4. A Good Walk

Ephesians 2:1–10 (ESV)

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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 at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Introduction

[Walking around the room]

Walking is really good for you. Many afternoons, in good weather, you can find me taking a break and walking around the neighborhood here to clear my head and get rejuvenated for the rest of the day. If it is really cold then sometimes I will just walk here in the building much like I am right now, but I like to get outside if I can because I like the fresh air.

And there are many great reasons to walk. It can strengthen your heart, legs and your bones. It can lower your blood pressure, ease your stress and help you sleep better at night. There is just something about how God designed us that benefits from the steady pace of a good walk. It is both head and heart healthy.

Tension

The New Testament talks about walking quite a bit. Half of the time it is talking about what you see me doing right now. Putting one foot in front of the other with a steady pace to get from one place to another. But the other half of the time it is referring to something else. Not walking like the physical exercise, but walking in the sense of how we are doing our daily life.

It is the same word in the Greek, περιπατέω (paripateo) but some Bible translations like the NIV see the context and choose to use the word “living” instead of “walking” like we have it here in the ESV. Either way the principle is the same, to walk in a certain way is to behave or live in that certain way.

This is why many of us, myself included, sometimes challenge our brothers and sisters in Christ with questions like, “How is your Christian walk going?” We are not asking about their physical health, we are asking if they are still walking in step with Jesus or are they following after something else.

The reason that I bring this up is that our text that Trevor read for us this morning begins and ends with a reference to how we are “walking”. It begins with a scathing description of how we were walking, But God then did something, He gloriously intervened so that now we can walk in an entirely different way.

So if you haven’t already, open up to Ephesians chapter 2. It is on page 966 in the Bibles in the chairs. I’ll pray and we will dive into these things together.

Truth

The first thing that we see in the first half of chapter 2 is that..

We were all walking dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1-3)

I know that using the words “Walking Dead” makes many of you think of Zombies, and there is something to that in that in principle as we were all physically walking but we were dead on the inside…but...however I don’t think that Zombies were exactly what Paul had in mind when he wrote this letter to the Ephesians. Still he says:

Ephesians 2:1–2a (ESV)

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,...

So not physically dead, in the 6 feet under kind of way, because you are still walking around, but spiritually dead because you were walking around unaware of the fact that you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

The you is plural here so Paul is not talking to any “you” individually, but all of us collectively. So it would be plural as in “You’s” or “Y’all”. The big idea is that Paul is saying that at one point, everyone of them - and so everyone of us - was walking “dead in our trespasses and sins”.

And that plural idea continues in the fact that he uses two words to describe our condition. Because both of these words, trespasses and sins, basically mean “doing bad stuff” so why not just use one or the other? Why use both?

Well this is introducing a theme that we will will get much deeper into next week, but Paul uses both these words because he was talking to a Church that was made up of two groups of people, the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians and each of these words applied more directly to one of these groups. So lets take a look at them.

We know that to Trespass is to cross a line. Right? You can drive in any direction from where we sit right now and you probably won’t find a beautiful plot of trees without finding a little sign posted there saying, “No Trespassing”. And what does that sign tell you? That you have no right to cross over this line and if you do that is Trespassing and it is punishable by law.

Now lets move from the Woods of Wisconsin back to the Church in Ephesus. The Christians there of Jewish descent had access to God’s written law for generations. Like one of those “No Trespassing” signs, they knew where the line was.

But at the end of the day, that knowledge is only helpful if you are the kind of person who prefers to obey the law. And what we know from the history of the Jewish people is even though they had the law, they were not those kind of people. They bent the law, twisted it’s meaning, tried to manipulate it or made sure that they did the bare minimum so that they looked “right” in the eyes of other people never considering the fact that God knew what their hearts preferred all along. In essence, they walked right by their warning sign and so they were trespassers.

But lets say you were hiking in a state forest and you saw a small trail that looked inviting and so you just took it not know where it went and you got lost and ended up on someone’s private property and there was no signage to tell you that?

Would you still be trespassing? Sure, because you have still crossed a line that you had no right to cross...but you just had no way of knowing that the line was even there.

That was the position of the Gentiles, like the Gentile Christians in the Church. They didn’t have God’s written law, they didn’t have the warning signs to tell them not to go over the line but the line was still there. So the Jews just saw all the Gentiles as “sinners” because how could they even obey God’s written law. They didn’t even know it existed. In his letter to the Church in Galatia Paul said:

Galatians 2:15 (ESV) 15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners;

And we might think, that isn’t fair. The Gentiles didn’t have access to God’s written law, but we have to remember it isn’t having the law that matters, it was being the kind of person who prefers to obey God’s law. And since God knows our hearts, that we are spiritually dead, He knows that with or without the law, we are not that kind of people.

So with both “trespasses and sins” Paul puts them all in the same sinking ship, and then he shows them what it was that shooting all the holes in their boat.

Ephesians 2:2b-3 (ESV)

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins2 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 at work in the sons of disobedience—

3 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.

Three elements in our world all work together to shoot holes in all our life boat. Three prison guards who hold us captive in our dead life, working together to keep us from even realize that we are walking dead.

It is only after God intervenes that we start to see that without Him...

We prefer to follow the course of this world

We prefer to follow the deception of the Devil

We prefer to follow the desires of our flesh

And I use that word “prefer” very intentionally because many of us don’t think that we are all that bad because we live a life where their is cultural and social pressure to “walk” in a certain way. There is still something of a “Judeo-Christian” ethic in our daily lives that rewards certain behavior and not others.

Many of you know that Rachel and I met at Rawhide Boys Ranch here in Wisconsin. It is a Christian boys ranch for at risk teenagers who were typically court ordered to the program. They have a better success rate than most other programs in their field, but one of the things that we noticed was that even the most successful teen in the program could be completely destroyed in one home visit.

It happened over and over again and it just blew our minds. Because while they were there at the Ranch, all the cultural and social pressures, even the system of rewards and consequences were aimed according to a “Judeo-Christian” ethic of right and wrong.

So you were rewarded when you did what God said was right and you were punished when you did what God said was wrong…but when they went home on a home visit, their friends, the neighborhood, even many of their own families pushed them back into the drugs and gang activity.

It did not take us long to conclude that the only real hope that these young men had was to be radically changed by the power of the Gospel, from the inside. Outside of that our efforts toward “behavior modification” seemed to just come up short at best and at worse it deepened their reliance on adaptability to their environment. So when their environment changed, then so did their behavior.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of us are still operating in a “behavior modification” like this. Whether we were or maybe are right now being brought up in “Christian home” where the expectation all go in one direction.

You see God doesn’t just look at how we are walking on the outside. We could be doing the “right” thing and still be walking dead. What would you prefer to do if there were no family, cultural or social pressures to do follow God’s ways? Or maybe a better question would be, would you chose God’s ways if everything in your life pushed against them?

When we find the courage to dive deep into those disturbing questions then we can relate with the Apostle Paul when he expresses in Romans:

Romans 7:24 (ESV) 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thankfully that is where Paul brings us next. We were all walking dead in our trespasses and sins...

But God made us alive together with Christ (Eph 2:4-7)

This is the thrust of Paul’s message. He only takes us into the darkness of our “walking dead” in order to bring us brighter into the glorious intervention of God into our desperate condition.

In fact, if you are one of those who still prefer the King James Version, it appears that those translators just couldn’t take the tension because they chose to move some of verse 5 up into verse 1 to provide some level of relief at the outset of such a dismal reality for us.

But in the original Greek, Paul held back on the good news till now. Let’s take another look at this beautiful news together...

Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV)

4 But God,…there is no more profound phrase than this in all the world! No matter what other words have escaped the lips of man, when these two words enter in it changes the course of everything!

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, we are ALL the kind of people who cross over the line, some just knew where the line was and others didn’t. Still, because of His great love for trespassers and sinners like us, God...made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

I hope you picked up on that “together with Christ” part. Everything we have in the Christian faith sits on the foundation of this reality: That because Jesus has raised from the dead, we too can be raised from the dead if we are “in Christ”. Paul said elsewhere:

1 Corinthians 15:17–19 (ESV)

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Remember “dead” is an absolute term. Being “dead” in our sins means that we have to be brought back to life. We don’t need a little adjusting or tweaking we need to be made alive again. There is no room for the idea that Jesus just came and taught us a good way to live and then left us to live it. We can’t live it. We are dead.

But Jesus conquered death. Not just in the sense of our eternity, but He has done away with the death that we were walking in here on earth. Verse 6

6 and [God] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

You might remember a couple weeks ago that we talked about the meaning behind the often used phrase in Ephesians “heavenly places”. That when we see it we may instantly think of “heaven” in the sense of the dwelling place of God with the streets of gold etc. but that is not what it is talking about.

This phrase is translated from the Greek word ἐπουράνιος epouranios, meaning “the sphere of spiritual activities” and it can refer to both angelic and demonic activity. Evantually we will get to Ephesians chapter 6 where Paul says that

Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

We are currently in this spiritual battle where forces of good and evil are in conflict and so Paul wants the Church to know that “in Christ” we are equipped to be a force for good in the battle. Without Christ, or preferences for sin and selfishness will keep us walking dead but because of Jesus’ death, burial and ressurection we can walk alive in Him.

Remember back in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 20 it says that

God “raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 1:20) And now here in the very next chapter he says

6 and [God] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, (Eph 2:6)

Why would God do such a thing? Paul tells us in verse 7

7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

God loves us and has a plan for our lives and so finding us dead, He brought us back to life so that…this is our final theme for the week...

So that we now walk in His good works and plan (Eph 2:8-10)

Ephesians 2:8–10 (ESV)

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Denny did a great job laying out this for us last week in the message. That there is no “work” that we can do to be right with God. We are dead, and dead people can’t rescue themselves, but instead God gives it as a free gift of grace that is simply recieved through faith.

That verse we read from Galatians continues beyond the Jew/Gentile division to say...

Galatians 2:15–16 (ESV)

15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

The Bible is clear that we are not saved by our works, but that does not mean that there is no relationship between our works and our salvation. In our salvation we are saved FROM something, but we are are also saved FOR something. We are made alive for a reason, so that we can walk in a new way.

This may be the most important thing that we look at all day Church, so please don’t miss this. Too many of us have bought into the lie that after we receive our salvation FROM God and then just go back to living FOR ourselves. We walk down the aisle, say a sinners prayer, get baptized or whatever else and then figure we have our ticket to heaven purchased and now we just live our life till the trumpet sounds.

But just because we are not saved by our works, doesn’t mean that have no work to do. We have been raised to new life and seated in the heavenly realms with Christ for a reason. We have very important work to do.

So many of us have Ephesians 2:8-9 memorized, and that is great, but I wish more of us would see how imperative verse 10 is to understanding the depth of 8 and 9. We are not saved by our works, but verse 10 is clear that now that we are saved we are to walk in whole new way.

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

We are going to see more of this in the weeks to come, but don’t forget where we are seated right now. We have a position, a role to play, a good work to do in the spiritual realm right now.

How are we doing in that Church?

Application

I want to close this morning with something that may just be me going off on a rant, but it may be something more. Rachel and I have been observing a trend among our family and friends that we think might be a sign of something more. It seems to us that, especially in light of the many conflicts over the past couple years that people are using a particular phrase more than we have ever heard them use it before. And while it certainly doesn’t sound diabolical in any way, I wonder if it isn’t forming our thinking and attitudes on life more than it should.

And of course, that is a big build up, especially for a very small phrase. But let me ask you, how many times in the past week have you heard or said the phrase “Be Safe”.

Aren’t you hearing that more now than ever before? Maybe it is just us, but I don’t think so. And I am not trying to target any of you with some sort of legalistic rigidity, but I would ask that you think about what it means for us to be a people that often tells one another “be safe”.

And the reason that I share this with you is because I don’t see this idea a Biblical principle. I can’t see how anyone would look at the life of Jesus and say, “Yup, that guy played it safe.” And obviously I am not advocating for pointlessly reckless behavior, but I am just not sure how we will be able to walk in the “good works” and plan that God has given us if we are still trying to “be safe”.

Especially since so many people in the world are still walking dead, imprisoned by the world, the devil and their own flesh.

Landing / Next Steps

But let me offer more than just criticism over the phrase “Be Safe”. How about some constructive criticism that offers alternatives for us to show our care for our loved ones. What would happen if instead of “be safe” we left our loved ones with phrases like:

Be bold. Be generous. Be kind. Be courageous. Be true. Be compassionate. Or the new favorite in my household is to Be wise. Maybe you can think of even better ones from your walk with God, because I don’t think God ever promised that following Him would be safe. But he did promise that it would be good.

Psalm 128:1 (ESV)

1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!