What is the Church – Ephesians1:15-2:10

Our reading today is from Ephesians chapter one, verse fifteen, to chapter two, verse ten.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and a revelation in the knowledge of Him.

Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power towards us who believe, according to the working of His great might.

That He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him His head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which He 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 had all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the 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 us up 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 in kindness towards 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.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to you.

If you joined us while we were singing, my name is Mark.

I'm uh one of the pastors here at City Church.

And if you have a Bible, I would encourage you uh to uh turn up with us into Ephesians chapter two, end of uh chapter one.

If you uh if you have a Bible, I know it can be a little bit gloomy in here, and we kind of use our phones, but if you can kind of bring a physical Bible, it's a good thing to kind of have open on your on your lap to draw your attention because it's worth knowing that uh the things that we talk about here and the things that I should talk about are the things that are in the text.

And so it's good for you to keep me in check and make sure that what I'm saying actually accords with what God is saying in His in His Word.

So do have the passage uh open in front of you.

Uh we are in uh week two of a series thinking about the the church and what the church uh is about.

And so if you've just joined us, you're just uh getting settled in, you haven't uh missed uh too much.

If you uh are sitting here, uh could answer in your own mind this question.

Uh if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it what would it be?

Uh would it be something physical?

There's a part of you that you don't particularly like or you would like to change?

Maybe it's a uh maybe it's your job right now, you would uh you'd happily change that, make that a lateral move, or uh, or better, better yet, uh that ascendancy up the up the rungs.

What would you change about yourself?

What would you change about the circumstances that you find yourself in?

Now, what if you couldn't change?

What if you were stuck?

What would you do then?

At the heart of the message that Christians believe is the idea of change.

Christians believe in transformation.

The Bible agrees and affirms those longings that we have to change stuff about ourselves.

It understands that there are things that we feel that aren't quite right.

It knows that there are ways in which we want to change.

Maybe you're here this morning and you know that very acutely, rolling even, and you would like to change.

Perhaps you have tried yourself and it has not worked.

Or maybe you've never really considered it.

Maybe you think that actually the message of Christianity is about just kind of leveling up morally, spiritually, a little bit.

Uh, a little bit of improvement, tinkering around the edges of your life rather than some deep core transformation.

That is what Christianity is actually about.

Like I said a moment ago, we're in uh week two of a six-week series in the church.

And you might ask yourself, well, what kind of community is the church?

What kind of community is this as you look around you and as you uh as you engage with people in uh over tea and coffee after the service?

You look around and say, well, is this basically a kind of uh a social club for religiously minded people?

Or is this a uh a gathering of the uh the morally superior hoity-toity club, where we actually just like to think about how great we are and look down on those that we consider to be lesser?

Well, actually, fundamentally the church, and this is what I hope you we will see during our time in this text, is that the church is fundamentally a community of transformed people.

It's a community of people who have undergone the most significant radical change that a human being could undergo.

Change at the level of our heart, not just our actions, not just the things that we do, but our internal life is changed.

That's what Christianity brings to the table.

That's what Jesus talks about, that's what he offers, and that's what Paul is talking about here in this passage, and that's what the church is.

That when Jesus rescues someone, he doesn't just rescue you from a previous life, an old way of living, he rescues you to a new way of life, a new way of living, a new community, a new family, a new kingdom.

The church is that kingdom.

It is the community of transformed people.

And this morning we're going to see that in this passage.

We're gonna look at three things.

We're gonna ask the question, well, why is our why is our transformation needed?

We're gonna see that actually it is necessary.

So if uh another slide is going to kind of uh wonderfully morph, look at that.

Uh, and it's gonna come so our transformation is necessary.

We're gonna ask the question, well, how does it come about?

We're gonna see that it is received, not achieved.

And we're gonna see, well, what does it actually change about us?

It changes our position.

What does that mean?

And it changes our purpose.

So that's where we're going.

Don't just kind of take a picture of that and then nod off until coffee time.

I'm giving you a heads up so that you can, you know, track with me.

That's where we're going.

Why is it necessary?

Because for in order to truly understand why we need to be transformed at the level of the heart, we need to understand what our problem is.

What's the issue that we need to be changed from?

What's the issue that uh in us that needs to be transformed?

It's a bit like going to the doctor.

Uh, you hope that the doctor will have a clear and precise diagnosis of the problem that you were presenting in order to be able to accurately treat it.

Uh about 15 months ago, I was uh in the park with uh with my uh middle child, my firstborn son, uh, with Owen.

And uh this might come as a shock to you, uh, but we were playing football together.

Now he's far better than I am, okay?

Uh we're playing football together uh in the park, and that's hilarious, I know.

Um, and at one point uh Owen decided that what we should do is we should take shots at one another.

Uh we should do penalties.

And so we uh we put down a couple of our jackets and we made some goals, and uh and he wanted to be in goal first.

Um and me being the the athlete that I am, uh, I for the first time ever in my life uh got a shot on target.

No, I yeah, thanks.

Uh shall we pray?

That's all I wanted to tell you.

Uh um and uh and yeah, Owen, uh being even more athletic than his old man, actually saved it.

And as he saved it, he went, ah and he just broke it down on the ground holding his wrist.

And I thought, okay, well, he's just kind of he's you know, it was a great save.

He kind of bent his wrist back a little bit, he's kind of staved a little bit, and he was crying a lot.

And I said, okay, we'll go home, we'll get a little bit of ice on it.

It's not like it's not too swollen, like it's okay.

And um, and we went about the rest of our day.

Another day passes, and he's like, my dad, my my wrist is a bit is still a bit sore.

And I was like, Yeah, well, like he's probably bruised from from yesterday.

Um like you did really, like he really bent it back, and like you're fine.

Have a bit of cow pol and you know a couple of days and it'll it'll die down.

Another day passes.

Dad, my wrist is a bit sore.

Another day passes.

Dad, my wrist is still sore.

Fine, let's go.

We've got VHI, so we'll head over to the Swift Care Clinic.

Over we go to the Swift Care Clinic, and you know where this story's going.

Uh the guy takes him in, performs an X-ray, and of course he has a compound fracture in his wrist.

Yeah, I know.

All right, okay, worst dad ever, I understand.

Okay.

He had a compound, so he needed to have a brace and wear a brace on his wrist for about six weeks.

My problem was that I wasn't accurately diagnosing the problem, and the problem wasn't getting any better.

It wasn't until somebody who knew where to look was able to conduct the right sort of diagnosis and then apply the right sort of treatment that he was able to get better.

Our world offers us different diagnoses about the problem with humanity, the problems that society has.

Those different diagnoses are things like, well, there just need there needs to be more education.

People just need to understand more.

Or there's a lack of equality or equity, and what there needs to, what needs to happen is there needs to be a redressing of societal and systemic imbalances.

Or they might say, well, there's increasingly divisive ideologies leading to increasingly hostile rhetoric, and that leads to more and more cruelty and violence.

Or there's mental health issues that often go undiagnosed and untreated, and that is what's leading to familial and then societal breakdown.

All of those things might be true in different ways, but our answers are often to put some ice on the swelling, to give a little bit of kelpel, and to hope that it's gonna get better.

The Bible's diagnosis is far more serious, and the Bible's diagnosis comes to us in chapter two, verse one, where Paul says, You, that's plural, you were dead.

You're dead.

You were dead in your trespasses and sins.

Humanity's problem is not that we are ignorant, it is not that we are weak, it is not that we are uneducated.

It's that we're dead.

But what's killed us?

I didn't realize I was dead.

You might be sitting here going, I don't feel particularly dead.

If I'm dead, how am I dead?

What's killed me, Paul?

And he goes on.

Verse 2, he says, You're dead in your trespasses, it says, 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 working, the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

We're by nature children of wrath.

There are certain things that we uh that we follow.

We follow the course of this world.

That is, the world often in the Bible is not really a geographical term, it's a moral term.

The world is not uh this the spinning ball in space.

It is um it is humanity arrayed together in its hostility against God, that we follow the crowd that's that in its rejection of the God who made it.

So we're following that.

Prince of the power of the air, that's uh that that's kind of Paul ancient Near Eastern uh fancy language for the devil, the Prince of the Power of the Air, Satan, that we follow evil desires.

And those things that we follow are not just things outside of us, but within us.

We follow our own flesh, our own um corrupted, selfish, fallen desires that prefer our own needs, our own satisfaction, our own happiness over that of others.

But these words, this word follow is actually too weak to convey what's going on.

It's not just that we uh we kind of figure like, well, well, I'll I'll go along with that.

No, no.

To follow these things is to be captive and captivated by them.

It's to be enslaved by these three things, by the world, the flesh, our flesh, and the devil.

Our problem is not just that we do bad things, but that we are by birth subjects, captive subjects of an evil kingdom in need of rescue.

We are, to use Jesus' words in Mark chapter 7, we are captives in the strong man's house.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Or to use Jeremiah's language, we are all thirsty beggars, and we're looking for a drink, and where we look for those drinks are the most mildew-ridden crack pots.

We're longing for something that will satisfy our souls, and the only thing that we look for are the most destructive things that will never really truly satisfy us.

Have you been down those roads?

Or to use Ezekiel's language, we are sheep who follow bad shepherds, who are cruel to us.

Now, instinctively, all of this, like a like a dreadful diagnosis, makes us feel very uneasy.

And we don't want to immediately go into either defense or denial.

We like to think of ourselves as free people.

But the Bible is clear, and if we cannot get our head around the diagnosis, then God's solution will never look good to you.

God's solution will never make sense to you.

The Bible is clear that human beings are not just neutral objective arbiters, able to kind of objectively uh discern whether or not Christianity is the right religion or not.

No, that that's not the way humanity is.

We're already biased, we're already on one side, we're captives, allured by our own desires, enthralled by the world.

This is why Paul says that we are dead.

Because we have been captivated, stolen away from the source of life.

You're dead because you have turned away from God who is your life.

And there is no means of escape by your own hand.

Let me make it a little bit worse.

Ah, before making it any better.

And it does get wonderfully better.

But let me make it a little bit worse first.

What's worse is that when somebody shines a light, like what's happening now, when somebody shines a light on our condition, on the dark kingdom that we belong to by nature, we don't welcome it.

We don't sit there and go, oh yeah, I'm really glad that you saw that.

Oh, I'm so glad that you're here to rescue me.

You go, how dare you?

That's our instinctive response.

We react with hostility, we shut our eyes, we cover our ears, we silence the messenger.

It has always been thus.

From Abel, first brothers, to the prophets of old, to Jesus himself, to people speaking the truth in our day.

Humanity always shuts up those who speak the truth of the diagnosis that the Bible has over humanity.

Always.

That's the condition of a spiritually dead heart.

And the reason why we cannot help ourselves is because you're dead.

I don't know uh if you have ever been to an Irish wake.

If you have been to an Irish wake, or I imagine this happens in other cultures as well, but certainly in Ireland, somebody when somebody dies, you're uh you usually go round probably with a chicken curry uh or something to to offer, some sort of food or lasagna, or uh somebody when my grandfather died, somebody brought a whole roast turkey, and it was in July, and I was like, Where'd you get the turkey from?

Anyway, they're ushered in and you come in, you everything's very quiet and spoken in somber tones, and what do you do?

You're brought in to look at the body.

And you stand around the body and you say those platitudinous things, that doesn't he look well?

Does he just look like he's sleeping?

Do you know the do you know what a a corpse can't do?

Anything.

Corpses don't do stuff.

That's our problem.

There is no way for us to make ourselves more alive.

A dead body cannot revive itself.

That's why Paul is so stark.

We don't just need a moral boost or spiritual glow up.

We need a resurrection.

Sometimes some Christian churches define sin essentially as a kind of we're kind of sick with sin.

And so we come to uh we come to church, we come to the gospel, we participate in the sacraments kind of as divine spiritual medicine, and that makes us better.

But our issue isn't that we're sick and need medicine, it's that we're dead and we need a defibrillator.

Do you see?

This means that none of us can rescue ourselves.

Whether we are outwardly moral or openly immoral, Paul's verdict is the same.

We're dead with sin, without hope, without life.

And do you hear that?

You you can be you can be dead and a very moral person.

It's not just that the openly immoral, the addict, the lustful, the greedy, the violent, those who have obvious chains.

No, no, this deadness can often wear a religious disguise.

It's outwardly moral, but without God, outwardly respectable, scrupulous in rule keeping, in church attendance, in attendance at community group, participation in it.

But all the while it's a way of avoiding God rather than receiving him.

One life says, I don't need God because I'll live however I please.

The other says, I don't need God because I'm good enough on my own.

Both are symptoms of spiritual deadness.

So the question then is not, well, am I better than others, but am I alive in Christ?

Or am I still dead without him?

No.

If this were the end of the story, if we concluded there, then that would be fairly devastating.

But Paul does not stop there.

Into this apparent hopelessness, he inserts two of the most hope-filled words in the whole Bible.

They come at the start of verse 4.

But God.

But God.

And this is moving into our second point.

How are we transformed?

Our transformation is received, not achieved.

Remember, corpses don't do much.

If you may take notes, chant that down.

Corpses don't do much.

Which means that our resurrection, our transformation, must be received from outside of us.

Because we're spiritually dead, trying to be more moral or religious will never change us.

It will either lead us into pride where we think that we have done it or we're superior to others, or it will lead us into despair.

Why can't I change?

Why can't I do this thing that I'm setting all of my willpower to?

Why won't it work?

No, the only way that a dead person can be made alive again is if God Himself acts.

Well, he says that that power is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and has seated him above every rain.

So the power to transform our lives is at heart resurrection power.

Do you see that?

The power that comes to us to make us alive is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead three days after he died.

What sort of God would do this?

What sort of God would act in this way towards you, given how you are in secret?

Well, Paul tells us in verse 4 of chapter 2.

But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us.

What sort of God does this?

The God who is rich in mercy.

Isn't that such good news?

Rich in mercy, not rationed, not drip feeding mercy, abundant, lavish, rich mercy is available to you in your deadness.

And he is the God of great love.

Let's ask another question.

When did he love us?

Did he love us when we had begun to kind of clean our act up a little bit?

No.

Keep reading.

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.

When does God's love come to you?

When you're dead.

When you've been unable to do anything.

His love seeks you out.

His love pursues you from eternity.

His love is barreling towards you, even when you're blind to see it.

Why?

But because he's the good shepherd.

Because he goes seeking after lost sheep, even when those sheep don't even realize that they're lost.

Now notice, as we read on, let's pick it up.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he 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.

Paul here is using the same words, the same verbs, and applying them to us that he applied to Jesus in his prayer at the end of chapter one.

That God raised Christ from the dead, that he has seated him far above our rule and authority, that he has exalted him.

And he says, all of that is true of you.

Though you were dead, though you were a corpse spiritually speaking, he has made you alive and he has seated you with him.

That his resurrection is our resurrection, his enthronement is our enthronement.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Some gospel presentations go this way, and there is some truth in this, but some gospel presentations go like this.

There's a throne in your life.

There's a throne in your heart.

And either you will sit on it or God will sit on it.

And what you have to do is you've got to enthrone God on your heart.

Get off the throne and let Jesus sit on the throne of your heart and let Him be in charge.

And to that I say yes and amen.

But push it one step further.

When Jesus is enthroned in your life, what does he say to you?

Come sit with me.

Have you thought about that?

Come sit sit here.

Sit here with me.

It's beautiful.

Raised.

But not just raised.

Exalted.

Not just exalted.

Enthroned with him.

We are redeemed, resurrected, truly made free.

You must ask yourself, why?

Why would God do this for me?

Doesn't he know what I'm like?

Why would he do it?

Why would he transform and change us in this way?

But Paul gives us the answer.

Twice, in fact, in case we missed it.

He gives it first in verse 5 in that little kind of uh parentheses.

He says, By grace you have been saved.

And then again in verse 8.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

Why does God transform us?

Because he is the God of grace.

That is, he is the God who is undeservingly kind to people.

Do you know that that's what grace is?

Justice is getting what you deserve.

Lots of people are saying, we need justice for this.

I want justice.

Let me tell you, eternally speaking, cosmically speaking, spiritually speaking, you don't want that.

Right?

You don't want justice.

Don't go to God saying, give me justice.

Hell would be full.

We go to God and say, I need your grace.

I need you to be kinder to me than my life deserves.

I need you to be kinder to me than my thoughts, words, actions merit.

God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead, says, Alright, I will show you my grace.

For by grace you have been saved.

Our transformation is a gift from him.

It must be received.

It cannot be achieved.

Paul is crystal clear about this.

He emphasizes it.

Verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing.

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

You cannot say, therefore, I work so hard, morally speaking, spiritually speaking, I've achieved so much.

I deserve as my wages, as my merit, your salvation.

I deserve to enter into your heaven eternally.

Not one of us can say that.

We cannot boast in our own spiritual accomplishments.

Paul says that we are transformed by grace through faith.

What's faith?

What does he mean by faith?

Faith is simply the empty hand that receives that gift.

That's what faith is.

Faith is saying, God, I need that.

I don't deserve it.

I don't bring anything to trade.

I don't bring any barter.

I have no standing on my own.

My hands are empty.

Would you please give me that gift of resurrection to life?

Seat me with Christ.

Change me, please.

That's it.

That's it.

This humbles the religious because there is no room for boasting.

And it offers hope to the irreligious.

Because no matter what you have done in your life, no one is beyond the reach of God's grace.

This, friends, is utterly transformative to the Christian community.

This utterly changes who we are as a church.

It means that as a church, we should be a people that are marked by such overflowing gratitude for what he has done.

That we sing and we serve and we give because everything is a gift that has come from his gracious hand.

The drowning person, when pulled from the sea, does not boast about their ability to swim.

They thank the rescuer.

As a church, we should be therefore marked by welcome.

Our door is open to all.

Because we didn't get in by our own merit.

We all come in through merciful gates.

And it means that our community should be marked by dependence because we don't operate in our own strength, but in his power.

That's what Paul's been praying.

Paul says, I want you as a community to know more and more and more the increasing measure of the power that is now at work in you who are trusting in Jesus.

And that same power is the power that raised him from the dead.

And we know more and more of that power as we cast ourselves in dependence on his mercy.

But notice finally, God doesn't just rescue us from death and leave us where we were.

His transformation changes not only what we are, but where we are and why we exist.

And so this is our final point.

That we are transformed, uh, that we it changes our place and our purpose.

I mentioned just a moment a drowning person, think of him or her again.

How strange would it be if the rescuer, once they had pulled that person out of the water and revived them on the shore, as soon as they they kind of splutter up, say, well, okay, now that you're now that you're breathing again, into the waves you go.

That would be weird, wouldn't it?

That would not be a great rescue.

Now, once they are resuscitated, revived, they're placed by sure footing on solid ground.

The rescue isn't complete until the person finds a new position.

And it is the same with all those that Jesus rescues.

Our position has changed.

We're seated with Christ.

Verse 6.

Think about it.

Before, what was our position?

It was a grave.

And now it's glory.

What a transformation.

Before we were captives of a dark power.

But now we were under a new rule, the rule of Christ.

And beneficiaries of resurrection power.

Paul in chapter 1, verses 20 to 22, he says that Christ has been risen, exalted, that he is savior and lord of all, and that he is head of the church.

And then he says, Not only has he rescued us, but he has seated us with him.

Spiritually, our address has changed.

That once we lived under the world, the flesh, and the devil, now we live under his rule, his victory.

We have gone from captivity to enthronement.

What does this mean?

This means that our identity is secure.

That you're no longer under condemnation, no longer enslaved, no longer defined by your past, no longer defined by your sin, no longer defined by your shame, but seated with him, made new, welcomed as a son, as a daughter of the king.

Because you're seated spiritually speaking in heaven, it means that you can endure every circumstance of this world because you know that your final destination is secure, that whatever suffering comes your way, you can say with Paul in Romans 8 that I do not consider the sufferings of this present age worthy to compare with the glory that awaits us.

What assures him of that glory that awaits us?

Because he is seated with Christ now.

For us as a church, we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

We live under his rule and authority.

He is the head of the church.

And so we do not live for the world's applause or approval.

Not only has he transformed our position, he has transformed our purpose.

Final verse, verse 10.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

This word workmanship could be better rendered masterpiece.

We are God's masterpiece.

Putting it is as though we are put on display by God for the world to see, and what the world will see is the grandeur and beauty of his work in us and in the world.

Salvation in verse 10 is not by works, but it is for good works.

God doesn't just save us from something, he saves us to something, he saves us for something.

Let me be emphatically clear here, like Paul is being our good works are not the ground of our salvation, but they are a consequence of it.

What that does is it answers two, it answers two heresies at once.

One, that you must contribute to your sal, that you must contribute to your salvation.

No, not of works that no one may boast.

Second, just let go and let God.

Yeah, pray the sinner's prayer and just do whatever I want.

It's wrong.

It's not what the Bible teaches.

It is not the grounds that say uh our good works are not the grounds of our salvation, but they are an evidence that we have been saved.

They are a consequence of a transformed life.

The follower of Jesus is a new creation.

Our life has begun now in him, that though we were spiritually dead, we have been raised, seated with Christ spiritually, never to be abandoned, never to be disowned by him.

And that our new creation life is infused with intent and purpose on God's part.

And he intends to send us out to show the beauty of his handiwork to the world so that more might come and say, My goodness, how is it that you have changed your life?

How is it that you have been transformed?

Can I know more about this power that so transforms people from the inside out?

The church's purpose is to display God's handiwork to the world.

We exist not for our own comfort, therefore, but for him and for his mission and for his glory.

Taken all together, this means that the church is a place of humility.

We have nothing to boast about on our own.

Our story, where does our story begin?

It begins in a graveyard.

It ends in glory, but it begins in a grave.

And so we cannot boast.

Are beggars telling other beggars where to find bread, as C.S.

Lewis said.

It means that we are a church, as a church, we should be marked by compassion.

We do not look down on the world.

Because we know that we were once enslaved to the same powers.

And so instead of pride, we show patience.

Instead of disgust, we extend grace.

It means that as a church, we should be realistic people.

Do you know what you're truly like?

I know what I'm like.

And it's scary.

And what that means is that we shouldn't be surprised when sin shows up.

When sin shows up amongst us.

Transformation's real.

But it begins with death and with brokenness.

We're seated spiritually, not yet physically.

And so in this overlap between Jesus' first coming and second coming, we're still wrestling with sin.

That other kingdom still wants to try and break in from time to time.

It means that as a church, we should be courageous.

So because we have been seated with Christ, immovable and secure, then we can speak with courage about the truth of God's grace to broken people.

You speak the truth of the diagnosis that without Christ, people are dead in their trespasses and sins, though they may bulk against it and pull away from the light and act with hostility towards us, because we are seated with Him, never to be taken away.

We can speak gently, humbly, courageously.

And finally, this makes us all together a church that is filled with hope.

Because if God can raise you from the dead, then no one is beyond his reach.

Be transformed by his grace today.

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