were
on the broad path headed for destruction, even if you grew
up in Sunday school before you were converted. And when he says
the world, he's talking about the evil world system with its
godless ideologies, and you were entrapped in the system. When
you were born into this world, you were not born into the kingdom
of God, you were born into the kingdom of this world, and you
were like a dead body floating downstream, going with the flow
of this world. And then the third word is devilish.
He says in the middle of verse 2, according to the prince of
the power of the air. We know who that is. That is
Satan, and there's only two families, only two spiritual families in
the world. There is the family of God, and
there is the family of the devil. And there's not a third or a
fourth family. And when we were born into this
world, we were born into the family of Satan. That is why
you have to be born again in order to enter into the kingdom
of heaven. And the fact that you must be
born again is an indictment of your first birth that you were
born in sin. Psalm 51, David says, in sin
did my mother conceive me. Not that the act of conception
was sinful, but that the sin nature was passed down to you
while you were in your mother's womb. You came into this world
speaking lies, Psalm 58 says. And so, not only were you dead,
and not only were you walking according to the course of this
world, you were also a child of the devil. And you were in
the grip of a real devil. as He was snatching God's Word
from your heart whenever it was being sown, perhaps in church,
as He was blinding your eyes, 2 Corinthians 4, 4, so that you
could not see the truth, how it relates to you, and you were
being held captive by the devil to do His will, 2 Timothy 2,
verse 25 and 26. And then to compound it in verse
2 is the word disobedient, deviant, devilish, disobedient. Notice at the end of verse 2,
the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Everyone who is unconverted is
a son of disobedience. It's the mark of an unbeliever.
They live a disobedient life to Scripture. And then in verse
5, a fifth word, defiled. He says, among them, meaning
the whole lost world of sinners, he says, among them We, us who
are believers, we were just like them. We were floating down that
same stream of the world, under the control of the devil, spiritually
dead, deviating from God's Word. We were just like them. Now, we may have dressed up a
little bit nicer and been more respectable, but as God sees
it, as God looks into the heart, God sees exactly the same even
in the elect before they were converted, as in the others who
were unsaved. He says, among them, we, the
elect, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh. Our sinful appetites were unrestrained. Strong desires overpowered us,
and flaming passions for sin and cravings for that which God
forbid. He says, indulging the desires
of the flesh and of the mind. Even our minds were incapable
of thinking correctly about who I am and my need for grace. And so, this leads to the final
word I want to give you. It's the word doomed. At the
end of verse 3, he says, and were by nature. We, the elect
of God, were by nature, meaning in the very fabric of our nature,
children of wrath, and that's a euphemism, a Hebraism for children
deserving wrath. We were sons of disobedience.
We were children under the wrath of God. Romans 1 verse 18 clearly
states, for the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men. And that's right where we once
were. We were no better than anyone
else in the world. We were just as doomed, just
as dead, just as deviant, just as devilish, just as disobedient. We just may have dressed up and
looked a little bit nicer on the outside, but as God looks
upon the heart, there was no difference. Dead is dead. It doesn't matter if you've been
dead for a day, for two days, for a year. Dead is dead. And so, that's where we were. That's the truth. That is the
pit from which God rescued you. That is the fire from which you
and I were snatched. It's worse than we probably thought
it to be. And our outward lifestyle may
have been somewhat more respectable than when compared to others,
but in God's eyes, as we were weighed in the balances, there
was no difference whatsoever. We were drowning in the same
ocean of sin, sinking in the same quagmire of transgressions,
buried in the same grave of sin. you were going to hell, and I
was going to hell, and we were strutting there like
a peacock on our merry little way to damnation." That's the
truth of the Bible. And when the doctor comes into
your hospital room and gives you the report, He has to tell
it to you straight. You have pancreatic cancer. You've got to know how bad it
is to have any hope whatsoever of survival. And this is how
bad it was for you and for me. Now, praise the Lord, it doesn't
stop at verse 3. Or we would all just be without
hope. So, I want you to note, beginning
in verse 4, what God did. Because what God did is almost
unimaginable. Verse 4 begins, but God. And I love what Martin Lloyd-Jones
said, praise God for the buts in the Bible. Praise God for that negative
conjunction that turns it in the other direction. Lloyd-Jones
says these two words, but God, in a sense contains the whole
of the gospel. Here is the entire forest in
one nutshell. But God. And please note, it's
not but God and me, not but God and you, but God and us, but
God and the church, but God and this, but God and that. No, it's
but God and God alone. That's how bad it was. Only God
could have rescued us. It's not just being rich in mercy. Incomprehensibly wealthy in mercy
is God, possessing vast fortunes of mercy, limitless storehouses
of mercy, possessing oceans of mercy, galaxies of mercy. Mercy is that God felt pity on those who were in such dire
need. And in Romans 9, God says, I
will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. And I will have compassion
upon whom I will have compassion. And it is the mercy of God moved
within Himself toward spiritual corpses who had no hope whatsoever
of ever resurrecting themselves out of this grave, God was moved
with mercy. And then He says, because of
His great love with which He loved us, not just love, but
incalculable love, incomprehensible love. Love that is not based
upon the merit of the one loved. It is God loving us, not because
of us. It is God loving us in spite
of us. It is a love that originates
within God Himself. Who is it that God has loved?
It is those who are dead and devilish and disobedient and
defiant, that that's who God chose to love. He says, even when we were dead
in our transgressions in verse 5, which reinforces, by the way,
verse 1, just so that that truth will not escape us. He repeats
it now in verse 5 that we would have that really drilled within
us that we had nothing but the stench of sin in us. And notice what God did. The
two key words, and I hope you've got enough light out there to
see in your Bible. Three times in verses 5 and 6,
He says, with Him, with Him, with Christ. We've been raised
with Christ. We have been raised with Christ, seated with
Christ, made alive with Christ in verse 5. The whole key is
with Christ. This is what God has done. God
has done it with Christ. And this is the doctrine of union
with Christ, that all grace has come into
our life through the person and work of Christ. He is the sole
mediator of saving grace. There is not one drop of grace
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only condemnation and
wrath, justly so, outside of Christ. But in Christ, because
of His sinless life and substitutionary death, we have grace. So, he says three things here
that we have been made alive with Christ, we have been raised
up with Christ, we have been seated with Christ, and all three
of those are very important. And what they do is they parallel
the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the
enthronement of Christ. Those three, all three of those.
That's what has happened to us. And we've done nothing. God in
Christ has done everything. So, it begins in the middle of
verse 5 with this spiritual resurrection. He says, he made us alive together
with Christ. And Paul here probably is coining
a new word that has never been used in the Greek language before. It's what we call a compound
word. There are three words joined together to make one word, and
where it says, made alive together with, it's just one word in the
original Greek language. It takes five words to translate
it into English And what it is, is that as Christ was raised
out of the grave because of what He has done for us, and because
we are in Christ, we have been made alive with Christ and raised
out of the grave of sin with Christ. It's a spiritual resurrection. You were spiritually dead, and
now God in Christ has made you alive. It's unbelievable. And think of it this way. simply changes your status. It doesn't change you, it just
changes your status. You're standing before God, no
longer condemned, now accepted by God, clothed with the righteousness
of Jesus Christ. It doesn't do anything to you
personally, it just changes your status. You got out of this line,
God has now put you in this line, and you have favor with God.
But this truth right here is really the doctrine of regeneration. It is the doctrine of the new
birth, which actually changes you from the inside out. You become a new creature in
Christ. The old things passed away. Behold,
new things have come. It is the life of God in the
soul of a man, and it is as if you have been just in a coma. You've been dead, and in a moment
– and this takes place in the twinkling of an eye – you suddenly
were made alive. as if a lightning bolt of grace
just struck your heart, coming out of heaven, and you suddenly
sat up and you were alive in Christ, and you were alive, made
alive with Christ. Just like when Jesus stood before
the tomb of Lazarus, whose body was dead, and Jesus said, Lazarus,
come forth. And in that moment, Life surged
through the corpse of His dead body. That is exactly what happened
in your life, and it happened in a moment. On the day of Pentecost,
three thousand souls were made alive in Christ. It wasn't the month of Pentecost.
It wasn't the year of Pentecost. It wasn't the decade of Pentecost. It was the day of Pentecost.
And at the end of Acts chapter 2, it says, and day by day the
Lord was adding to their number those who were being saved. Some
were being made alive on Monday, some were being made alive on
Tuesday, some were being made alive on Wednesday, but there
is a point in time on the timeline of your life when you suddenly
came alive with Christ. And the life of God and the life
of Christ suddenly filled you. And he says at the end of verse
5, by grace you have been saved. It's all of God and all of grace. We have been saved from God,
by God, for God. And then in verse 6, a spiritual
ascension. This is very important. I want
you to see this. In verse 6, and raised us up
with Him. Do you see that? It's another
compound word, two Greek words merged together to form this
one word, raised up with Him. It's just one word in the original
Greek when Paul wrote this. And it is not speaking of the
resurrection of Christ, nor our spiritual resurrection. It is
referring to the ascension of Christ. After the resurrection,
the ascension, and what happened at the ascension, Christ was
lifted up out of this world in a resurrected, glorified body,
no longer in this world. now lifted up and ascended to
heaven, and now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on
high, no longer in this world, now in a resurrection body in
heaven. And what this means for you and
me is that as we have been resurrected with Christ, we, by grace, we
have been raised up in the sense of ascending with Christ. We are no longer a part of this
world. We are in the world, but we are
not of the world. And we are no longer walking
according to the course of this world because we are no longer
of this world. In fact, we are strangers and
aliens in this world, and our citizenship is in heaven. from
which we eagerly wait a Savior," Philippians 3, 20 and 21. So because of Christ, we've been
made alive, and because of Christ and God's grace, we're no longer
a part of the system over which Satan presides. We now belong
to a whole different world, and that world is mentioned here,
referred to at the end of verse 6 as the heavenly places of Christ
Jesus. It's the realm of grace. It is the realm of salvation. It is the realm in which God
bestows the fullness of His mercy. Early in chapter 1, verse 3,
Paul wrote, "'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ.'" All of those blessings are in
heavenly places, referring to the kingdom of God. And so, not
only have we been made alive, we could have been made alive
and just left a part of the world system, but no, not only we've
been made alive and now we've been taken out of the world,
though we bodily live in the world, we have entered into a new realm,
the heavenly places already, and we live in the kingdom of
God. But more than that, please look
at the end of verse 6, he says, and seated us with Him. Another compound word, seated
us with, one word, and Paul just packs it all together And Jesus,
after His resurrection, after His ascension up into heaven,
He is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, the place
of highest authority in the universe, and all authority in heaven and
earth has been entrusted to Him, and He is now co-equal with the
Father in heaven, and we now are seated with Him in heavenly
places. So what does that mean? That
doesn't mean that we've become little gods or that we're sovereign
or anything like that. What it means is for us to be
seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father means we now
know the Father. We now have a personal relationship
with the Father that we never had before. We now have an intimate
relationship with the Father by which we can come before the
throne of grace, the Spirit of God crying out, Abba, Father,
within us, we now know God because we are now seated with Christ
right next to God. with access to know the Father. This is what God did in your
life. It was big. It couldn't have been any bigger. Never did anyone start out so
low and end up so high. You have gone from the grave
of sin to the right hand of the Father. That is amazing grace. And you don't deserve it. And
I don't deserve it. Now third and finally, why? Why
did God do it? Was it because God was lonely? He could have done a lot better
than us. Well, Paul tells us why God did
this, and there are two words that are mentioned three times.
So that, so that, so that. It's in verse 7, verse 9, verse
10. I hope you can see that. So Paul
tells us why God did not leave us in the grave of sin, which
would have been right and just, and why God raised us up and
seated us with Christ in heavenly places. Why? Well, look at verse
7. He tells us why. So that, that
means in order that. It denotes purpose or an end
or an aim. So that in the ages to come,
meaning throughout all eternity future, world without end. He, God the Father, might show
– the idea is to showcase, like you would put a trophy on a shelf
and just showcase your trophy so that He might show the surpassing
riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Here's reason number one. God
did this because it magnifies His grace. If God had simply
saved good people, people who were just a little bit better
than other people, then what God did, His grace would be very
minimal. But for God to reach all the
way to the bottom of the barrel, for God to reach all the way
down to the depths of the grave, to a rotten, stinking corpse
that had the stench of hell upon it. and for God to raise up such
a corpse and seat that corpse next to Him with the Son in heaven,
that is mind-boggling grace. That is unimaginable grace. Listen, if you elevate man and
if you lower God, grace is just a step away, man to God. But if you have man down here
where Paul says he is in verses 1 through 3, and you have God
way up there, holy God, then the grace that it took to span
from the grave to the throne is so great that someone like
John Newton, when he wrote his hymn, it's amazing. It is bewildering. It is astonishing
grace. And that is why we'll never know
how great His grace is until we know how wicked our sin once
was. And I want to tell you, every
time you come to the Lord's table, You need to remember the prison
house in which you once lived. You need to remember the grave
from which you were dredged up and made alive by God. Then verse 8, we all know verse
8, for by grace you have been saved through faith, out of yourselves,
etc. This leads us really to the next
reason. Not only does all of this that
we've been talking about in verses 1 through 6, not only does it
magnify grace, but it humbles man. We had nothing to do with
it. We're just along for the ride.
Verse 8 begins with the word for, which introduces an explanation
of the previous argument. So he's just expanding his argument.
By the way, for, F-O-R, is probably Paul's favorite word. As you
read epistles, just keep your eye out for how many verses begin
with the word for. It just introduces an explanation
of the previous sentence. For by grace," listen, electing
grace, predestinating grace, redeeming grace, reconciling
grace, forgiving grace, justifying grace, regenerating grace, sanctifying
grace, preserving grace, glorifying grace, for by grace you have
been saved. The word saved means to be rescued
from ruin. It means to be delivered from
destruction. For by grace you have been saved through faith."
That's the instrumental cause. And that, not of yourselves.
And the question is, what's not of ourselves? Well, the grace
was not of ourselves, and the faith was not of ourselves. It
is the gift of God at the end of verse 8. That refers to the
entirety of what preceded in the verse. Both the grace and
the faith is the gift of God. And if you want to be technical
about it, the antecedent is the closest to the gift of God or
the word it. It would be faith. It would be
even the…faith is the gift of God before it would even be the
grace. But it's both. Now look at verse 9, not as a
result of works. So that, here's the second so
that, no one may boast. Couldn't be more obvious. If
God saved good people, then it's a joint venture, us and God.
Look what we did. But if God is raising spiritual
corpses from the grave of sin, then no man can boast. You and I have absolutely nothing
with which to boast. We were no better than anyone
else. We were just as dead as the reprobate. And now here's
the final, so that's in verse 10, and it is, not only does
it magnify God, it humbles man, and it fulfills God's purposes. He says in verse 10, for we are
His workmanship. The word workmanship there, poema,
it's an interesting word. You can almost hear poem. We
are His poema. The idea is we are His masterpiece.
We are His showpiece with which He has crowned us with His grace. and we are His supreme work. We are His workmanship created
in Christ Jesus, and that is the idea of the new birth, the
doctrine of regeneration. We have been made a new creature
in Christ. And now He says, Why have we
been so created? And he says, for good works. So please understand this. We
are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ, for good works. There's a purpose for which God
has saved you, and it is to put you into His employment, to be
His servant, to carry out His eternal purpose and plan so that
you can be a part of how God is working in the world. That's
why He saved you. Sure, He saved you to get you
out of hell and to get you into heaven, but that's in a sense
somewhat secondary. He has saved you to magnify His
grace. He has saved you to humble man. He has saved you so that you
can be a part of carrying out what God has predetermined from
before the foundation of the world. And so He says at the
end of verse 10, so that we may walk in them. So, that gives us this third
reason. So, what should this produce
in us? When we get up here in a little bit and you go back
to your hotel room, well, what's the point? What's the application?
What are you supposed to do with this? Well, number one, humility. How could we ever become puffed
up with ourselves knowing this? God is opposed to the proud.
He gives grace to the humble, 1 Peter 5, 5. And those who exalt themselves
will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted
What we have just looked at here, when you put your head on your
pillow tonight in your hotel room, you have every reason to
go to sleep tonight dressed in humility, lowliness of mind. The second is holiness. You once
walked according to the course of this world. You have been
raised up now and put into heavenly places. How can we ever succumb
to the lures of the world and want to go back from that pit
from which we have been raised? And then the last would be honor,
to give God the honor, to give God the glory for what He has
done in our lives. There's no reason in us for what
God has done. It has all originated in God
Himself, because He said, I'll have mercy upon whom I will have
mercy. I will have compassion upon whom
I will have compassion. And God has done this to display what a gracious God
He is. May tonight you and I be once
again intoxicated with the grace of God, overwhelmed with His
grace. Let us close in prayer. Father, we see the necessity
of grace. Oh, do we ever see it. You have
made it loud and clear. and we must lower ourselves beneath
Your mighty right hand and look up and give You the honor and
give You the glory for this so great salvation. We praise You for what You have
done in Christ, in His name. Amen.