Alive in Christ

Intro

Nicky Cruz – From Gang Leader to Gospel Preacher

In the 1950s, New York City was plagued by violent street gangs. One of the most feared and notorious of these gangs was the Mau Maus, based in Brooklyn. They were notorious for their brutality, street warfare, and absolute loyalty to their gang. The group was made up of young men hardened by poverty, broken homes, and the violent culture of the streets. It was a bad situation for the city of New York.

Leading Mau Maus was a young man named Nicky Cruz—a teenager so consumed with rage and violence that even the police were afraid of him. He had grown up abused and abandoned, and now ruled the streets through fear. He seemed unreachable—too far gone, too hardened for any hope of change. All of us can think of someone we think is too bad for God to save.

Nicky Cruz was a feared warlord on the streets of New York City. He lived a life of crime, violence, and deep anger, shaped by an abusive and occultic upbringing. Nicky is the kind of person that we would assume was too far gone to receive the Grace of God.

But a country preacher by the name of David Wilkerson left rural Pennsylvania to follow a strange call to the streets of New York, no one would have guessed what God would do.

He met the gang leader Nicky Cruz who was violent, hardened, seemingly beyond hope. But David Wilkerson came coming back to him with a simple message:

“Jesus love you.” That’s all he could get out before taking a beating from Cruz. Wilkerson was persistent with this message and eventually it stuck. Nicky experienced the love of Jesus for himself.

Interestingly, David Wilkerson moves on to start a ministry called Teen Challenge, which still does great work today among trouble youths.

What happened to Nicky is Ephesians 2 in real life: ‘But God, being rich in mercy… made him alive together with Christ.’

If you have your copy of God’s word, go ahead and turn those with me to Ephesians 2. This morning we will be in verses 1-10. And this is what I want to talk about this morning, our New Life in Christ.

Because when we meet Christ for the first time, there is a radical change that happens in our life. As we will see in the Scripture, we are taken from Death to Life. The Lord Jesus Christ calls this the New Birth in John chapter 3. Paul calls this the New Creation in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

My goal for you this morning is that you leave this place with a sense of wonder at who our God is and what lengths he will go through to make us his own.

So if you have your Bibles open to Ephesians chapter 2, let’s go ahead and read verses 1-10 and then we will talk about it for a minute.

Ephesians 2:1–10 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 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. 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. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Let’s pray

Father, we ask that you send your Holy Spirit to this place. God, convict us of sin and speak to us from your Word in this moment. I ask that if there is someone here that does not know you that you would draw them onto yourself and save them this morning. We love you and we thank you for your Son the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in his name we pray. Amen.

Now before get going, I want to give you some context to what is going on in the Letter to the Ephesian Church.

Context and Background

The Apostle Paul is writing to the Church in Ephesus. In chapter 1, Paul explains to these Jewish and Gentile believers the power of God in their lives. He explains deep doctrines like Predestination and the Inheritance that is ours in Christ through his sacrifice on the Cross.

And he ends chapter one by offering a prayer for the power of God to illuminate their minds and their hearts to understand the glorious hope that is their through Jesus Christ.

Paul says in verse 20 of chapter 1 that the power from God that illuminates our hearts to understand the gospel is the same power of God that raised Christ from the dead. He prays that believers would know:

The hope of their calling,

2. The riches of their inheritance,

3. And the power of God toward those who believe (1:18–19).

What he says at the end of chapter 1 is that the power that Christ had to take back up his own life is living in you now. This is the Holy Spirit indwelling the lives of those who have faith in Christ.

In chapter 2 of Ephesians, Paul is now unpacking what that power looks like. Paul is writing to remind these believers of

who they were without Christ, and

who they are now because of Christ.

He wants them to know their salvation is entirely God’s doing—from beginning to end. It’s a story of death to life, wrath to mercy, sin to purpose. This is one of the most theologically rich passages in all of Paul’s writings.

And this morning, I want to give you three points from Ephesians chapter 2. I want to talk about who we were without Christ, what God did through Christ, and who we are because of Christ. And this is the first point in your notes,

Who you were without Christ (2:1-3)

Verses 1-3

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 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.

Paul gives us a brutally honest picture of who we were before Christ—and it’s not flattering. There are three things I want you to see in these verses about our condition apart from Jesus:

We were dead in sin

We were enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil

We were deserving of God’s wrath

Paul doesn’t say we were spiritually weak or confused. He says we were dead—completely unresponsive to God. A dead person can’t move, can’t speak, can’t help themselves. That’s how hopeless our condition was apart from Christ.

What does “dead” mean here? It means we were unresponsive to God—spiritually numb, blind to His glory, deaf to His voice. We couldn’t love Him, worship Him, or obey Him. We didn’t need a spiritual tune-up—we needed a resurrection.

Let me put it this way: imagine walking into a hospital room where someone has just flatlined. You can speak to them, shake them, even plead with them—but you get no response. Why? Because they’re not just sick, they’re dead. That was us—spiritually dead.

Not only were we dead in sin, but we were also enslaved to it. Paul says we walked in our sin, “following the course of this world,” and were under the influence of “the prince of the power of the air”—Satan. In other words, we didn’t just sin occasionally—we were caught in its current. Sin was the air we breathed.

Before Christ, we blindly followed the culture around us. We were discipled—yes, discipled—not by Jesus, but by the world. As Dallas Willard once put it,

“The issue isn’t whether you’re being discipled; the issue is who is discipling you.”

Before Christ, we were being discipled by our culture, by the media, and ultimately, by Satan himself.

The writer of Hebrews says,

Hebrews 11:6 ESV

And without faith it is impossible to please him,

Apart from Christ, even the good things that lost people do are counted as sin. Why? Because they have no faith and there are always some kind of motive behind the things that we do. And doing anything that doesn’t please God is sin.

Without Christ, we are enslaved to sin without even knowing it.

And the final piece Paul says is this: we were by nature children of wrath. In other words, we stood under God’s righteous judgment—not just because of what we did, but because of who we were. We were rebels at heart.

This gets into the righteous justice of God. And the very reason why the gospel is good news.

Imagine a courtroom. The evidence has been presented. The defendant is guilty on all counts—caught red-handed. The sentence is just, and the judge would be corrupt if he didn’t carry it out. That was us—guilty before a holy God, not because He’s mean or unfair, but because He’s righteous and just.

Without Christ, you are dead in your sins, you are enslaved to sin, and your are under the wrath of God. This is our condition and it is a very serious condition because of how hopeless it is.

And again, I want you to feel the weight of this because Paul is using such a strong metaphor. He says that we were dead. Not like in the Princess Bride after Wesley had been tortured until he was “mostly dead” but not all the way dead. There is no such thing as being mostly dead.

Spiritually, we were a bloated corpse at the bottom of the ocean with no hope of any kind of rescue.

This is what theologians call the doctrine of Total Depravity. Total Depravity means that all men have a bent toward sin and cannot please God apart from the intervention of God. This is exactly what Paul says in Romans 8:6-7 when he says,

Romans 8:6–7 ESV

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

All people, apart from Christ, are dead in their sins. They are enslaved to their sins and because of this, they are children of wrath. They are deserving of the wrath of God.

We talk about the gospel being good news, well this is the bad news that makes the gospel good news. Let’s talk about that good news now. And this is the second things in your notes this morning. Paul now goes on to show us,

What God Did Through Christ (vv. 4–7)

Look with me in verse 4,

Ephesians 2:4 ESV

But God,

Stop there. These two words, “But God,” are the most powerful two Words in all of Scripture. Paul is saying that you were in a desparate situation… But God. We were enslaved to our sins…But God. We were deserving of death, wrath, and judgement, But God.

If you are a Christian here this morning, you have experienced this But God. But what is it that God did. Let’s keep reading,

Ephesians 2:4–7 ESV

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.

God showed us mercy—not because we deserved it, but because He is rich in it. He rescued us from sin and wrath through the death and resurrection of His Son.

Paul tells us exactly what God did to rescue us. And these three verbs—made us alive, raised us up, and seated us with Christ—are the spiritual story of every Christian. If you are here this morning and you are a Christian, this is your story.

The first thing is he Made Us Alive. This is resurrection language. In the same way that Christ raised from his physical death, our dead hearts were given new life that is sensitive to the ways of God. With our new living hearts, we are able to know God and live in accordance to his ways.

This is the New Birth that Jesus spoke of in John 3 when he met with Nicodemus. Jesus says that if you want to see the Kingdom of God, you must be born again. This is so much more than behavior modification, this is resurrection. Paul says this same thing in Colossians chapter 2. He says,

Colossians 2:13 ESV

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

When we place our faith in Christ, repent of our sins and believe that God raised him from the dead, we share in his resurrection. Paul says that we are raised with him and are made alive.

Ezekiel 36:26 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The second thing that Christ accomplished through his death and resurrection is that he raised us up and seated us with him in Heavenly places.

This is more than being made spiritually alive—it means you’ve been lifted out of your old life, your life of sin.

You’re no longer bound by the power of sin or the course of this world. You’ve been raised out of it.

You’re not just surviving—you’re resurrected. You're not just forgiven—you’re freed.

It also means you share in Christ’s victory. The resurrection wasn’t just a moment in history—it was a turning point for you. God raised Jesus physically from the grave, and when He raised you spiritually, it was a declaration: Sin no longer owns you. Death no longer defines you.

And the third thing is that God seated us with Christ.

This has to do with our positional status. You see, Christ was raised and ascended to the Father but in a certain sense, we are seated with him.

This means that right now, you share in the honor, the authority, and the inheritance of Christ.

In the ancient world, to be seated with a king was a sign of favor and identity. And Paul is saying that you’ve been given a seat next to Jesus—not because of your record, but because of His grace.

And you don’t keep the seat by performance—you remain there by grace.

You may not feel it yet, but your position before God has changed forever. You are no longer under wrath—you are under grace. You are no longer a slave—you are a son. You are no longer cast out—you are seated at the table of the King.

All of these things—new life, resurrection power, and heavenly status—are yours in Christ. You no longer have to live under the weight of sin, the fear of death, or the shame of wrath. You’ve been made alive. You’ve been raised. You’ve been seated. And, as Paul reminds us in verse 5—it’s all by grace. Not because of who you are, but because of who He is.

I want you to remember these three things this morning because this is the Gospel. This is the good news for the whole world. God offers you his Grace. You are in a desperately terrible situation going down a path that leads only to death.

But God,

who is so rich in mercy and so full of love toward you, that he made a way for you to experience resurrection! Not just resurrection at the end of time after we’re physically dead. No, this resurrection can be experienced now in this life.

Now, God does all of this for a reason. Yes, he saves sinners because he is love and full of Grace and Mercy. But why? Why does he save us? Now, Paul is moving onto our new identity and purpose as his people. And this is the third thing I want you to see in this text this morning,

Who You Are Because of Christ (vv. 8–10)

Now, Paul makes it very clear that God is the one doing the heavy lifting in our salvation. God is the one who saw us in our brokenness and death and he’s the one that made us alive, raised us up, and seated us in heavenly places. God did it, not us through some kind of ritual or religious affiliation. But why?

Look at verses 8-9,

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

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.

Here’s Paul’s point: You are not the hero of your salvation story—God is. You didn’t earn it. You didn’t initiate it. You didn’t accomplish it. Salvation is God’s gift from beginning to end.

Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher and thinker from the 18th century put it this way,

“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary”

God did it. And when we place our faith in Christ and repent of our sins, he takes our sins away and he gives us his righteousness. Paul says that this is a gift and not a result of works.

Salvation can not be earned. There are no amount of good works that you can do to earn your salvation. In fact, Jesus talks about this very thing in the Sermon on the Mount.

Listen to the Lord’s words in Matthew chapter 7,

Matthew 7:21–23 ESV

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

The scene is the Day of the Lord. Jesus says that there are many who say things like,

“Lord, we prophesied in your name, we casted out demons for your name and did all of these good works in the name of Jesus.”

The problem is is that these people never knew the Lord. The gift of salvation is freely given but it cannot be earned.

Now, this does not mean that works do not matter. We can easily fall into the trap of licentiousness just like we can with legalism. We can either overemphasize works or we can live like works don’t matter at all.

So, if works cannot earn your salvation, does this mean that works don’t matter? No, not at all! Look at verse 10 in Ephesians 2,

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

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

Paul says that we are his workmanship. The Greek word that he uses for workmanship is ποίημα. This is where we get the English word for Poem.

What Paul is saying is that you are God’s masterpiece. Now, I know many of you don’t feel like a masterpiece. In fact, there are times when you feel more like a piece of work than a masterpiece. But this is God’s opinion of those whom he has saved. He looks at you and he sees something beautiful.

This also means you are not an accident. You are not just the sum of your past. You are not your failures or your shame. You are God’s masterpiece, handcrafted by Him, re-created in Christ Jesus.

It’s like an artists looking at a blank canvas. In his mind’s eye, he sees the beautiful piece of art that he is going to make. Or it’s like a musician who has a melody in their head. They know what it is that they are going to create before it is even a reality.

In the same way, God is working on all of us in the process called Sanctification. We are learning to walk in his ways, we are learning to live like Jesus and we are learning to do what he has called us to.

And how wonderful is it that God uses formally dead, sinful people to do his work in the world.

Paul says something that I don’t want you to miss and it is this,

We are not saved by good works, but we are saved to do good works

Paul wants you to be absolutely clear: You are not saved by your works. You are saved for good works. You don’t work to get grace—you work because you’ve received grace. Good works are not the root of your salvation, but they are the fruit of it.

And here’s the thing, you will never live up to being God’s masterpiece until you actually do Kingdom work. Until you actually do something for the Kingdom. Do good works because God has shown you grace. But what does this look like in our lives?

It means that you don’t serve the poor to earn something from God—you do it because God served you when you were poor in spirit.

It means that You don’t forgive people to earn God’s approval—you forgive because you’ve experienced the deepest form of forgiveness.

It means that you don’t pursue holiness to earn love or salvation—you pursue holiness because you are already deeply loved by God the Father and have received the gift of salvation.

And I want you to leave this place encouraged because your life has meaning and purpose. God has saved you for a reason, to honor and glorify him with your life.

This means that your life matters. I don’t care how mundane it may feel at times. Your 9-5 job matters because that is where God has you. Now, how can you leverage that job for the kingdom.

It doesn’t matter if you are a stay at home mom or if you are a retiree. You can still do Kingdom work.

Your job, your parenting, your conversations… all of that matters because God saved you to reflect his grace in the everyday stuff of life.

In addition to that, your church provides so many opportunities for you to do good works. Listen, we have a Food Drive, a clothing drive… we have members who serve the City Rescue mission every month, we have a children’s ministry that needs workers, we have a worship ministry where you can serve through music. There is so much that you can do here but you have to get involved.

This is our purpose. We have been saved by God, out of our slavery to sin and death, to be his masterpieces in the world. Now that we have experienced this new life in Christ, go out into the world and do good works in his name.

Conclusion

Let me land this plane and then we will celebrate Communion together.

We talked a lot of deep, rich theology today. We’ve discussed who we were without Christ. How he found us in Sin and Death… a desperate situation, but God, who is so rich in mercy and love, saved us freely through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We talked about what God has done through Christ when he saved us. And we talked about why God saved us.

So let me ask you—where are you in this story? Are you still dead in your sin, walking the course of this world? Or have you experienced that glorious interruption: “But God…”? If you’re in Christ, you’ve been made alive, raised up, and seated with Him. You are His workmanship. You are not your shame. You are not your guilt. You are His. So walk in the good works He’s prepared for you—not to earn your place, but because you already have one. That’s who you are—because of Christ.

Let’s pray and then we will celebrate Communion together.