Ephesians 2:1-10 - The Nature of Our Salvation

Well, church, this morning, we will be back in Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2, and we will be looking at verses 1 through 10.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Again, that's Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

Ephesians 2:1–10

And this passage really is an overview of our salvation.

If you look back at Ephesians chapter 1, the Apostle Paul opens this letter by blessing God.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

He gives us reason after reason on why God should be blessed.

Then he concludes chapter 1.

If you look at the end of chapter 1, he concludes by praying for the church in Ephesus.

It is this amazing introduction of worship and praise and thanksgiving.

But now, here at the beginning of chapter 2, Paul shifts gears and he gives the Ephesians a redemptive overview of their salvation.

He dives straight into the nature, if you will, of our salvation.

And he addresses three vital aspects of our salvation.

One, what they have been saved from, two, who they have been saved by, and three, what they have been saved for.

And so what things exactly have you been saved from?

How exactly did God save you?

What did he do?

And now that you are saved, what is your purpose?

And so our passage this morning addresses these questions, and it's glorious.

We need to be reminded, don't we?

We forget how horrible Egypt was.

We suffer from what Paul David Tripp calls gospel amnesia.

We forget what God did to bring us out of darkness, and we lose sight of what we are to be doing now as blood-bought believers.

Which is why Paul brings this up here, saying, Hey church, remember where you came from, remember what God has done, and remember what you should be doing now.

This is one of the richest descriptions in the Bible, I believe, outlining our salvation.

And it's my hope this morning that we will be divinely inspired and spiritually renewed as we look at the past, the present, and the future of our salvation, that we might have a deeper appreciation as we review our spiritual history.

And so Paul starts with the past.

He starts with the bad news.

He points to our life before Christ and he says, starting in verses one through three, and you were dead in the trespasses, in sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince and the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So who were we before Christ?

What condition were we in?

What kind of life were we living before the hounds of heaven led us to the cross of Christ?

The first description that Paul says is this you were dead in the trespasses in sins.

Now, what does that mean?

Okay, I'm pretty sure I was alive before I met Christ.

I was breathing, I was walking, I was talking, very much physically alive and active.

So in what way was I dead?

We were spiritually dead.

So the idea behind the word trespasses is that we have crossed a line.

We are outside of God's boundaries.

The idea behind the word sins is that we have missed the mark.

We're falling short of God's glory.

As John Stopp once said, before God we are both rebels and failures.

Ever since Genesis 3, every single human being born is separated from God, born with a sin nature that controls us, and born without any spiritual capacity to worship or love or know our Creator.

Which is why Paul says, you were dead.

Not neutral, not like kind of bent, not half good, half bad, as some Christians believe.

No, you were dead.

You had no spiritual pulse.

Your spiritual life was like a corpse in a coffin.

What can a spiritually dead man do?

What can he do?

He can't stop sinning because he's a slave to it.

He can't atone for his sins because the price is way too high.

He loves sin that much.

He can't even access God because he has no access.

Our sin has separated us from his holy presence.

And Paul says in verse 2, that is the way in which you once walked.

Meaning you walked in this deadness.

The trajectory of your life was away from God, not towards God.

And what did this look like?

Well, Paul explains this in specific areas in verses two and three.

One, we followed the course of this world.

Two, we obeyed the devil, being driven by a spirit of disobedience.

And three, we indulged every impulse of the flesh.

So let me break these statements down for just a moment.

Following the course of this world, it means that we participated in this world system that is anti-God.

This world, it despises God, it lives independently from Him, it opposes His law and His standards, His nature, and we loved the things of this world.

We followed its pattern in chasing after money, hoarding our stuff, making fun of righteous people, manipulating our emotions with chemicals, pursuing any and all sexual appetites, exploiting others, seeking revenge, putting our hope and trust in dead idols.

We joined the message of this world, which is shouting, I will do whatever I feel like doing.

God will not tell me how to live or what to do.

I am my own master.

And we participated in this mutiny, did we not?

We were a part of it.

We promoted it at one point in our lives.

We are all guilty of joining the course of this world.

Metaphorically speaking, we were all bricklayers in the Tower of Babel.

Okay, we were in Babylon helping it thrive with blood, sweat, and tears.

We rejected God's kingdom as we built our own.

And secondly, Paul explains we followed the prince in the power of the air, aka Satan.

So Paul uses this title to paint this picture, that we were obeying the one who has set up this evil system.

He is the one who tempted Adam and Eve in the garden and condemned the whole entire human race into his control.

Thus, he is the ruler, if you will, of this fallen realm.

Of course, we know that ultimately he is subjected to Christ.

But he does exert influence over humanity, and God has allowed it.

The devil is over the earth's atmosphere.

He's currently, right now, developing strongholds, he's creating new sinful inventions, he's deceiving us, he's suppressing the gospel that saves.

That is why Paul refers to him here as the prince and the power of the air.

And before Christ, he was our master.

We followed him.

That's the irony, church of sin.

Sin says you're free to do whatever you want to do, live your life, call the shots.

Here's the irony: that's not freedom.

That's slavery to Satan.

That is, as Jesus says in John chapter 8, obeying the devil.

John 8 · chapter mention

The Bible is very clear.

There are only two types of people.

Those who are children of Satan and those who are, through Jesus Christ, children of God.

As Spurgeon once said, one of my favorite quotes, he says, Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it.

I always meet will and plenty of it, but it is either captivated by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.

And what was our motivation in this state of following Satan?

What was the power that was fueling us to rebel?

Look at the verse.

It was the spirit of Satan.

The spirit that is working in the secular world, the spirit that drives Satan's hatred towards God's authority is the same spirit at work in those who are disobedient.

Implying that before Christ, we too, myself included, was disobedient and following Satan.

Before Christ, we were being led by the influence and the attitude of demons.

And Paul ends this description by saying in verse 3, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Key word here.

Okay, among whom we all once lived.

Everyone in this room, no matter your background, your upbringing, your social status, we all lived at one point in our lives in the passions of our flesh, guzzling down sin like it was water.

No matter your sin preference or how it may have manifested itself in your life, we all bathed ourselves in sin.

Both our bodies and our minds had perverted cravings, which we pursued.

And it doesn't matter whether you were converted at age five or age 50, we were all at one point in this condition.

Did not all of us at one time, think about this church, did not all of us at one time live in ways that reflected spiritual death and separation from God?

Were we not selfish and greedy, self-consumed with pride and self-importance, thinking only about ourselves, having little concern for other people, despising authority, living as if the world evolved around us, living life by our own laws, by our own feelings.

Didn't we once live with hearts full of anger, bitterness, jealousy, unforgiveness, evil intentions?

We didn't wake up each day saying, I'm gonna glorify God and think about him.

No, instead we blamed him for our problems.

We grumbled and rejected him because his ways interfered with my sinful desires.

Did we not live in this constant state of saying, me, me, me, my kingdom come, my will be done?

Friends, I could go on and on and on.

Sin knows no end.

The human heart is deceitful above all things.

Who can know it?

And what was the result of living without Christ?

Of living for the world and for the devil and for the flesh.

Look at the end of the verse.

We were by nature children of wrath.

Before Christ, we were not misled, misguided, we were not victims.

Let's call it what it is.

We were objects of God's furious wrath.

And rightly so.

We deserve the hottest flames of hell because we have committed treason against a perfectly holy God.

And so let me bring us real low for a moment, church.

Let me bring us real low.

Here's the summary of the bad news here that we're faced with in verses one through three.

We were spiritually dead zombies actively joining this world with our middle finger to God, being used as a vessel, as Satan's puppet.

We're bathing ourselves in sin like a pig in the mud, satisfying every sinful impulse.

No good thing dwelled in us, even our good works were filthy rags, abominable attempts to try to alleviate our conscience, and there was nothing we could do to fix this terrible plight.

This church is the sad reality.

This is who we were before Christ.

I remember reaching this conclusion in my own life.

I believe it was 2013.

I'm coming down off meth.

I'm a full-blown drug addict.

I realized how much blood I had on my hands, and how my heart continually craved evil, and there was no counselor, there was no program, there was no medication in the world that could change the desires of my heart.

And I realized that I love sin and nothing could change those affections, or so I thought.

And I realized that I'm guilty before God, and there's nothing I could do to make it right.

I realized that my condition was certain, that nothing could change unless some supernatural power out there came down and transformed me.

I was utterly hopeless.

My lot is with the demons where I belong.

I'm trapped by evil.

God's law is screaming at me, guilty, and I can't break loose from the grip of sin.

I can't get free from Satan's grip.

And this brings us, church, to the good news.

Starting with two of the most powerful interruptive words in the Bible, starting in verse 4.

But God.

Yes, sin is bad.

It's so much worse than what you can imagine, but God.

When you had nothing to offer, nothing to give, when the only thing you had was condemnation and shame, but God.

Why would he do that?

Why would he intervene on my behalf?

Look at the next part of the verse.

But God, because of, because he is rich in mercy, there it is, church.

Because God is rich in mercy, because God's mercy triumphs over his judgment, because he is wealthy, he's rich, he's abundant in mercy, he intervened.

Not only that, but look at the next part of the verse.

Because of the great love with which he loved us.

So what was God's motivation for intervening into our sinful lives?

It was his love and his mercy.

It wasn't based on your performance, your talents, or your response.

He didn't intervene because he thought you were such a great person.

He didn't intervene because he liked the color of your shirt.

He didn't intervene because you were so lovable and you just are someone who deserves mercy.

He intervened because he is love and he is mercy.

And when did he show mercy on us?

Like when did he love us?

Was it after we cleaned ourselves up a little bit?

Did God help us after we helped ourselves?

No, look at the next part of the verse.

Even while we were dead in our trespasses.

That is when God intervened and loved you.

He loved you while you were dead, while you were his enemy.

He looked at you in the climax of your rebellion.

And he said, I am going to show you love and mercy.

You were not panicking in the water screaming, Oh, help me God, come to my rescue, and God eventually heard and came to your rescue.

Not at all.

Your body was floating in the pool of sin, lifeless.

You had nothing to give or offer, and that is when God loved you, even while you were dead.

And what exactly did he do?

Like, what's it mean that God gave us love and mercy?

Well, look at the verse.

It says that he made us alive together with Christ Jesus.

He took your dead, sin-loving, worthless life.

He picked up your dead spiritual bones, he pulled you out of the coffin, and he made you alive with Christ Jesus, even while you were spiritually dead.

Meaning God regenerated you.

You became born again.

God breathed new spiritual life, the life of Christ, into your being.

He made you alive in union with Jesus Christ.

That is what it means to be made alive together with Christ.

This means that God took your heart of stone and he replaced it with a heart of flesh.

This means that God applied the blood of Christ, his sacrifice, to your account, giving you total forgiveness of your sins.

It means that God imputed to your account, he accredited the righteousness of Christ to your account.

It means that God sealed you with his Holy Spirit, who enables you to live for him.

You are made new by the work of Christ, by the Spirit of Christ, through the life of Christ.

The old man is crucified, he's dead, and we are now, what 2 Corinthians 5 says, new creations in Jesus, with the old things passing away and all things becoming new.

God buried the old man and gave you a new life in Jesus Christ.

And this begs the question if God did all this, what then is the means of salvation?

What brought this salvation about?

Was it something I said, something I did, something I thought?

Well, Paul explains this in the next part of the passage.

It is by grace that you have been saved.

Did you catch that?

Church.

You are saved because God gave you a free gift.

That's what grace means.

The gift of Jesus Christ, which includes the gift of his atonement, the gift of Regeneration, the gift of eternal life.

And says Paul in verse 6, he raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

What does this mean?

It means that your life legally is now united with Christ.

It reflects a settled sense of belonging with Christ, emphasizing a new identity and a relationship with him.

So sitting in heavenly places is more than just a figure of speech, it is a spiritual reality for the true believer.

You are now in union with Jesus.

Paul says this in Colossians chapter 3, verse 3.

Colossians 3:3

He says it this way: your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

You now have a right to the kingdom of God forever.

That's pretty cool.

Now, why would God do all this?

Let's get to the why.

Like, what's his purpose?

What's God getting out of this, so to speak?

Why take a useless sinner like me and give them the greatest gift in all of the universe?

Well, Paul explains this.

Look at verse 7.

So that in the coming ages he, God, might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us who are in Christ Jesus.

So why would God do this for a wretched sinner like me?

Here it is, church.

To show off his immeasurable riches of grace and kindness.

God did this so that he could show off his grace by presenting your transformed life to the world.

He did this so that you could be a trophy of his grace.

That people would look at you and cry out, God is so kind.

So often, church, our view of salvation is so human-centered.

Okay, God saved me so that I wouldn't go to hell.

God redeemed me so that I could have a better life.

God delivered me so that I could be free.

Yes, an amen.

Seriously, yes and amen.

But don't forget the primary reason.

God saved you for the glory of his grace, the fame of his name.

So that the whole universe, including the angels, would look at the people of God and then look directly towards God and say, God, what kind of grace is this?

How can we even begin to describe it?

Glory to your name.

And what Paul does next is he circles back to the means of salvation.

And, to be fair, rightly so, because he knew that we would have a very hard time with this.

We have a hard time believing that salvation is initiated by God, it's accomplished by God, and it's given by God all for his glory.

We often object and we say, well, you know, where do I fit in, God?

I want a participation trophy.

And so Paul repeats himself in verses 8 and 9.

He says, 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.

One of the most innate, natural consequences of sin ever since Genesis chapter 3 is thinking that we can come to God on our own terms.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

When we think of sin, we often think of like bad behavior, you know, sleeping around, using drugs, you know, those kinds of things.

But one of the most innate sinful tendencies we have is trying to perform for God, trying to take credit for God's gifts, thinking that we can earn his approval.

We see this problem throughout scripture, starting with Cain.

You guys remember that story?

We see it exemplified with Israel, and then we see it later modeled by the Pharisees in the New Testament.

And so Paul clarifies redundantly, hey everyone, just to be clear, your salvation came to you by grace through faith.

Let me put it another way, using the original meaning of these words.

You are saved by an undeserved gift that God gave you, that's grace, which came to you by God pursuing and persuading you.

That's the verb of faith.

Right?

And so to make sure we don't misunderstand what he means here, he solidifies this argument by saying, and this was not your own doing.

Church, I don't have time to get all Greek on you here, but the word this means the whole package.

Okay, both grace and faith.

There's no way around that grammatically.

Both grace and faith were things that did not originate with you.

It's all of God's doing.

God is the one who gave you the gift.

Christ is the one who accomplished salvation and paid your debt when he cried out, it is finished.

God is the one who pursued you.

He is the one who revealed himself to you and convicted you of your sin and opened your eyes to see the glorious gospel.

Jesus puts it bluntly in John chapter 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you.

John 15 · chapter mention

As Jonathan Edwards once said, the only thing that you contributed to your own salvation, or to your salvation, is the sin that made it necessary, right?

This is one of the greatest offenses of the gospel.

We hear that and we squirm and it makes us mad.

The religious Jews had a very difficult time with it because it obliterates all human pride and declares that salvation is from the Lord, period.

And Paul concludes this argument in verse 9, saying that this is not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

How offensive it is to God when we attempt to try to take credit for something only He can do.

And then we humans, made from dust, we take these gifts and we turn around and we say, Look at what I did.

I prayed the prayer.

I went up to the altar.

I took the step, the first step forward.

Yeah, sure, God, you know, he opened the door, but I walked through it.

It's like, no, my friend, as Spurgeon writes, salvation is all of grace, which means freely given for nothing.

There will be no one walking around heaven saying, look at what I did to get here.

Maybe we don't do this blatantly as Christians, shouting, I earned my salvation, but we do it in more subtle ways.

We're always trying to put mankind at the center of our theology, always trying to defend ourselves by saying God did 99% of the work, but look at what I did.

As Alistair Begg once said, we should never describe salvation, our salvation, in the first person.

I'm saved because I did this or did that.

We should always describe it in the third person.

He saved me.

He found me.

I am what I am because of him.

So if, church, then we can conclude that we're not saved by our works.

What is the proper place of good works in the Bible?

It's everywhere.

Like if human effort or obedience is not the means of salvation, why is it so emphasized in the Bible?

The Jews really struggled with this.

Paul actually was often accused of preaching a gospel that promoted loose living.

So where does good works fit in?

Well, Paul explains that in the next verse in verse 10.

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

So we are not saved by our good works, but we are saved for good works.

Don't ever get that twisted.

In fact, I would argue that obedience to Christ is actually evidence that we are saved.

If you're abiding in the root, you will bear fruit.

As James tells us in his epistle in chapter 2, a saving faith is a faith that produces works.

As Jesus says in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

You cannot, I repeat, cannot experience the salvation process and come out of the other end totally unchanged.

You cannot receive the Holy Spirit and continue to delightfully and joyfully chase after sin.

You cannot say, Jesus Christ has completely transformed my life and go on joyfully living like the devil.

Okay, that's called a false convert.

God saved us from his wrath, he raised us up with Christ, he gave us new life so that we could then enter the arena of righteousness.

This means that God has a unique and special purpose for us on this earth.

God saved us from his wrath, he brings us into his home, he gives us a new wardrobe, and then he turns us around and says, I am now going to use you to help build and accomplish my will on earth.

God didn't save you so that you could sit back and relax and do nothing.

He enlisted you into his army so that you could participate in kingdom work, that you would be used as an honorable vessel, that the instruments of your body, your mouth, your hands, your feet, would be used to promote righteousness.

As Jesus says in Matthew 15, or 5, verse 16, that you would let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

So, generally speaking, every Christian is called to the common good works revealed to us in Scripture.

Okay, we are all called to walk in the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

We are all called to live holy lives, resisting sin, pursuing righteousness.

We are all called to be an active member in the body of Christ.

We are all called to be disciple makers.

We are all called in some fashion or form to support missions and be good evangelists and share our faith with lost people.

We are all called as Christians to be hospitable, to take care of those who are orphans and widows.

But then we each have a unique calling.

Okay, this refers to kind of the specific tasks, gifts, or roles that God assigns to individuals within his church and around the world.

We all have unique callings.

Maybe it's starting a Bible study in the factory that you work in.

Maybe it's playing worship songs, starting kind of like a music ministry for people who are on hospice.

Maybe it's helping a local pregnancy center or starting a college ministry.

Maybe it's just being faithful to your family and being used as a tool for the lost family members that are in your circle of influence.

Maybe it's just financially supporting a mission that God has placed in your heart or pouring into the youth at the church that you attend.

The point is this: God not only saves us, but he uses us to advance his will on earth.

God pulled us out of the miry clay, he gave us new clothes, he washed us in the blood of Christ, he wrote our names in the family will, and he didn't do all this to say, hey, isolate, hide what I have done, don't tell anyone, just kick back, relax, wait for my return.

No.

God does all of this and he says, now go and live for me.

Go and advance my kingdom on earth.

Declare my glories.

Reflect Christ to this broken world.

Go and make disciples.

Walk in the good works that I have prepared for you before the foundation of the world.

Your salvation was not accidental.

It was on purpose and for a purpose.

As Christians, especially here in America, we can fall into this horrible mindset of thinking I'm good to go.

You know, I've got my ticket to heaven.

Christ accomplished it all on my behalf.

Let's sit back and just wait for glory.

That's a terrible mindset, church.

That's lazy and that's unbiblical.

Not to mention all of the eternal rewards that you're forfeiting in that mindset.

You have been made new.

As Paul says back in chapter 1, God has given you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.

You now have every spiritual tool at your disposal.

Utilize them.

Use your spiritual gifts.

Exercise them to build up the church.

Discover and discern the good works that God has sovereignly placed right before you.

Participate in the benefits of partnering with God and accomplishing his will.

And these good works, by the way, just a side note, they are not burdens.

This idea that being a Christian is boring is so foolish.

It's so foolish.

It's not like working a dead-end job.

Doing God's work is the most fulfilling thing that we can experience.

It's meaningful, eternal work.

We have the privilege of sharing an eternal message that could transform someone's life.

Is that not cool?

We have the privilege of playing a part in someone's transformation.

Is that not cool?

We have the privilege of helping ministries that are literally saving lives.

Is that not cool?

I don't know about you, but I have more joy, I have more zeal and excitement and adventure in my life when I do these things, because these things carry eternal weight.

But if I, you know, if I spend most of my days just indulging myself, wasting a lot of time on video games, reading and watching things that are just vain, being isolated and lazy, which I have, okay, I feel empty.

I get miserable.

I feel unproductive, I get depressed.

But when I am a faithful steward, doing what I know my Heavenly Father wants me to do, I feel most alive.

Why?

Because I'm walking in the good works that God has sovereignly assigned to me.

I'm operating in, I'm I'm investing in the eternal rather than the temporal.

I'm doing things that have true everlasting meaning.

And most importantly, I'm doing what pleases my Heavenly Father.

I'm carrying out his will for my life.

So proclamation church, this is the nature of our salvation.

This is what we have been saved from, who we have been saved by, and what we have been saved for.

Isn't it amazing?

I want to conclude this passage with just a few applications for us.

And the first is this remember what you have been saved from.

Remember that.

Write down all the things that God has delivered you from.

There is a reason in the Old Testament God told Israel to make monuments, to write things down, to share God's stories with their children, so that we could look back and remember the bondage and the oppression and the hell that we've been delivered from.

Don't look back in self-loathe.

Don't look back in a manner that will make you become depressed.

Don't look back and reminisce on the honeymoon of sin.

Look back and remember at how lost and depraved you were and how far God has brought you.

Secondly, remember who saved you.

You didn't deserve it, you didn't earn it.

Stop thinking that way.

That's legalism, and legalism is dangerous.

Remember that it was God's love and mercy that found you.

And he united you with Christ, seating you in the heavenly realms.

Stop striving in the arm of the flesh.

That's exhausting.

Stop trying to take credit for things that only God can do.

You're not fooling anyone.

And rest in the fact that salvation is all of God from start to finish.

Rest in the salvation of God.

Delight yourself this morning in the finished work of Christ.

And thirdly, remember that you are saved for a purpose.

To do good works.

Don't be lazy.

Stop abusing the doctrine of grace as an excuse to not be productive for God.

Be honest with yourself and ask, Lord, what are you calling me to do that I'm not doing?

What good works have you placed before me, before the foundation of the world that you want me to walk in?

And lastly, if you are an unbeliever in this room, if you find yourself currently in verses one through three, you look at that description and you say, Yep, that describes me.

There is good news for you today.

By grace, through faith, you can be made alive in Christ.

You can receive the forgiveness of your sins and experience the new life that God offers us through Christ.

May God grant you his gift of grace and faith, and may the Holy Spirit lead you to repentance this morning.

Lord, we ask, would you do that?

Would you use your word this morning to save the lost who are hearing it?

That you may quicken them to Christ for the sake of your name.

Church, let's pray.