Walking in Awe at the Glory and Grace of God

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This passage is amazing in how in just 10 verse we go from this terrible state of being dead in our trespasses to being declared God’s workmanship in the final verse. The most important question of anybody’s life in answered in the passage. How do we go from such a pitiful state as described in the verse three verse, to such a glorious state as being made alive, raised, and seated with Christ in a heavenly places, and how do we live now walking in good works and not walking in the ways of somebody still dead in their sins. This is all done by Grace. Why are we not given the fate we deserve being by nature children of wrath? Grace. How are we not only made alive, but made a recipient of immeasurable riches for eternity? Grace. How do we live now, as we are called to no longer walk in sin and follow the course of the world, but are called to walk in good works? How do we walk in good works as we still have this body with is sinful passion and desires? Grace. There is an important truth that this grace is accessed through faith, but it is by Grace. The hero of the story of this passage as it were, is not us and our faith or perseverance, its all about God. My hope is that we end this passage not just encouraged to live a life of good works, as we are called to do, but that we are in awe of the grace of God and how every part of this amazing transition through the passage, gives glory to God.

The text reveals a spiritual reality to us. Back in Ephesians Chapter 1 Paul is praying for believers in Ephesus, and prays:

Ephesians 1:17-21 “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places”

Remember this is a passage to believers, who already have their eyes open to their need for repentance and Grace. You see Paul connects these two passages with similar language about our inheritance of riches and Christs being raised and seated in the heavenly places, to tell us there is a truth here that requires revelation in the knowledge of God with enlightened hearts. What I do not mean is that there is something to see here that is not written plainly in the text as if there is extra unwritten revelation we need to seek, I am not at all saying that. But that there is a reality of this truth that if our spiritual eyes are opened to it, so that the words we do not just read, but they convict us and sink in our hearts, we will be in awe of the grace of God that enables us to walk in good works and not as one still dead in their sins and a slave to their trespasses . That’s Paul’s prayer for those reading or hearing this text, that’s my prayer as I have been reading through it, and that's our prayer tonight. That we would not just hear the words of Scripture, but that the reality it reveals about grace and our spiritual position and our call to good works, would penetrate our hearts and that the “eyes of our hearts would be enlightened” and we may “know what is the hope to which he has called us.”

This text shows us that: Our purpose is to glorify God by walking in good works as a consequence of the the grace that we have recieved. Three truths about God’s Grace:

1. By Grace We Have Hope

A. The hopeless situation of being “dead in our trespasses”

Ephesians 2:1 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins”

It is by grace that we have hope, and what the first three verse make clear to us is that without Grace, our spiritual situation is hopeless. There is such finality in the phrase “dead in our trespasses.” We are not wounded in our sin as if our sin nature is just an inconvenience to us. We are not gasping for breath in our sins with the ability in our own effort to claw our way to God up a mountain of morality and good deeds until we reach the top where he sits and waits for us.

One commentator writes that: …The point of the status as spiritually dead is to emphasize how completely severed they were from their creator God. They were unable to live for God, unable to please him, and unable to reverse their standing with God by their own power. As John Stott comments, “They are as unresponsive to him as a corpse.” Dead people are not able to heal broken relationships and they cannot undo past mistakes. The notion of spiritual deadness is an absolutely devastating condition out from which exists no natural means of reversal.

The gospel is at the heart of everything we do because their exists no greater problem for any human being that ever lived than the problem of being dead in their trespasses and sin. Some years ago I was working a job where I did what I considered “good works” and I was confronted by the truth of Isaiah 64:6 “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” That all my effort and long hours, if I am not saved by grace, do not impress God for a moment. If we are not saved by grace, and our works are not done as a result of grace, no amount of works done by our effort will solve our biggest problem, that we are still dead in our trespasses.

B. The truth of this reflected in the world around us.

The finality of being dead in our sins is so great and yet Paul instead of just moving on and getting to the good news part, continues to give us insight into to reality of the world we live in. I love that Scripture is true, and because it is true, it is a lens that we can see the world through and it lines up and there is no other worldview that can claim that. The real problem with the world is described in this passage. Listen to the language of following:

Ephesians 2:2–3 “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— 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.”

One of the most delusional ideas of man is that we can throw off the “shackles of religion” and by our our human reasoning, create our own morals and live in a world that is governed by human reason and not scripture. So when these recent HS graduates go off to college, and they have Professor espousing Secular Humanist ideas we can confidently say to our college students “When you look at the world around you, do you see a world ripe with reason and virtue, or do you see a broken world that follows its own passions and its own sinful desires.

C. Children of wrath, as sons of disobedience, inherit wrath.

This truly hopeless position results in wrath.

Ephesians 2:3 .... and were by nature children of wrath

Without Grace, the current state of the unbeliever is hopeless, and without Grace the eternal state of the unbeliever is hopeless.

D. Application of our heartbreak for the world.

The reason I spent time on this, instead of just focusing only on the “good news” of this passage, is that the reality of the “bad news” should break our hearts in way that we never cease to pray for those who are still dead in their sins. We never view people as inconveniences in our lives. I get caught up watching the news, and I see some of the stuff happening in our country and I think “what is their problem, what are they thinking?” Their problem is that they are doing what people dead in their trespasses do. They follow the world, they follow Satan, and they are ruled, not by reason as they may claim, they are ruled by the sinful passions of a heart and mind that is totally corrupted by sin. We should look at the world with such compassion and desire for them to experience the first day a true freedom in their life through Christ. Notice Paul does not exclude our involvement in this, there is an emphasis on this being “how we used to be” and how we still would be if it were not for Christ. We will come back to that more later.

2. By Grace we Receive Salvation.

A. “But God”-this is about the character of God.

Now we move from the “bad news” to the “good news,” though there are really no words to describe how amazing this transition of “But God” is. But understanding the reality of our hopeless situation apart from Christ adds contrast to this moment in verse 4. Notice this incredible shift, not just in language but from an emphasis on people and the condition of the unbeliever to a shift in focus on God and the character of God:

Ephesians 2:4–9 “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 us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The incredible thing here is when we ask the question “Why? Why would God do this?” If I am in a position of spiritual death, in which I cannot please God with my own works, why would God make a way for me to no be in a spiritual position of being seated with Christ? How did I go from my state of hopelessness to a state of being promised eternal riches? It is amazing grace in itself that we we were made alive with Christ. But God not only makes us alive with Christ, He raises us up with him, and He seats us in a heavenly place. That is quite honestly sometimes hard to read when I really let it sink in. I know how selfish and wicked my heart can be. You don’t know. My discipleship and accountability brothers may know a little more, my wife may know a lot more. But besides God, nobody knows how incredibly rebellious, wicked, and selfish my heart can be more than I do. So to know that, and then read what God has done, there is a groan from within that says “How can this be?” And when talking about making us alive, raised, and seated with Christ, its an aoritist tense-form, meaning that this is something that has already been accomplished. Our heavenly position is accomplished now for those who are in Christ Jesus. Physically, we are obviously still in the flesh and here on earth, but for those in Christ Jesus, our spiritual position is currently heavenly in that we have union with Christ, we have the Holy Spirit, and are eternal position with Christ is sealed through the Spirit as said in:

Ephesians 1:13–14 “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

Why? And this is all done because of God’s love. Because that is who He is. That is the eternal nature of God. Not only that, but this was done “even when we were dead in our trespasses.” God’s divine intervention in our salvation is not a story about our ability to be attractive to God, or to please God through our own works, intelligence, or moral living, but is about God’s love for us that is a result of His own character.

B. Definition of Grace and Faith.

The why is answered by this revelation into the character and love of God. The How is answered by this important phrase: By Grace. Through faith. But by Grace. To understand this it is important that we understand what grace and faith are, and how that helps shone light on this passage for it is “by grace we have been saved, through faith.” Grace is unmerited. A lot of us probably thought of that first thing when we heard the word “grace” that is something we receive but do not deserve. But is not just receiving something we did not earn or do not deserve, but it is something God initiated. For grace to be grace, it must be totally initiated by the grace giver, or it is quite simply, no longer grace. The grace of the cross and the grace of God intervening in our life is nothing less that an unprompted act of God with the purpose of saving us from our spiritual position of being dead in our trespasses.

It is by this act of God, this undeserved love we call grace that we are saved, which we access through Faith. So what is faith. We know that just believing God exists is not faith, as James points out even demons believe God existence. Satan is aware that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he believes that event happens, but Satan hates it. Evil hates the authority of Jesus. We believe it, and we declare our allegiance to King Jesus. ***SPOOKY*** In discussing Faith as allegiance to Jesus one commentator says:

Allegiance differs from mere mental assent in that it conveys a level of commitment—a person with allegiance to Christ offers his or her devotion and obedience, while also trusting him. In this sense, faith in the Lord Jesus is not genuine faith if the “believer” has not switched allegiances from self and the forces of evil (2:2–3) to Christ. Since Jesus is presented as the “Lord,” genuine faith in him can involve nothing less than genuine devotion and allegiance.

And we know from Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

We are saved by an unmerited act of God’s divine intervention through responding by putting our complete trust and allegiance in Jesus.

When we read this text, we want to be certain that the emphasis and glory is always on God. This is all about God and how amazing his love and grace are for us.

In verse 8 when Paul says:

Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,”

The grammatical structure in the Greek of “this” doesn’t point to faith being what the gift of God is referring to. While I believe that even that faith I have is given to me by God, here “this” refers to all of it. The whole act of God in our salvation. This whole amazing process of being made Alive, being raised, and seated with Christ, that entire act of Grace is a gift and not of our own doing.

C. Legalism and Misplacing “works”

So what legalism does, which is rooted in pride and not piety, is take “works” out of verse 10, and tries to insert it somewhere in verses 4-6. We are blessed to be in a Church where you are not going to hear a sermon, or Sunday School teacher, or elder, or deacon, ever preach or teach that we achieve salvation by our works. If you do it will be the first and last time you hear that sermon or lesson, I am fairly certain of that. The danger I think for us, is that we can take “works” out of verse 10, and our pride will try to insert is somewhere else, like right before where we told that because of God’s grace we are seated in the with Christ in the heavenly places. So our pride reads this as “We are made alive, raised with Christ, and this is done by grace through faith, but our works will define our heavenly position.” I have seen it happen in my own life and I have never once believed that I will get to heaven by my own works, but I have bought the lie that my value while on earth is defined by my works. And if you see that happening in your own life, I want to tell you: Take a breathe, working for value and worth is exhausting. Relax because there is nothing you can achieve in this life by your own effort that will come close to what Jesus has done for you, and nothing that can come close to being seated with Christ so that for eternity will show you the immeasurable riches of his love. Sin will absolute cause us harm, you will not feel the peace of God while looking at pornography, finding your joy in Alcohol, or being consumed by your own ego. Sin has consequences. But as a believer, your spiritual position and being united with Christ is a work done already, and that is grace.

There is also a kind of our pride that takes another form, less boastful but equally legalistic. And it is the belief that your sins are just too much for God to want me. You look at the language here about being seated in the heavenly places and receiving the immeasurable riches of His grace and you think “that can’t be me.” That must be for other people, other people that grew up in the Church, that listened and did the right things. Even if you’re a Christian this form of legalistic thinking can seep in, and you look at your past and you say “look, with my Christian resume, maybe God can save me from Hell but I can’t be worth too much to the Kingdom now. I have too much baggage, I have too much shame, I have too much fear and anxiety.” I would say the same thing to you as I would to somebody trying to achieve their heavenly position by works, that its not about you. Its about what Jesus has done. Our conversion story is not a story that ultimately gives glory to us, or our faith. It always is about giving glory to God. Its deceptive because That “I have too much sin” type thinking doesn’t feel like pride, but it really is because you are elevating what you have or haven’t done, and diminishing what Christ has done. True humility comes about not from thinking we are not good enough, true humility comes from an awe of the work of Jesus and the grace of God that despite our sin, he seats us in a heavenly position as a recipient of immeasurable riches.

D. Application of Identity and Awe

The application of all this is given to us in verse 10 but before we get to that I point out an application that sets us up for the application in verse 10. We need to be in absolute awe of the love of God and recognize that this is all possible, our salvation, our church community, is all by Grace. And for verse 10, where works is mentioned, to really be in the proper context for us, we need to be in awe of the grace of God.

3. By Grace We Walk in Good Works

A. Works is not Legalism, it is Scriptural

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Works, in the right context, is not Legalism, it is Scriptural. Christians need to be comfortable talking about the importance of “good works.” If we take works out of verse 10, and we try to rearrange the structure of this text where it is our works, and not the grace of God, that has granted us salvation, then we have become legalistic and have distorted the truth. But if we stop at verse 9 and leave out the mention of works, we have missed one of the main purposes in the text.

As John Stott puts it “Good works are indispensable to salvation—not as its ground or means … but as its consequence and evidence.”

That what James is addressing in James chapter 2. If I say I have faith, and yet there is no evidence of it, its a logical question. Well, what faith is actually there if there is no evidence for it? So how do we acknowledge the importance of works, without our pride making our works the focal point. That’s the key, our pride will distort anything it can. I look at pride like a black hole. A black hole will distort light, gravity, and because of that even time itself is changed by a black hole. So any “good thing” I do, pride is right there trying to distort it so the glory is due me and not God.

B. Good Works Vs. Works

The key difference between good works and works, is that “good works” originate in the grace of God. It a result of being Gods workmanship. Can somebody, who is dead in their sins, do a good thing? Sure. An atheist can feed the hungry, run organizations that do humanitarian efforts that have no desire to spread the gospel, and we would say those humanitarian things are “good” things. God’s will is done through all sorts of people and things. But for a work to be truly a “good work” it originates in Grace, and is an outpouring and a consequence of that grace. God gets glory from us as his workmanship. Notice how the text says that we are “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.” We see out total dependence on God for not just for our salvation, but our ability to do good works. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, we were made alive and raised with Christ in our salvation, and when we see in Ephesians 1:5 “he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” and Ephesians 1:11 “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,” whatever logical conclusion you take the work “predestination” we see that without God, without his divine intervention and unpromted gift of Grace in our lives we would have no hope. And that even the good works we do now, because we are currently Gods workmanship, is something that God prepare beforehand. Understanding this is how we do “good works” without losing sight of God being the reason for all of it and help us from giving glory to ourselves that is due God. If we think that too much emphasis on grace is unhealthy for our ability to do “good works.” You are saying in a sense that we are not God’s workmanship, we are our own workmanship. When I read this passage and I am in awe at the love of God and His character, and I hear somebody say “all this grace emphasis just gives people a license to sin”, I can honestly say “I don't have clue what you’re talking about.” That not only contradicts the passage, but its sad because that view totally missed how amazing the character of God is revealed in the text.

When Paul uses the term “walk” in “that we should walk in good works,” instead of just “doing” good works, he is calling our minds back to verse 1-3. In verses 1-3 we are told, this is how you used to walk, how we all lived before Christ when we were “by nature children of wrath.” The implication being, why would we go back to that. Just as Paul says in Romans 6:1–4 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

The tension is that while the work of Jesus has given us a heavenly position seated with Christ, and this is referring to a past and completed event, physically we are still here. We still have this physical flesh, we are still prone to wander. There are the “passions of the flesh” and the “desires of the body” that we still live with. One day our physical body will be in that heavenly position and that sin nature will fall off of us, and what a glorious day that will be, but until then we still have the temptations to return to the ways of following the world and the lusts of the flesh. If you are looking at your life, and see an area of your life that is more in line with walking in the ways of the world and in sin, you need accountability, you need to be active and follow the commands of Jesus and “gouge out that eye, or cut of that hand” meaning of course do what you need to do to remove the temptation and put guard rails up and be proactive. But it may also help to pray to God that he opens your eyes to this glorious truth to our heavenly position, and ask that God that fills you heart with awe at what he has done. I do know, it is a lot harder to seek after the passions and desires of our flesh when we are captivated by God and in awe of of the grace that is described here.

C. This is an outpouring of Grace-Major Application “Faith from hearing”

So when we see the truth that those who do not put their trust in Jesus are dead in their sins and what a hopeless state that is, and the truth of our being made alive, raised, and seated with Christ, and that this is done by grace, and through faith, and how in Romans 10 we are told that faith comes by hearing the word of God and how can people believe something that they have never heard, how can this be something we are silent about. This is becomes what are lives revolve around. This doesn’t just influence our evangelism, this influences everything. After Paul lays down this theological truth, he then moves to our ethic. This truth pours out into our humility, into how we no longer walk in the ways we used to, into how we see ourselves in society, our interactions with our Church community, and it defines how we love our spouse. Everything. As Christians, we are made to be God’s workmanship, we are made to do good works, but it all starts with Grace.

I’ll end with an illustration:

According to the Chicago Tribune, in the summer of 1994, Marcio da Silva, a love-struck Brazilian artist, was distraught over the breakup of a four-year relationship with his girlfriend, Katia de Nascimento. He tried to win back her love by a gesture of great devotion. He walked on his knees for nine miles. With pieces of car tires tied to his kneecaps, the twenty-one-year-old man shuffled along for fourteen hours before he reached her home in Santos, Brazil. He was cheered on by motorists and passersby, but when he reached the end of his marathon of love thoroughly exhausted, the nineteen-year-old woman of his dreams was not impressed. She had intentionally left her home to avoid seeing him.

Some people try similar acts of devotion to impress God and earn salvation. Like Katia de Nascimento, God is not impressed. The only thing that brings the forgiveness of sin is faith in Jesus Christ, not sacrificial deeds.

D. Closing

For the unbliever, I would love to here how you ended up here on a Wednesday night its probably an interesting story. But we love you too much to ignore the reality, that without Christ, their is simply no hope. We invite you to receive the grace of God, the work that we could never do has already been done, and we invite you to experience your first day of true freedom.

For us believers who acknowledge our allegiance to King Jesus. Lets be in awe of his grace. And as a response to that awe, Lets walk in good works. Not because we think it will help us achieve a spiritual position that Christ has already done the work for, but because we are Gods workmanship and that the grace revealed to us here it just too amazing to be silent about.

PRAYER

LORD, give us the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of you, make the eyes of our hearts be enlightened so that this truth, this reality of our spiritual position, would change us and influence everything in our lives. LORD I pray that your grace would pour out of us, that we would not walk in defeat or in the sin that is characteristic of a former life, but that we would walk in works that reflect your grace. That would surrender ourselves to be your handiwork, that we would not resist the Holy Spirit, but would instead be in such awe of your grace and love, we cannot be silent about it. I pray LORD that as we recognizes the areas of our life that reflect more of following the world and not following you, that we would be so captivated by your Grace and your Love, that we would walk in humility and in “good works” that result from you working in us. I pray this in your name Jesus. AMEN.