Alive in Christ
Notes
Transcript
"From Death to Life"
Ephesians 1:1–2 (ESV)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The ultimate questions is can a dead person come back to life? Our natural tendency is to say no, for death seems is final, we live our lives, growing older each day, until one day we come to the end, and that is it. We get a headstone, with our name carved on it, with two dates, the date you were born and the date you died, and life is measure by that small dash in between.
From the minute we are born, taking in our first breath, we are holding on by a thread, where the slightest thing goes wrong, that is it. Life seems so tragic and yet what we do not realize is that if we view life in this way we are already dead.
That however is exactly what we were dead in our trespasses and sins. The part about being dead is that you do not even realize you are dead until you are alive.
I. Our Condition Before Christ Ephesians 2:1-3
I. Our Condition Before Christ Ephesians 2:1-3
The Bible tells us this very thing right here in the beginning of chapter 2, Ephesians 2:1
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
This is not just some mere illness of sin, it isn’t a mere cold or flu that you may recover from but in your sin and trespasses against God and your neighbor you were as many still are, dead. Stone cold dead, not a heart beat to be detected, all brain activity has ceased, and the only thing left was to put our bodies into the ground.
Wait though, are we not talking, breathing, and are not our hearts beating, certainly but spiritually speaking death has already come, for scripture tells us Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The wages that we get for sinning is death, and we all have sinned Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Therefore all have died.
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—
To follow the ways of the world is disobedience, thus sin and then ultimately dead. We all once walked in this way, and there are many who still are and it is becoming even a problem in the church as we talked about last week love without faith. Faith is the lack of belief, the lack of life and we are seeing it more and more where churches are conforming to the ways of this world, not only accepting sin, but praising it and even approving of it. Isaiah 5:20
Isaiah 5:20 (ESV)
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
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.
To live by the passions of the flesh, to carry out the desires of the body and mind are to contrary to the Spirit, and thus are children of wrath. That is what mankind is destined to and we do not have to look very far to see this in the world, for it hates this message of the gospel because it brings life and prince of this world wants death and therefore we are locked into a spiritual battle.
As bad as all of this sounds, for us it is good news, for we see it our eyes are open by the gospel because our Lord, Jesus Christ, went into death, having been crucified and then defeated death by rising three days later.
II. God's Merciful Intervention Ephesians 2:4-7
II. God's Merciful Intervention Ephesians 2:4-7
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—
There again we have this faith and love becoming real, for even though we were dead in our trespasses, God through His great love has made us alive! You see love has created faith in us by the grace of God shown through the person and work of Jesus.
This as I have said over and over again is the gospel, the good news, that Jesus Christ paid the penalty so we did not have to. In fact we who were once dead are now alive, because we have been forgiven of our sins, we have been washed clean, by the working power of this grace conveyed through baptism, through the washing of regeneration, not by works that we have done, but by his.
This is how it is by grace that you have been saved, that word grace is unmerited favor. Meaning that we get what we did not deserve and we don’t get what we did deserve. God could have left us in our death, and yet he chose us, before the foundation of the world, in Christ Jesus. You may see how all of this is tying together now.
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
We are made alive for his glory by his grace, for the coming age, and for all generations.
III. The Means of Our Salvation Ephesians 2:8-9
III. The Means of Our Salvation Ephesians 2:8-9
Again Paul here reemphasizes the point, 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,
Just like a dead person cannot all of the sudden one day say hey I want to live, it takes something outside of themselves to bring them back to life. Like those who have been faced with physical death, where had they not been taken to the Doctor or hospital, they would have died. Well spiritually speaking it was worse than this, we were already dead, and God came along and says live, hear the gospel and live.
Again,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
W cannot say that we found Jesus, he found us. We cannot say I decided to follow Jesus, this too was too much for me, Jesus drug me along kicking and screaming. I cannot boast about anything then, except Jesus Christ and his victory that he won for me.
We cannot take credit for anything other than being dead, that is the problem with free-will, it allows us to do nothing but stay in the bondage to sin and death, to reject the gospel, or worse it tries and says that it did something to deserve this, thus no longer trusting in Jesus alone, but turns back to the self and the desires of the flesh, and death.
Thus why we are warned repeatedly through scripture about the deception, the lies of the devil, he would love nothing more than to bring you back into death, to kill you again, to get you to harden your heart to the point in which sin is no longer called sin, pride takes over and death will eventually ensue.
IV. Our New Life in Christ Ephesians 2:10
IV. Our New Life in Christ Ephesians 2:10
We however 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.
We are his workmanship, we are no longer dead, we have heard the good news and have passed from death to life and therefore we are his workmanship and no created for good works. Its putting everything into proper order, we trust in Christ because he brought us to life, so we love as he first loved us. We forgive because we have been forgiven and now good works become a result of faith.
Faith then comes by hearing and hearing by the words of Christ. All the more why we continually preach the gospel, why Jesus is the answer to the question, why we know that we were once dead and I now raised to new life, that it wasn’t anything that we had done, there was nothing we did to deserve , in fact the only thing we can say is this it all was for the glory of God alone. It is all him, and what he did for us, and we can only keeping on sinning praise, preaching this good news to everyone who will hear, and you even you have the power to bring people from the dead by proclaiming the gospel that Jesus Christ died for your sins, he has forgiven them and will make them his own, through Jesus, through his death, burial and ultimately resurrection by which we have hope for eternal life in the age to come.
Amen.