He Has Raised Us Up With Him In Life

This morning we're talking about Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

That's the text that we're going to be diving into.

And here's something that I want to kind of put forward as we engage with this scripture.

We live in a world of tension.

And you probably feel it on a daily basis, the tension that we live in, right?

And society is creating this tension of these two different polar opposite chasms within culture.

And here's the reality of this, right?

The reality of this tension is that no matter which side of the ideological pole you sit on, there is a rooted belief that you are attempting to bring life out of death.

Each side believes they have the answer.

Each side believes that their methodologies are the cure.

Each side believes with all of their heart that they have the key to bring life from death.

And that's what we see in the attempt of society, and the attempt of mankind is to produce that.

But there's a reason that that's the case.

You see, all of us, we believe that things aren't as they could be or as they should be.

Each one of us in our heart, whether it's in your parenting, your marriage, your job, whether you look out on culture or you see our political structures, no matter what you see, there's something in you that believes there's more.

It's not quite right.

It's not quite as it should be.

Why is that?

It's because God has planted within us a vision, a vision of something bigger, eternal.

It's a vision of Himself.

And we wrestle with the longing for that.

And in our own effort and our own strength, man gets to work getting his hands dirty in the mess of culture to try and produce life from death.

But there's a fundamental problem.

And we engage in this problem right at the beginning of Ephesians 2.

Man can never produce life from death.

Because man himself is dead.

An agent of death cannot produce life.

He can only procure more and more death in his efforts and strivings.

As we engage with the beginning portion of this text, we look at verses 1 through 3 and we kind of see this.

We see dead men walking.

That's what Ephesians labels us as.

That's how God used his Holy Spirit to be able to communicate to us our state of being.

We are dead men walking.

It's an emphatic statement made in the opening of this passage about the condition of man.

Dead.

Dead of life, but also dead of power.

When it talks about you were dead, it means that you were lifeless.

You had no power, you had no ability, you had no strength, you had no merit, you had no goodness, you had nothing.

You were dead.

Devoid of power to change our state, to ever work up enough effort to be made alive.

The state of man is utterly destitute and hopeless.

But though dead, the Bible describes man as walking.

Dead men walking.

This spiritual zombiness that we exist within is how the scriptures communicate our condition as mankind.

Men walking around without life, without power, without hope.

And this condition, this deadness, is rooted in something.

Ephesians says that it is rooted in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked.

So we are dead men walking in the state of, or because of our trespasses and sins.

Though we are dead men, we are walking in these two realities of being.

What does trespasses mean?

Trespasses simply means a false step.

A false step.

When the Bible says that we are dead in our trespasses, what it means is that we knew the way to go.

We knew what was right in the path of which we should walk, but in rebellion we deviated to try and create for ourselves our own path because we thought we understood rightly what was good and beautiful.

But what happened?

When man stepped out to create his own path, he did not produce life, he produced death.

Man, knowing in which way he should go, has consciously rebelled from the path to attempt to make his home.

Let's look at Isaiah 53, 6.

He describes it this way: all we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way.

At the heart of our deadness, we are dead rebels.

What about sins?

So trespasses and sins.

Well, sins simply mean a missed mark.

It means a missed mark.

It means a failed attempt.

Falling short of the standard that God set before us of his righteousness.

Mankind in their own efforts and workings failed, and we missed the mark.

Romans 3.23 says this for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Now, if we look at both of these passages combined, we see this universal reality of all, everyone.

There is not one single human being that has ever existed that was able to go with outside of this reality.

Well, one, Christ Himself.

We'll get to that a little bit later.

But you and I aren't Jesus.

You and I make really bad Jesuses.

Why?

Because we exist in this dead walking state in the trespasses and sins of our life.

It's a statement about the guilt that resides upon every man.

It's a declaration of being about who we are universally as his image bears.

In our given nature, we are dead men who are entrapped entirely by the false steps and missed marks of our life.

We cannot escape them.

We have no power to liberate ourselves from underneath their captivity.

To understand ourselves rightly in this statement, we must realize that before God, we all have become both rebels and failures.

Before the holy God of the universe, how does he describe us in our being and in our state?

Rebels and failures.

And as both rebel and failure, we have been found to be dead.

As dead men, though, we walk.

We walk having no life of the soul, but stumbling in the very darkness that we have created.

And Ephesians 2 talks about our walking.

In our walking, we are not leading, but we are being led.

That's how it describes us in Ephesians 2.

As dead men, we walk, but not leading in our own.

We are being led by three powerful forces that it lays out here in this passage.

It tells us first and foremost that we are led by the course of this world.

This is the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

We are led by the voice of culture calling us to follow after their godless solutions, ideologies, and philosophies.

We are swept out by the tides of culture that shift at breakneck speeds.

We are moved by the pressing topics of the day, which try to establish a value system that is completely alien to God.

The Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

What does it do?

It leads us as dead men stumbling in darkness toward death.

Number two, it says the prince of the power of the air.

Right?

If we're going to get spiritual here, let's just talk the reality of what it means.

It means that we have an adversary.

We have an enemy, a foe.

The devil himself.

Who doesn't uh try to work for our good but leads us into this state of darkness.

The devil himself who entices us to follow him.

Being a foe of God, the enemy leads us away into greater darkness, and we follow willingly.

Those who are led by him will find themselves in utter darkness at the end of the age.

As Jesus described, those who would follow after Satan, he says that what awaits them is a darkness greater than the darkness that we're living in now.

It is utter darkness.

Where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the darkness does not subside.

Katie and I went to Colorado this last year and we did a cave exploration.

And there's this thing called cave darkness.

And we got to experience it in this deep tunnel, and we had to cover our watches and phones and everything else.

And if this darkness, after five minutes, the human mind starts to hallucinate.

They can't take it.

Our minds, our eyes, with our senses, they start going haywire and crazy.

It was one of the creepiest 30 seconds that they allowed us to like experience in my life.

I'm not a fan of dark.

If you ask my wife, I love light.

Let's turn the lights on.

Why don't we have light?

That's why God made light.

God is light.

You should like light too.

But my wife likes darkness for some weird reason.

I think we're still working on her, but uh but what the Bible's telling us here is that we are being led in our dead state by the king of darkness, which will end itself in utter darkness itself.

The power of the air that it talks about here.

So the prince of the power of the air.

It speaks about this lower heavens, this realm that we exist in within earth, where the devil has dominion and reign, and his legion of followers have power to influence and inform and create even the deceptions that we find ourselves in today.

Then it says, lastly, the spirit.

So we're being led by the course of this world.

That's the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age.

We're being led by the Prince of the Power of the Air, and then we're being led by the Spirit.

This impersonal force that's working, it says here in Ephesians, in the sons of disobedience.

And that's going to be key to understand that statement, that sons of disobedience.

The spirit is working in this.

There's three realities, though, that we see in that phrase: the spirit working in the sons of disobedience.

There's three realities in that statement that are juxtaposed to the kingdom of God.

First and foremost, that's a lowercase S spirit.

It's not the capital S spirit that you might see in your Bible speaking of the Holy Spirit.

No, this is not speaking of the Holy Spirit.

So we are all led by Spirit.

It depends on are you being led by the Spirit of darkness or are you being led by the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit, the Spirit of life, right?

The next juxtaposed reality of the kingdom in this sentence is this word working.

So it says, the Spirit who is working.

What's really fascinating about this, this is the exact same word that the gospel writers and other New Testament writers use for the power that raised Christ from the dead.

But Paul in Ephesians is not using it to describe the power that raised Christ from the dead.

It's speaking about the power that is keeping dead men down.

And then lastly, he says, the sons of disobedience.

But the gospel makes us sons.

Not of disobedience, but of obedience.

We get sonship where we were once rebels.

In verse 3, it's made clear that the universal nature of mankind truly is.

Simple as this.

We all have walked this way in spiritual deadness.

We stammer around in darkness, being led astray, and we feast upon the impulses of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

Spiritual zombies.

These things make us by nature, Ephesians summarizes this introduction with children of wrath.

These realities.

That we are dead men walking, stumbling around in the darkness, feasting upon the impulses of our flesh.

What does this acquire for us?

It acquires for us God's wrath.

God's wrath.

A people who deserve the fullness of God's holy justice poured out onto them for both their rebellion and their failure.

If the state of man was not already grim enough, declaring that we are entrapped by our rebellion and failures, how much more grim is it to know that we also stand condemned?

Condemned under a holy God whose righteous standard is completely unattainable in our striving and contending.

We are truly dead men walking in every sense of the phrase.

Dead men who stumble around in darkness, dead men who feast upon the impulses of their flesh, dead men who are walking, being led toward death.

But then we get to verse 4.

And verse 4 shows us this.

But God.

Here is the great turning point of our condition.

This is where the story changes for all of us.

We see here bursting through the darkness into marvelous light is God Himself accomplishing for us what we never could in our dead state.

This one, this God who both desires and is able to change our circumstance, to bring death to everlasting, abundant, joy-filled life.

What would drive God?

What would drive God of whom's wrath we have been existing under to create such a butt in our story?

It says this in Ephesians 4, it says that it is because he is rich in mercy.

Rich in mercy.

What is mercy?

Why is that such an important qualifier for how God is moving in us?

Well, if we understand the first part of Ephesians 2 of what we deserved because of our trespasses and sin, namely God's wrath, when it qualifies him as the one who is rich in mercy, that means that we are not going to get what we deserve.

That's what mercy is.

When you do not get that which you deserve.

We deserved justice.

Justice exhibited in wrath for the trespasses and sins in which we once walked.

But he is what?

Extravagantly wealthy in mercy.

And he lavishes upon us.

Why?

Because of his own good pleasure.

God being rich in mercy.

But he doesn't end there.

He says, also, because of the great love with which he loved us.

His love for us is greater than our rebellion and failure toward him.

And that love is active.

And it's producing an outcome in our lives.

It's producing life where there was once death.

It's bringing life where death had reigned.

And it's also changing sons of disobedience, children of wrath, into eternal sons.

When it says the great love with which he loved us, the Bible's talking about this specific love called agape love.

And this is why that sons of disobedience part is important because what Ephesians is helping us understand is that God has loved us with the love of a father.

And he's taken the child of wrath, the son of disobedience, and bring them into his own family by his mercy and love of which he loved us, and he now makes us sons.

Even, Ephesians goes on, even when we were dead in our trespasses.

Why is Paul reiterating that point?

Because he's trying to help us understand.

When we had nothing to offer God, he moved.

He was the one.

When we had no merit in us to earn his affection, loved us.

When we were dead, incapable, hopeless, God moved.

And in his moving, what did he do?

He made us alive together with Christ.

He brought the dead to life.

He brought the dead to life.

He made us.

Do you understand that?

He caused us.

He was the agent.

He was the power.

He was the one that made us alive.

We could have not done it on our own, not only because we were incapable, but we had no desire to either.

We thought we understood the way to life, but we were continually incurring death on ourselves.

And God, in his mercy and love toward us, made us alive together with Christ.

With Christ.

With Christ.

You see, he was dead.

On the cross just a few days ago, we celebrated or remembered and reflected upon the Savior dying.

He died in our place, taking the wrath of God that we as children of wrath deserve so that we might have life.

And because he is living, we are able to have life also through his mercy and love.

And this all leads us to the summary statement of this entire passage.

This is the point that we have to focus on so clearly in this verse.

By grace, you have been saved.

By grace you have been saved.

Why have you been saved?

It's not because you're awesome.

You're not awesome.

It's not because you did really good and kept your nose clean and made sure that you were super obedient and didn't get in hanging out with the wrong crowd.

That's why God saved you.

It's not because of how generous you were and you gave up everything to feed the poor.

It's not because you did everything right in life and you were the one that set the moral standard for your family.

It's not for any of those reasons.

Why has God saved you?

It is by grace you have been saved.

What is grace?

Grace is this that we are given what we do not deserve.

If mercy is that we are not given what we deserve, grace then is given to us what we do not deserve.

We don't deserve life.

We deserve wrath, justice, condemnation.

But God gives us life instead.

It's the unmerited favor of God, grace.

But he doesn't simply save us.

Ephesians says that he also raises us and seats us.

Now this is important because we look back at a f in the first section of Ephesians, and it says that we were being led by the Prince of the power of the air.

Speaking of this lower realm of heaven, where does God seat us in Christ?

In the heavenlies, at the right hand of the Father, seated with him above the power of this air.

We are elevated and raised up that we might reign over death and sin as he does with him.

Why?

Why would God do this?

Why would God do this?

What is the most motivation in this merciful, loving action toward our benefit?

This is where God flexes, right?

This is where he shows off.

And he says this in Ephesians.

He says, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

God is going to put on display for all creation to gaze and bear witness to the riches of his kindness and mercy toward us in Christ Jesus.

At the end of time when he comes back to rule and reign and establish a new heaven and new earth, what is going to be put on display for all of the cosmos to gaze and bear witness to?

To cry out according to his praise and glorious grace, the riches of his kindness and mercy toward you and I in Christ Jesus.

He is the one who earned the Father's favor.

He is the one who has been rewarded the Father's blessing.

He is the one who has come from death to life, and in him, you and I become heirs of all of it.

We become heirs of the Father's favor, the Father's blessing, the Father's life.

We become heirs because Christ has accomplished it for us.

At the very close of this passage, Paul reiterates his divine thesis.

He says, this, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

And then he adds this, and this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

This is not your own doing, it's a gift.

It's not a result of work, so no one may boast.

What I'm trying to help us understand, what Paul is trying to help us understand, is that when we are saved, when we are brought into the family of God, when sons of disobedience are made sons, when children of wrath are made heirs of the blessing, there is nothing that we can make claim for for why that happened.

It was nothing in us.

There was no measure of goodness in us that was able to spark that reality.

There was no effort and striving.

There was no amount of prayers, there was no amount of indulgences, there was no amount of supplications, there was no amount of anything that could have made God move in your behalf.

It was because out of his kindness and mercy he chose to make you a son.

How beautiful is the gospel.

What's our main idea this morning?

It's that God alone can bring the dead to life.

God alone can bring the dead to life.

Try as we may.

The Bible has authoritatively shown us that in our strength and efforts we cannot bring life from death.

If we hold the Bible as truth, if we hold it as authority in our life, then it makes an anthropological statement here in Ephesians 2, saying we are dead and we can do nothing except to create more death.

That's it.

In our own strength.

Only God can bring the dead to life.

We are helpless in our attempts.

Death can only produce death, but God.

We are trying to create life from death.

And we think we have the solutions, we think we have the answers, but we are merely agents of death.

That is why we look throughout our efforts, and what do we see?

But more death, more confusion, more tension, nothing really producing life.

We see it in the rebellion and the failure of every man's effort.

It is the living God alone who can produce the life that we're striving to produce ourselves.

And this life is genuine and true.

It is eternal and tangible because a tomb lays empty this morning.

Luke 24 5 gives us a glimpse into this tomb reality as they were coming the next day to try to discover Jesus' dead body that they might uh minister to it.

It says this in Luke 24, 5.

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, Why do you seek what?

The living among the dead.

Is that not us?

Don't we seek life among dead bones?

Don't we try to discover life among the dead?

We are just like uh Mary and the women.

We are just like the apostles who ran to the tomb to try and find Jesus.

We try to look for life among dead bones, but he is not here, for he has risen.

He has risen.

He wasn't dead, he was alive.

And Jesus' resurrection makes the way for dead men to be alive also.

He is not just the God of the living, but he is the living God Himself.

In him, life produces life.

Yet, even with the evidence stacked against us, we strive to produce life.

We wrestle with the tension of living in such a cursed state, and we work tirelessly to get our reality to reflect what we feel deep within things should be.

The yet to come that we all long for remains outside of our reach and beyond our grasp.

Still, like an insane person, we try the same futile methods over and over again, expecting different results.

Ecclesiastes says that uh that that nothing is new.

It's all been tried.

That we can't do something new to create better results for ourselves.

This has been the reality uh since the beginning of mankind.

We have tried in every effort possible the continued circular same things and gotten the same results.

Death.

Some of us, we work to bring life from death through revolution.

We work to bring life from death through revolution.

We identify, where we're conscious of, we identify that the ways of this world are failing.

We see them as death, but we fail to understand ourselves, the true enemy, and we really provide no solution or strategy to help liberate its captives.

Critical theory, anti, insert any word you want after it.

Cultural Marxism, the radical right, nationalism, you name the revolution of the day.

They are trying to bring life from death through revolution.

We believe a revolution is necessary, but instead of actually creating life, we often create more death in the process.

As we work to deconstruct, we destroy.

Instead of nurturing vitality, we inflict vengeance, and in place of redemption, we heap on rubble.

Every attempt to produce life encures death.

Because we ourselves are dead.

What good is a revolution if the revolutionary himself is an agent of death?

We will continually experience the pangs of a fallen world because we provide it for it no real solution for redemption.

We cannot bring societal life from a revolution because we can't even bring life to our own dead bones.

How can a revolution be born out of a rebel?

Remember, we're dead in our trespasses.

We are natural-born rebels ourselves.

A rebel who both refuses and is unable to walk the path of life.

How will we ever create the revolution that we think we so desperately need to produce life on the other side of it?

We're never going to.

We're always and continually going to fail.

And this is the tension we're finding ourselves in.

We're seeing in every movement of our culture this attempt to produce life.

And what we're seeing on the other side of it is more and more death.

Some of us, though, we don't try to bring life from death out of revolution.

We try to bring life from death through religion.

We work to bring life from death through religion.

We acknowledge God and that his ways do lead to life, but we fail to recognize that we will always miss the mark.

The mark, the standard of perfection that God has established for those who would be his children.

We fail to realize that we ourselves are failures.

We can't earn or merit that which we actually seek after.

We are dead in our sins.

Remember that?

We miss the mark.

In all of our attempts to earn the affection, the favor, or the blessing of God, we will be found wanting in the end.

We won't measure up.

The scale will not tip in our favor.

Because by grace you've been saved.

Not by your work, not by how good you were, not by how faithful you were, not by how much you went to church, not by what classes you went through, not by any measure of our perceived or even biblically communicated good, will we be able to ever earn God's affection?

Because grace has freely given it to us.

Life is freely given to dead men who do not deserve it.

Dead men who are dead in their sin and who continually fail.

They are the ones who are made alive.

Religion is dead when practiced by dead men.

We see the mark that needs to be hit.

But there's nothing in us ever is able to truly accomplish it.

How devastatingly frustrating is that?

When we try to earn God's affection, when we try to earn his favor and blessing through religion, we work tirelessly.

And all of us know when we lay our head down at night the ways that we miss the mark.

You and I know how you failed, how we uh uh thought about others, how how we were angry in our heart, how we were bitter, how we were gossipers, how we were slanderers, how we hated our brother, how we went against what was good.

We all know at night when we are alone with our own thoughts in the stillness of the dark, we don't stack up.

We don't measure up.

And so what do we do?

We try to wake up the next morning and work even harder to earn God's affection.

And what he's doing is he's telling us it is not by your merit or striving or scraping or clawing through this life.

It is by grace.

I love you because I love you.

Not because you've earned it, not because you've been so good.

And here's the good news too: we don't lose God's love when we fail.

God loves us because He loves us, no matter how awesome you are or how ridiculous of a failure you are.

God loves you.

And many of us maybe have grown up under fathers who it seemed like day after day their affection for us changed, whether they were pleased with us, whether they truly loved us, whether their blessing and favor was upon us, and we had to watch how we walked through the house always on eggshells, or we had to make sure when those grades came home, man, they, you know, I remember change, I could change an F to an A like nobody.

And then the report card came in.

You can't do nothing about that.

But I remember having to just work so hard to have a father say, I'm proud of you, I love you, I want to give my blessing on you.

I remember that I could not stack up.

But God loves us.

Why?

Because when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, when you were both a rebel and a failure, when you could do nothing, he determined and does good pleasure to love you.

To just love you.

Religion cannot bring life from death.

Only the gospel can.

That's what makes grace so much more beautiful.

So whether through revolution or religion, we come up disastrously short of the life we were hoping to obtain.

Instead, we discover ourselves still in death and under the condemnation of God as a holy judge.

A judge who will inflict holy justice on the sons of disobedience.

But the beauty of the gospel for us is this Jesus died as a son of disobedience that we might live as sons.

Jesus died as a son of disobedience that we might live as sons.

This is the great exchange of God.

This is the great exchange of God.

Our death for his life, our sin for his righteousness, our trespasses for his obedience.

And in this exchange, and only by this exchange are dead men brought to life.

Not simply because Jesus died in our place, but he also rose that we might find our place in him.

You see, in the incarnation, Christ took on our flesh.

In his birth, in his coming into the world, Christ took on our flesh.

In his crucifixion, Christ took on our death.

But then there's something alien that inserts itself into the scene.

When Christ raised up from the dead and he became life itself, there was something foreign to our nature that we could not have that we could not obtain, that we could not grasp in our own.

He takes nothing from us in his resurrection.

Because you see, we only have death to be offered.

No, he gives something alien and foreign to us.

He gives us life.

A life that we could not fabricate on our own, but that he accomplished for us.

In him we are no longer sons of disobedience, church, but we are made eternal sons.

In him we are no longer children of wrath, but we are heirs of the blessing.

In him we are no longer dead, but we are truly alive.

When we look at the scriptures, there's three, there's several places it talks about what it means for us to be in Christ.

But let's look at three passages that talks about the flip side nature of Ephesians when we are found in Christ.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

John 1.12 states that, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, what did he do?

He gave the right to become children of God.

He exchanged from us as sons of disobedience to be children of God.

And Romans 8.1 shows us that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We are made alive.

And now we get the joy of walking in the light and walking in his righteousness.

We can finally live because of his life.

And so what do we do?

Church, we should walk in the sonship that you have been freely given in Jesus.

Walk in the sonship that you have been freely given in Jesus.

You have been made alive in Christ.

If you trust him, if by grace through faith you have been brought out of darkness and into the marvelous light, if you have been brought from dead to life, then we should walk in that sonship.

We are sons of God because of Jesus.

That means we are forever and eternally loved by the Father.

That means that we are heirs of his blessing.

That means that we don't have to fret and worry anymore about what the future holds because our Father says, I've got it.

I've got everything under control.

Everything is going to be accomplished according to my plan and will.

That yet to come, that what could be better one day for us will be perfect.

And we get to live in that and rejoice in that because we're sons.

I love this quote from Martin Luther.

He was the kind of Kickstarter of the Reformation in 1517, but he says this about sonship.

He says, it is not the imitation that makes sons, it is sonship that makes imitators.

What he's saying is this it's not in how good we are, it's not in how hard we work to do the right things, it's not in how clean we keep our noses that makes us sons of God.

It's the fact that we are sons because of Christ Jesus, because of grace, because of the extravagant wealth of God's mercy that we then desire to be imitators ourselves.

You see, we don't work for God's love and affection.

We work from God's love and affection.

We don't work for God's good pleasure on us.

We work from it.

How freeing it is to realize that your efforts in this life to be more like Jesus, to be more like our older brother, to be re uh to have a reality in our sonship with God doesn't dictate his affection for you, his love for you, his pleasure in you.

That's liberating.

Because if I mess up, I don't have to fear that he's gonna be mad at me.

So that he's actually more pleased with me.

God cannot be more pleased with you than he is in this moment because he is so utterly pleased in his son in which you rest in.

The good news is you can't earn God's love any more than he has lavished it on you in his own son.

That's the beauty of grace.

That's the beauty of the gospel.

And so, church, this morning I pray that we stop trying to produce life from death in the ways of this world.

That we stop trying through our own strivings and efforts and strength, whether it be through revolution or through religion, we have to realize we will not produce life out of death in our own efforts.

It is only in resting in the one who is seated at the right hand of the Father, who has accomplished life for us and freely gives it to us by grace that you and I will ever find the life our hearts are truly looking for.

Let's pray.