Your Real Spiritual Biography

YOUR REAL SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHY
The Master’s Plan • Ephesians 2:1-10 (p. 917) • Redeemer’s • 5/11&12/19
Intro: I have a confession. Sometimes I get nervous when I hear Christians speak of being saved or having salvation. Don’t get me wrong: I think we need to be saved. I like the word. But I don’t think most people have the right idea. Christians often think of it simply as being forgiven—and that’s barely the beginning. And non-Christians normally interpret “save” to mean preserve or collect—like saving leftovers for later, or saving bottles for the dime deposit. Sometimes we use it in its rawest meaning of to rescue or deliver, as a doctor saves a patient having a heart-attack, or a firefighter saves a home from being burnt down. But when the normal person outside of the church thinks of saved in the religious sense, they wrongly picture emotionalism, or unthinking televangelists buttonholing their audience with the Q, Are ya saved?
•I’d like to try to restore the word today, because it describes perfectly what has happened to us as believers in Christ. (But you might object: “uh, rescued doesn’t really describe my spiritual story…”)
•If you were to ask how Barb and I feel in love, how we met and eventually married, you probably would hear two different versions of the story. Apparently I am under the mistaken notion that I sought and courted her; but she insists that long before I knew she existed, she went after me. Same thing with believers: Ask many of us how we became Christians, and you’ll likely hear a story that doesn’t sound anything like how God tells it in the passage we’re going to look at today: We’d say something like, initially we heard or read about Jesus, or knew someone whom we respected as a Christian—a friend or co-worker or mom or dad; we grew to understand what God had done for us and at some point, began to believe it. He loved us, and offered forgiveness to us, so whether motivated by a desire to know God, or to settle the issue of our guilt, or because we wanted what our friends or family had, or simply because we thought it the right thing to do, we decided to believe in Jesus and accept His forgiveness. But whatever the motivation, we decided. We did it. It was our choice. We could have decided to reject Him and His offer, but we thought better of it. It was all pretty much up to us. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. But it hardly sounds like a rescue—which what being saved really means. And when God tells your story, your real spiritual biography, from His viewpoint, it sounds very different. Something very different happened: it wasn’t a pretty picture of a person thoughtfully and independently and objectively weighing factors and then giving some reasonable assent to Christ; instead, the picture was initially shocking and repulsive, and a miracle occurred to change everything. NB when God tells the story, there is Then (vss. 1-3) and a Now (vss. 4-10):
I. [THEN: THE BREATHING DEAD] (vss. 1-3) This describes our past condition. NB were…once walked…once lived…were… The divine diagnosis could be summarized in 3 statements:
A. You were dead!” (vs. 1): It’s figurative, but pregnant with meaning! When God described our condition as dead, it implies you were:
1) Unable to help yourself. Spiritually speaking, how badly off were we? Picture salvation as a person falling off a cliff. What do we need from God? Some think a person just needs God’s motivation and encouragement to climb back up (“You can do it!”). Others think that in the fall, we were hurt, and so now we need God’s help back up. God must assist us as we make our way back up the cliff. But God says when we fell, we broke our neck and died. We’re lifeless. Lying at the bottom of the cliff, we can’t do anything, because we’re dead.
2) Unresponsive. Ever have a good conversation with a corpse? They don’t talk much, do they? One of the signs of death is the inability to respond to stimuli. They don’t respond to light (pupils are fixed), or to sounds (a clap), or to pain (prick a toe); they don’t react at all. Completely unresponsive to God. Spiritual zombies. Alive but dead. One of the first funerals I did as a young pastor was for Dwayne, a 21 year old drug dealer who had been murdered. At the funeral, his girlfriend overcome with grief approached the casket, stood frozen, reached out to touch him, caressed him, and when he didn’t respond, began to cry, and loudly call to him, and grip him, and shake him, until she attempted to crawl into the casket with him. But no amount of love, or concern, or touching or prodding can make a dead person respond. And you were that dead person.
3) Separated: When someone dies, they’re gone. The body may be lying before you, but you’re separated from the person who once inhabited that body. So spiritual death means a person separated from God. In fact, the Bible tells us that if a person remains in that dead condition and dies physically, they stay separated from God forever. [Is 59:1-2/x]
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that He does not hear.”
•So what killed us? trespasses and sins. trespasses are those things we do knowingly; we know where the boundary is, where the line has been drawn, where the forbidden field is, and we cross over anyway, intentionally. But sins refer to our passive failures—a failure to measure up, to meet God’s standards. We do things God told us not to do, and we have failed to do what He has instructed us to do. Together, these two terms represent the whole range of human evil. [John Stott: Before God we are both rebels and failures.”] The poison that killed us spiritually was our rebellion against God, our disobedience to God. And our condition was complicated by this:
[B. You were enslaved!] (vss. 2-3a) NB three controlling influences:
1) The World: (vs. 2a): We drifted along the stream of this world’s ideas and values (like a current in the river: do nothing and the flow will take you to where you might not wish to go.) It involves peer pressure, and the no-so-subtle temptation to do and think along the same lines as everyone else. Be a part of the “in” crowd. I speak up about evolution because there is real pressure not to criticize the theory or investigate alternatives. “We are accidents, there is no unseen God in the universe, and that’s that. That’ scientific.” Or the world tells us no one has any right to judge our sexual preferences, or our gender, or whether one religion is better than any other. They’re all right and nothing is wrong. Unless of course you think one is wrong, and then you’re wrong. But behind the world is a personality controlling it, giving it direction and leadership. To this tyrant we once were enslaved:
2) The Devil: (vs. 3b-3a) He’s a created but fallen angelic being, elsewhere known as Satan (adversary), or the devil (accuser or slanderer), the one who opposes God. And his kingdom is that of the air—not the atmosphere (as opposed to land/earth), but rather the sphere under heaven. EG you have Heaven (the place of God), Earth (the home of men), and the air (the realm of unseen spiritual beings, usually evil). So he operates in the unseen dimension of life. And he does as he wills; and he intends to work in/influence people disconnected from God, prompting them to disobey and rebel against God. So if that weren’t bad enough to feel the squeeze from outward influences, inwardly we were self-destructive, and trapped by our own nature and desires:
3) The Flesh: (vs. 3b) There’s nothing wrong with bodily desires for food, and drink and sex and sleep; but when they become paramount in our lives, they tend to take over, so we become enslaved to our physical appetites—obese, and alcoholic, and lustful, and slothful. And flesh doesn’t just mean bodily; [Gal. 5:19-21] flesh refers to living on a single plane—just life lived apart from God. There’s attitudes of the mind that can enslave us too: the desire to always be right, pride, ambition, comparisons, anger, revenge, self-consuming self-centeredness. No matter how it appeared from the outside, inside us the spiritual connection with God was dead. And we were enslaved. Because of that:
C. You were condemned! (vs. 3b) NB by nature: i.e. we naturally did wrong things. You don’t have to be told to do them, don’t have to be instructed or trained in Evil 101, or Advanced Selfishness; How to be critical and judgmental.” Don’t have to instruct kids how to throw a tantrum. (Without much trying, we’d all get A’s.) We naturally do things that arouse God’s anger. It’s part of being part of the fallen human race. Result?
•children of wrath: It doesn’t mean God hates little kids. It’s a figure of speech meaning worthy of wrath; i.e. if we got what we deserved, we get objects of God’s judgment. And His wrath is not his losing his temper and flying off the handle. It’s never arbitrary, but it is His determined response to human evil and rebellion. [Stott: “It is God’s personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil; his settled refusal to compromise with it; and his resolve instead to condemn it.”]
•Summary: It’s a bleak picture. God regards all who are not following Christ as being spiritually dead, morally enslaved and divinely condemned. This is God’s diagnosis of every person without Jesus. Even a nice guy who is religious, and is a faithful spouse and loving parent still needs someone to rescue him from his condition as much as a serial killer or child molester does. The popular notion today is that everyone is a child of God, though some are sinners, and some are saints: [graphic]. But the Bible only makes two distinctions: [dead/alive/x] If you haven’t pass into the upper circle, by default you’re in the lower. No exceptions. How can we read such words without our hearts being gripped with new concern for those who don’t know Jesus? They’re spiritually dead. Enslaved. Condemned. With such a condition, it would take nothing short of a miracle of God to rescue people from such a living death! Exactly!
II. [NOW: LIVING MASTERPIECES (2:4-10) One of the most beautiful and relieving words in the entire passage is this: BUT… What we’ve read isn’t the whole story. BUT:
[A. Who initiated this?] (vs. 4a) [God did] He intervened for us! Your story is a story about God!
[B. What motivated Him? (vs. 4b) [great love] That’s pretty amazing considering what we were like. We were exactly the opposite of what God wanted. No corpse is attractive. Yet God not only felt pity for us, but he had surpassing love for us! And if he loved us when we were corpses, how much more does He now love us since we are living? And if His love didn’t depend upon our performance then, how could it now?
[C. What exactly did He do?] People who don’t understand the problem ought not to prescribe the prescription: like a band-aid for an aneurism, or an aspirin for cancer, or a tourniquet for a sore throat. People who don’t understand what our condition prescribe more rules or laws or legislation, harsher punishment, no punishment, universal education, mandated tolerance, less expectations, working together, doint your own thing, trying harder, sincerity, church attendance. But NB what God did: (vss. 5-6)
[1. For the dead: “…made us alive”] Not only a new start, but a new life. We are spiritually reborn!
[2. For the enslaved: “…raised us up”] He freed you, and empowered you with the Holy Spirit.
[3. For the condemned: “…seated us with Him”] Instead of being under judgment and an outcast, you take our place next to Jesus in the seat reserved for you, and a place of acceptance.
•So salvation is far more than being forgiven. It is being made alive, it is being delivered from evil’s power and control; it is being rescued from deserved wrath. Now can you understand why in the midst of describing what God has done for us, Paul had to keep emphasizing that we are rescued by grace? Grace means getting what we don’t deserve and couldn’t earn. We didn’t initiate it; we were dead. We contributed nothing, except our sin and guilt. We didn’t deserve it—what we deserved was to be judged.
[D. What purpose did He have? (vs. 7)] [to display His glorious grace] (cf. 1:6) kindness is love in tender action. So today you are demonstration, a picture of his amazing grace. In the near and distant future, when He wants to illustrate His love and mercy, and His gracious nature of being the God who gives what isn’t deserved, he’ll point to you and me.
[E. How did He pull it off?] (vss. 8-9) BTW—these are our memory verses for this series. …this is not your own doing. What’s this? Refers to the entire rescue/salvation!
[1. The Necessity of Grace: it’s why we can be saved] If we were to be rescued or saved, it had to be by grace. We can better understand grace by pointing out what can’t coexist with grace. [Robert Farrar Capon: “Grace cannot prevail…until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has runout of steam and collapsed.”] EG:
•Fear: When we understand grace, that God forgives completely in X without strings attached, we are no longer worried. It’s done, taken care of. It was freely given.
•Debt: in terms of a payoff or payback—grace means gift or freely, not “bargain” or “payment plan.” You couldn’t pay it back if you tried. It’s one thing to respond with such gratitude that you forever are changed by the gift; it’s another to try to work off the debt—something that would wound His heart.
•Pride (of human accomplishment): How can we be proud of what we didn’t do? Christians who boast or think of themselves as better than others either don’t understand what they were then, what they are now, or how they got there. Grace.
[2. The Importance of Faith: it’s how we receive salvation] through faith: Faith isn’t something we pat ourselves on the back for having. It’s nothing more than a response, entrusting yourself to the truth. It is a means by which we receive and experience salvation. What satisfies your thirst—the drink or the straw through which you sip the drink? Faith is important, but it doesn’t earn anything; it receives what God offers.
[3. The Place of Works:] (vss. 9-10) [not the basis, but the outcome of salvation] NB we once walked taking our cue from the world (vs. 2), but now we walk looking for and fulfilling the divine opportunities that God before has prepared for us! In fact, workmanship is a word to describe a work of art, craftsmanship, even a masterpiece. One of the evidences of our salvation is our changed life! We do things that serve Him and others not to earn His favor, or try to be saved or stay saved; we live out love and gratitude for all He has done for us in saving us and including us and using us.
Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound—that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost…but now am found…was blind…but now, but now, but now…I see. Do you see?