Back in the fall of 2011, shortly before I accepted a call to become your pastor, I went on a trip to Haiti, to a remote portion of the island outside of Gauthier City near the Dominican border. I, along with several other pastors, went with a newly formed mission organization and was going as a representative from the church where I worked at the time. The purpose for my going was to determine whether or not Grace Chapel EPC wanted to partner with But God Ministries in their mission. But God Ministries was started by a man named Stan Buckley while he was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Jackson, MS, one of the largest churches in the U.S., and it was something that he felt so passionate about that he actually left pastoral ministry so that he could devote himself fully to this ministry. Their vision was simple, to go into this place that was largely dominated by a mixture of voodoo and semi-Catholicism (sound familiar?) and plant not just a church, but an entire Christian community with Christ as the cornerstone. They were going to work their way outward from a water well and move onto medical facilities, housing, and a worship center. In other words, despite everything else telling them that what they were doing was foolish, bordering on impossible, they were going to do it, and believed that they could do it. Why did they believe so adamantly about this? Why did they know that despite everything telling them otherwise that their plan would work? This verse right here in the middle of our passage today, “But God…” Yes things were bad; yes they were awful; and yes there was a seemingly certain chance of failure, but God.
Paul, in our text for today, starts off by telling these Christians in Ephesus of where they stand on their own merit, and it isn’t a good place. He says that they “were dead in trespasses and sins” and were once “children of wrath.” Now, one of the things that I find so astounding about this passage comes from adding the previous chapter to this. Paul has laid out in chapter 1, basically God’s plan of redemption. He’s talked about Jesus and the work of the Trinity and then he went on to talk about the work that ought to be done through the Church after the time of Christ. Now, he’s talking like there’s no hope for us. He’s talking like no matter how much we are a part of the body of Christ, it isn’t going to do any good. At least that’s the sense that we get from those first three verses. Then, there are those sweet words of verses 4-6. “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 up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ.”
Did you notice the phrase “dead in our trespasses and sins” being in there both before and after this turning point in verse 4? In other words, even though we are exactly as broken and undeserving as Paul described us as being in the first three verses of this chapter, God still carries out His saving and redeeming work in us; “by grace you have been saved.” Notice that that statement is in there twice as well. Yes, you’re sinners. Yes, you’re broken. Yes, you’re fallen. Yes, you’re disobedient. Yes, you follow your own desires over the Lord’s. Yes, you’re constantly straying from the Father’s will for you, but God. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said of these two words that “These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole of the gospel.” Lloyd-Jones is exactly right. The gospel is all about our coming to know and understand just how errant we are, how broken we are. It’s about knowing that we don’t measure up to the standard that God has set for us. However, despite the absolute truth of that fact, God still sent His Son into the world to pay the price that was owed for our sins. God still sends His Holy Spirit into the world to be the power of God working in us, to us, and through us.
You know, it’s not like the text says, but God forgave everything in Jesus. I mean, it would be great if that was all that Paul wrote, but it’s not. Instead, we find something so much more joyous than we could imagine: “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” So let me get this straight; not only is God not going to punish us and exercise His wrath towards us (which He is perfectly within His rights to do), but He is also going to show us such riches and grace that the only way that we can quantify them is to call them immeasurable. Surely there’s some catch here. Surely there’s something that we must give up or do in order to be shown these immeasurable riches of His grace. You know what they say about a deal that sounds too good to be true…it usually is. “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that all of this, all of these wonderful blessings that God has promised to, and indeed will, bestow upon us are granted to us because we have faith in Him? “And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Ok, now things are starting to seem just too good to be true. I mean, rationally thinking, there’s no way that we could be the recipients of something that we so clearly do not deserve… “But God.”
I want to remind of a few things here. First, faith is much more than acknowledgment. We covered that pretty in-depth when we studied the epistle of James. Faith is not just admitting or acknowledging the existence of God, but instead it is knowing that God is real and trusting in Him. To borrow a phrase that we used last week, it’s heart-knowledge and not just head-knowledge. Secondly, even when we get that assurance that we have faith, even when we know beyond and shadow of a doubt that we believe wholeheartedly in Christ and rest upon Him for our salvation, we have absolutely nothing to brag about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about celebrating. Being found in Christ gives us every reason to celebrate. I’m talking about boasting or bragging as if we’ve done anything ourselves. If you recall, back in the opening part of this epistle, Paul wrote that one Greek sentence that talked about the work of the Trinity in terms of our salvation: chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. We don’t find our names anywhere in there except for being the ones who everything is done to. It’s not as if we really contribute anything to our salvation.
I’m kind of a particular person. I have certain things that just jump out to me in certain ways and I really don’t know why. Now, my wife has finally after some time gotten through to me and helped me to see that I don’t have to point out every little thing that I notice. For example, I’ve often found it puzzling why after a surgery the doctor or surgeon comes in and tells the patient that they did great during the procedure. Did they? Well, what exactly was their role in the operation? I mean, can you really count being laid out and knocked out by gas as doing something? After all, they have people now whose sole job it is to monitor your vital signs throughout the surgery. In essence, when you don’t even do the one thing that you’re supposed to do, they have someone to do it for you. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of anyone making it through a procedure and bragging about how well they did during the operation. However, I know a lot people who like to brag about their standing with the Lord even though, as Paul wrote here, they really don’t have anything to do with it. Again, I’m not talking about celebrating. Celebrate all you want because it’s something worth celebrating. I’m talking about boasting about what you did to give yourself that standing with the Lord. God gives each one of us our position with Him, “it is a gift from God, not a result of works.”
You see, this is the application of Ephesians 1:3-14. Chapter 1, as I mentioned earlier, is the revealing of God’s plan of salvation through Christ and carried out by the Holy Spirit through the instrument known as the Church. Chapter 2 is the position that the Christian has in that plan. It’s not our plan for our lives; it’s God’s perfect and righteous and holy plan for our lives. God is the one who is the architect of the plan. God is the one who executes that plan in Jesus Christ. And God is the one who applies the benefits of the execution of that plan to our hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul is writing to the Ephesians and telling them of the work of Christ that is to be done to them and in them. He’s telling them that they “who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, [Jesus] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present [them] holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (Col. 1:21-22).
You see, these 10 verses that we have for us in our text for today are basically a summation of much of what we looked at during the first part of our look at James’ epistle. It’s great that we’re found in Christ and that we have a relationship with God. It’s great that despite our faults and our failures that we are still able to enjoy such wonderful blessings. However, don’t think for one second that it is because of your own doing that you have that relationship. Yes, you make the decision every day to follow Christ, but it is because God has put that burden upon your heart. As we’ve already said, if we completely fell during the fall so that nothing good exists in us naturally, then how could we come to saving faith without God first planting that seed of faith within us. It is by grace that God grants to us that faith. It is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone that we are saved. How do we come to know about Christ? We come to know him through the Church. Remember that this entire epistle is centered around the Church and the one on whom the Church is founded and built. Christ must be at the epicenter of all that the Church does and is.
I’ve been giving this text a lot of thought this week and it’s been a bit strange. I mean, just think about the last couple of weeks. We’ve had websites hacked that exposed countless marital affairs, news crews shot on air, potential school shootings, police officers shot, and even today we remember Hurricane Katrina. I mean, that’s a lot of bad stuff. However, in the midst of that Amy and I have been able to celebrate the birth of our niece, spend time with our kids, and wake up each morning and praise God. In other words, yes there’s a lot of bad stuff out there, yes there’s evil in the world, and yes sometimes it seems like we’re almost fighting a losing battle being Christians who are trying to raise and make Christian disciples, but God. Because God is who He says He is, we know without a shadow of a doubt that not one promise that He makes will fail. We know that He will see us through any storm, any season, and problem that may arise. It may not be pretty, and it may not be without some discomfort and hardship, but He will see us through it. And that’s the hope that we all must have. Despite who we are and what we actually deserve, God gives us so much more.
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