The Greatest Before & After Shot
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Eph 2:1-10
Eph 2:1-10
The Before and After is one of the internets absolute favourite genres. [Show my pic]
The purpose of a before and after pic is to show transformation, from one state to another. It should make you go; WOW!
Ephesians 2:1-7 is just like a before and after! It should make us go Wow.
Showing the most incredible, unimaginable transformation possible. This is the story of salvation but this time the focus is on us, on mankind, on what we were before God’s grace came in, and then on what His grace accomplishes in us.
BEFORE
God the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul tells the Ephesians - You were dead! Dead in trespasses and sins. That was their condition, that was their original state, and not just theirs but ours too. According to scripture it is the condition of every person born into this world.
My Grandfather on my Mum’s side was a surgeon and a GP. For him, it was essential that he properly diagnose the condition of his patients. An incorrect diagnosis would lead to incorrect treatment and could put the patients health at risk.
It is no less essential that we are able to properly diagnose the spiritual condition of mankind.
There is a very famous illustration that some evangelists use to describe the call of the gospel. There’s a man who’s been swept out to sea, he is out of his depth, he is struggling against the current, struggling to breath, he is about to drown and then from nowhere someone throws him a rope. The rope is there but it can’t save him until he grabs a hold of it!
The problem is - the true picture of the unsaved man according to scripture isn’t that he is struggling in need of help, nor is it that he is a bit down and in need of some encouragement, nor is it that he is sick and in need of healing, it’s that he is dead. Utterly lifeless. He can’t grab hold of a rope - He’s unable to do anything to help himself. Education can’t help him, encouragement can’t help him, medication can’t help him, he needs a miracle. He needs someone to make him alive again!
Moralistic therapeutic deism - Christian Smith.
Paul’s aim in this whole passage is to take away any grounds for boasting. There is no strength or power in us to work salvation for ourselves.
Pelagius’s theology (condemned as heresy at the council of Carthage in 418)- man born with the natural capacity to choose by his free will to either follow God’s commands or not. But what freedom of choice does a dead man have? We are totally dependant on God to do something for us. We need his grace just to give us the ability to choose him.
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
Original sin - Total depravity.
Most people aren’t wowed by the miracle of their salvation because they haven’t understood what the Bible says about their original state. They didn’t feel dead, they didn’t feel like they were following the prince of the power of the air, they didn’t think of themselves as a son of disobedience. And so they’ll say - oh I wish I had a more dramatic testimony like so and so who overcame a drug addiction or such like. But your testimony is far greater than overcoming an addiction - you were DEAD!
How were we dead? We were dead in our trespasses and sins and beacause of them
We were following the course of this world. Dead to the Spirit of God, unable to please God, unable to obey His commands.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Not only were we enslaved by our sin and following the course of the world, we were also being led by the prince of the power of the air; in other words Satan. Those outside of Christ aren’t just dead in their sins, they aren’t just following the pattern of the world, they are actually being led by Satan, indeed verse two says he is at work in them.
Verse 3 says that the Ephesians were once by nature ‘Children of wrath’ like the rest of mankind. That is - destined for judgement, heading for the wrath of God.
The idea that we are all God’s children, no matter what we believe, no matter how we live isn’t borne out by scripture except in the sense that we all share a common creator.
44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
AFTER
In verse 4 we read two words that ought to thrill us, ought to give us hope ‘but God.’
All the verbs from verses 4-7 are 3rd person masculine singular - it’s all about what He has done! There’s no ‘we’ here, it’s all ‘he has done’.
What has He done?
He has made us alive together with Christ.
A Christian is someone who has been MADE ALIVE. Someone who God has literally MADE ALIVE. They once were dead, but now they are alive.
Alive in what sense? Alive to God. Alive with, in and through Christ.
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Why has God done this? Because He is rich in mercy.
31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
And because of the great love with which He has loved us.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
By grace we have been saved. That word grace in Greek is Charis - its where we get our word charity from. Grace is God freely expressing His love for us in giving us the gift of salvation.
We are raised up with Christ and seated in heavenly places with Him.
when we were led from Adam to Christ. It is as if we had been brought from the deepest hell to heaven itself
Why has he done this? So that in God might show the immeasureable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
“Salvation is all of grace because it is all of God; and because it is all of God, it is all for His glory.” James Montgomery Boice
This is your before and after - it should make you go - Wow!