Ephesians 2:1-10
By Grace you have been Saved
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Welcome to God’s Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.Sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life.
Let’s turn in our Bibles to the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, you can find that on page 1,038 of the provided Pew Bibles. Ephesians chapter 2 and this morning we’ll be looking at Ephesians 2:1-10.
“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in out trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Oh, soak it up, brothers and sisters, this Word is true. This is God's Word and it's holy and it's perfect and it's never fading. Store it up in your hearts and pay attention now as we go through it.
I'm not sure if you remember, but just about 2 years ago, we met. I'm not sure if you remember, but just about 2 years ago, you all listened to another sermon from this very passage, and you're not going to hear much different today, because God's Word is true. You have been saved by grace. You have been saved by grace. It’s a beautiful truth. It's a wonderful truth. And I just want to soak it in this morning.
But the reality is that when we get into this beautiful passage, it starts off with a hard reality. It makes us look at ourselves and ask ourselves some hard questions. It makes us do a reality check. And the first things it makes us see is that we're dead. You are dead apart from the work of God in your life, you are dead. Dead spiritually. This is the idea that, it's saying here, “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins.” You'll notice that, “He made alive” is in italics. That's not actually in the Greek. They're just trying to help us make sense here. It would be more helpful if they didn't because the statement is shocking. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” That is the natural state of humanity. That is who we naturally are, are walking zombies, spiritually. That is who we are by nature, that God has set a line and He said, “here and no further,” and we went, “I'm just going to step over that boundary that God gave me.” That's the idea of trespasses. That's the idea here of trespasses, you know what it's like to see a sign on a tree that says, “No Trespassing.” Don't go here. Don't go here. If you do, something bad is going to happen. Sometimes it has a gun or a dog underneath where it says, “No Trespassing.”
And God said that in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, He told our forefather and our foremother, “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Each one of us finds ourself in that spiritual death by nature. We transgress God's law, we go over the boundaries that He's told us. And even when we're trying to shoot at good things, we miss. That's the idea of sins is missing the mark. It's like you're an archer and you pick up your bow and you're trying to hit the bullseye, but you're doing it with your eyes closed and you just shoot willy-nilly, and you miss the mark. We can't even hit the bullseye, we can't even hit the target. And even when we're trying to do good things, we can't do the good things we want to do and even if we would try to keep God's laws, we still cross over them by nature. We were dead in your transgressions and sins.
And this wasn't just a one-time occurrence, but look with me at verse 2, “in which you once walked.” The pattern of your life was walking in sin. The idea of walking is this continual idea that this is just the way we operate, the way we just do things by nature. We sin. That's just what we do, “in which you once walked.” And we find ourselves, we walked in this way because we were slaves to three different things that we were slaves to. We were slaves to our sins. And we find in verse 2 and verse 3, things that we were slaves to, “according to the course of this world,” number one, “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,” two, “among whom we also conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, just like the others,” three.
There are three things that we find ourselves, as we walk in our sinful state. One is that we walk in a poisonous air. You live in a world that is set against God. Do you realize that? The world does not want you to be here this morning. The world does not want you to lift up your eyes to heaven. Marketers will do everything they can to keep your eyes on the things that you “need”. Psychiatrists will do everything they can to try to get you to look inwardly, instead of looking up. Our culture will do everything possible to get you to worry, and to be anxious about the things of this life, and the goods of this world. The air you breathe is poisonous, do you get it? Every time you turn on your TV, every time you open up your Facebook app, every time you open up tiktok, every time that you go to social media, or go to YouTube, every time that you pick up a book, someone is selling you a worldview.
And the ways of this world are at enmity with God. You breathe noxious air, just by living in the world. A world that is full of beauty. A world that displays God's glory. And yet, a world that people use for their own advantage. A world that people take the beautiful things that show God's glory and twist it for their own ends. A thing that God has created that we would use to bring Him glory, and instead people use it to satisfy themselves. The world pushes down upon you.
I was just talking to someone recently about, if you're a guy it's really tough. I don’t know what a lot of ladies struggle with, but when you're a guy, and just by being a male, if you go and you sign on to almost any social media account, you know, you just go on and you just create a new social media account, you want to know the first thing that the social media algorithms want to put right in front of you? What they think every other guy wants to see. Young people, I am shocked by the culture in which they live in. If you've ever been on the platform tiktok, you might not want to go there, but it's shocking the pressures that children feel as they live in this atmosphere of social media just dragging you down. I mean, kids who are purposely, it's fun to play shocking music full of profanity and vulgarity, just to see how their parents are going to react, so they can get a few likes, just so they can get a little bit of attention, just break the rule and videotape yourself, just so people can laugh at what you're doing. “According to the course of this world.”
Also in verse 2, “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is who now works in the sons of disobedience.” See, it's not just that the world is against you, Christian, but Satan himself, the prince of the power of the air, is against your holiness. Have you ever wondered why it's so easy to get distracted in the morning and not read your Bible? All the forces of hell are against you. Have you ever wondered why you can get out to work on time, but on Sunday mornings, when you have kids, it seems like little demons have gotten into them and they just won't get their pants on and get out the door? Because Satan does not want you here. Do you get it? Do you see it? I'm not making this up! Look with me at first two, “according to the prince of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.” See, there are spiritual forces who are against your love for God. Satan seeks to devour you. He's there like a roaring lion just waiting for you to become complacent and rely on yourself. Oh, sin is crouching at your door. Satan is ready for you, and he's wanting to devour you, Christian. You once walked that way according to the prince of the power of the air, but it's worse than that.
It's worse than that. It's not just that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, because of stuff out there, but look with me at verse 3. “Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just like the others.” It would be really if we could point blame. Right? Isn't that exactly what Adam did right away? The woman You gave me God, the woman You gave me God it is your fault. It's her fault. It's not my fault. God, I just ate it because other people led me… No, no, no, no. Adam, you followed the desires of your heart. You were able not to sin and yet you did. We follow the carnality of our own hearts. And when it says the lusts of the flesh, this is not just talking about sensuality, yes, it is talking about sexual sins, it is talking about those things, but even just the word here, there's a whole school of philosophy, the epicureans who just want the desires of the flesh; just wanting to satisfy yourself. We can satisfy ourselves our fleshly desires all sorts of ways. If you're like me and you have to struggle with gluttony and telling yourself, “No, body, you don't actually need that,” you know what it's like to struggle against this. There are some who the natural carnality of their flesh is, “I just want to bite their head off. I just want to yell at them. I just want to let them know how I feel. Because it feels good.” There some who just want to tear other people down with their words because I just want to get a reaction out of them. I just want to push the big red button. I just want to see someone get upset.
It's more than just the sexual desires which are the carnality of our flesh that we follow, but it's a heart issue. Deep down we got a heart issue. We’re in a deplorable state. We’re in a corrupt state. We are in a destitute state without God and without righteousness. We are objects of wrath just as the others. This is all humanity. Every one of us. Paul is saying, “I was this way.” The apostle Paul is saying, “Even when I was a Jew, I lived this way, following whatever I wanted to do.” Anything apart from Christ is just following the carnality of the flesh.
Thank God the passage doesn't end there. One of the most beautiful words in the entire Bible is the transition between verse 3 and verse 4, “but God.” “But God who is rich in mercy because of His great love which He loved us.” God has loved you, even while you were dead in your transgressions and sins, He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for you. There's a truth here that we need to cling on to, okay? Why does God save you? Why does God save any of us? Look what verse 4 says. We know it’s not anything in us, that was verses one through three. If there was anything we contributed to our salvation, it was the bad side. It was the death. But here God contributes everything from who He is. Verse 4, “but God, who is,” and then we learn of attributes about God, what is God like? Who is God? God is rich in mercy. God is rich in mercy. What else is God like? “But God, because of His great love which He loved us;” God is great in His love. He is abounding in His loving kindness. God is merciful to you. God is gracious to you. God is loving towards you.
Why else did God save us? Look with me at verse seven. “That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace.” God is gracious to you. Why has God saved you? Because He's a merciful God. Because He's a loving God. Because He wants to display the riches of his grace. And lastly, why does God save us? Because He wants to display the “riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Do you see what the focus is of the passage here? I want you to think back. We've been in Ephesians now for a few weeks now. And I want you to think about who the focus has been since Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3. Who has the focus been on? It's been about God. It's been about praising God for Him calling us. It's been about praising God for Him redeeming us. It's been about praising God for sealing us and giving us the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. It's been about taking hope in His calling. It's been about treasuring His inheritance and it's been about displaying His power. And here we saw His power in raising Jesus, and here we see His power in saving you. This text is not about us ultimately, but it's about what God is doing. Do you see it? Maybe you missed it. Maybe I'm just blowing this up. I don't think so. But this is about what God is doing to redeem people, to display the riches of His grace. Do you see how beautiful it is that a sovereign God has done everything necessary for your salvation, that you might know Him because He loves you. He's displayed His power in saving you from death unto life. And that's exactly what verses 5 and 6 tell us. Look with me there. “Even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
One of your notes there in your outline is “I have been raised together with Christ Jesus.” How do you know you're saved, Christian? How do you know that you are saved? We often want to look inwardly. We often want to do introspection, we want to see, are there fruits in our lives? Are we doing the right things? But here it's telling us, “hold on. Before you go there, go to the resurrection.” Before you go looking at your inward fruits, make sure you're looking to the power that God has displayed in Christ, because it is in the resurrection, it is in God's power for raising up His Son from the dead, He did that with an eye towards raising you from the dead. Do you see the parallel? Do you see how these run on the same tracks? God rose Jesus up from the dead, displaying His exceedingly great power, and He has displayed that same power in raising you from your spiritual death.
And where is Christ? Where is Christ? We looked at this last week. He ascended into heaven and there in the heavens He sat down at the right hand of God the Father and He was given a name which is above every other name. He is high above all dominions and powers and authorities and rulers and principalities. But notice where you are. Look at verse 6, “and He raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” If Jesus's resurrection is historical truth, then your spiritual resurrection is historically true now. So let me ask you, is God merciful? I hope you're nodding your head. Is God merciful? Yes. Is God exceedingly gracious? Yes. Is God displaying the riches of His grace in saving people? Yes. Is Jesus truly raised from the dead? Yes. Then I have assurance of faith, because if Jesus is raised from the dead and if these things are true of God, then what it's telling me about myself here is true, that I have been saved. That you have been saved through grace.
Again, this is exactly what verses 5, 8, and 9, tell us. “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),” and then verse 8, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of words, lest anyone should boast.” Who is the only person who gets to boast in salvation? God. Thank you. Somebody mouthed the answer. Who is the only person who gets to boast in salvation? God. It is God alone who gets to boast in salvation, do you see it? You couldn't raise yourself up from the dead. You can't raise anybody else up from the dead. Please, I beg you, if you want to prove me wrong, after church, we’ll go outside we’ll open the doors we’ll go here into the graveyard and you can say whatever you want to say and I’ll wait. I'll bring my lunch with me and I'll just wait for you to raise someone from the dead. No, that is God's prerogative. That is God's doing. That is to His glory. That is to His works.
See, we are created in Christ Jesus for His glory. You were saved by grace. There's no boasting ourselves. We can't sit here and go, “Oh, hold on, but I believed. But I made a decision.” You’ve missed the point here. Hold on. The entire focus of this passage has been on who God is and what He has done. I often find myself in a hard spot because some of you know what's like to walk that path of willful disobedience. And sometimes people invite me and they'll say, “Hey can you tell me your testimony? Can you tell this group how you became a Christian? And in one sense, I'm overjoyed because I get to tell people about the work of God through Christ in my own life. But at the other sense, I worry. I worry about my children and I worry about other children who are in the congregation because I don't want them to think that somehow they have to go and live a life of lasciviousness, of drunkenness, of sexual immorality, of perversity to somehow be able to say, “Oh, I have a testimony.”
Brothers and sisters, our testimony is in Jesus Christ. If you are one of those, and I pray that my children will be one someday, that they will not say, “Oh, I wish I had a testimony,” but that they will be able to say, “You want to know my testimony? Jesus Christ came in the flesh and He died for me.” The second person of the God-head, enrobed Himself and humbled Himself in human flesh that He might go and die upon a cross. And He rose again from the dead. And He sits at the right hand of God. You want to know my testimony? Let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you about what He has done. I was by nature a child of wrath but He brought my parents to me. He brought me Sunday school teachers that told me about His cross. And they told me about the depth of His blood and the riches of His grace. Brothers and sisters, we are not those who send our children into the world that they might go and have a worldly testimony. We want our children to know Jesus Christ now.
Yes sir, some of us who God has brought along that broken road, I guarantee if you talk to any of us, will say it's full of pain and scars and hurt and sorrow and we wish we had bowed the knee to Jesus Christ far sooner. You were dead enough, because you're a human. You were dead enough because you are a son of Adam, a daughter of Adam. You don't need to go and throw yourselves into the pollution of the world to try to come out clean. No, you throw yourself at the blood of Christ. Children, please, please, run to Christ. Don't look back to someday when you are brought out of a life of sin. Now some of you, that's your case. That was your own choice. You dug that pit, and you made that bed, and you got to sleep in it. The scars are there.
But people accepting Jesus is not the gospel of Ephesians. It is the God of the universe saving people by grace. I don't want to talk too hard, but there is a critique that we desperately need in our culture. My heart was broken as I was just reading another biography of a seal who died. And as he was writing his memoir, his autobiography, before he died, the man just lived a life totally apart from Christ. And in the very last chapter of his book, he says, “But I accepted Jesus when I was a little kid, so I know that I'm saved.” And he was looking back to a decision that he had made when he was 6 years old, but lived his entire life as a practical atheist. Never soaking in the mercy of God, never fully living out his grace. See, when God raised us up in Christ, there's a reality that happened, just like that Jesus Christ is literally sitting at the right hand of God the Father now, there's a reality that you are no longer under the prince of the power of the air.
Let me flesh that out just a little bit here, okay? Jesus Christ is your King. He sits on His throne in heaven. You were once children of disobedience. You once served the prince of the power of the air, but what has happened in salvation? He has moved you from the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of light and Satan has no authority over you. Satan does not have any authority over you, Christian. This culture, this world, does not have any authority over you. You do not any longer have to live your life following the carnal desires of your flesh, because God is renewing your mind. He is renewing your will. He is giving you new desires. This is what Jesus Christ does. You have a King who is conforming you more and more into His image. Please, grasp this. The Christian life must not be lived in verses 1 through 3, but we live the Christian life in light of verses 4 through 10. Our faith is not just about beating ourselves up spiritually, because we were once sinners. But it's about taking glory in God who has loved you, and has saved you by grace. This is what He's done.
And because He's done that, now you do good works. Please, get the order right. Let's think about this for a second. Verse 8, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Verse 8 comes after verse 6. I know that’s a profound point, right? Verse 8 comes after verse 6. I know, everybody’s like, “Whoa! What do you mean?! Wow!” No! Look at verse 6 comes first. “He has raised us together in Christ Jesus,” then we find verse 8, “by grace you have been saved through faith.” Do you see? God raised you up from the dead, that's why you have faith. And this comes first. The order is very important. We are raised up with Christ. He saved us by grace. We have faith.
Now what do we do in light of that grace? Verse 10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” What a snub to the devil that is! You want to know why the world mocks Christians? Because they think we actually believe this.
Just last night, I was reading a post on Facebook. The man's a murderer. Calls himself a murderer. When he was a boy, he murdered. He was an accomplice in murdering another boy. They bludgeoned the other boy to death. And even though he wasn't the only one doing it, he partook. And for that, he spent years upon years upon years in jail as a murderer. And while he was in that prison cell, for years upon years upon years, somebody gave him a Bible. And as this man read those words, these words today, he realized that he was an object of wrath, just like the rest. And he was saved. He cried out to God and he trusted that Jesus Christ would be his righteousness. He was actually saved. Now let me tell you what his life is like now. He'll tell you, “I'm a murderer. I deserved death. If I lived in the Old Testament, they would have stoned me. And yet, for some reason, God redeemed me. And now I'm alive. What am I supposed to do with my life now as it's hidden in Christ?” You ready for this? He stands outside an abortion mill every single day, pleading that the murders would stop there. And you know what people tell him every single day? You deserve death. You know what he says? “You're right. I do. But by grace I have been saved. And now there's good work for me to do.”
Brothers and sisters, by grace you have been saved. He has raised you up with Christ. He's loving towards you. He is gracious towards you. He's merciful towards you. He is kind towards you. Soak that in and live your life in the reality of that grace, and let your heart and your feet overflow and do the work that comes from it.
Let's pray. “God, we thank you for Your Word. We thank you for Your Spirit. We thank you, Father. Lord, we don't deserve this grace, this unmerited favor that You've poured out upon us. Thank you. Father, please, well up in our hearts thankfulness. In Jesus’s name, amen.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website: Sharonrpc.org. We’d love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa 52640. May God richly bless you this week.