From No Pulse to New Life.

Ever had your phone die at just the absolute worst time? You’re trying to show someone a picture, so you navigate through all the photos, finally find the right one, and the phone goes dead. Or maybe you’re sitting in the car pulling up directions. You don’t have a charger, don’t know the way home, and the screen goes black. Or maybe you’ve got enough points for a free sandwich over at Chick-fil-A, so you roll up through the drive through, listen to about 30 “My pleasures,” and as soon as the hyper friendly smiling face pulls the scanner out to scan your app, it happens. What was moments ago your phone, your pocket-sized, infinitely useful, addictive computer, is now just a brick. No matter how much you swipe, tap, or plead with it, it won’t turn back on. It’s out of power, has no charge whatsoever. It’s DEAD.

And, of course, a dead phone can’t fix itself. It needs a power source from outside itself—a car charger, an outlet for a charging cable, a wireless charger. It needs someone to plug it in, to put it on the charger, to do whatever it takes to give it life.

This morning, I want to invite you to imagine yourself as that phone. That’s actually the message of the passage in the bible that we’re looking at this morning, that passage we read together earlier. Here in Ephesians 2, Paul says that at some point every one of us in this room was spiritually dead—not just low-battery, not just weak—but dead. And IF you’ve been saved, just like plugging that phone back into a charger, God breathed life into you through His grace in Christ Jesus.

As we say whenever we baptize someone, as our baptism T-shirts say, we are “raised to walk in a brand new life!”

But apart from Him, we are dead. And you know that, you feel that, if you have any spiritual insight at all. You used to make rules for yourself, only to break them. You set standards for yourself, only to forget them. You restarted self-improvement plans more times than you could count, but you could never get any traction until you met Jesus. You know why?

You were dead. Like a phone WITHOUT a battery, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

That’s the bad news. But again, the good news is that Jesus Christ came to give you life—a brand new life. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning, as we dig in to these first ten verses of Ephesians 2 that we read together earlier. And that’s the question we’re going to ask ourselves. What does it mean to have this new life? What does it feel like? How do we know that we have it?

Maybe you’ve never thought about that. As far as you’re concerned, life in Jesus just means you don’t have to suffer the consequences of your sin in Hell after you die. And that’s true, but there’s SO MUCH MORE to it. There’s so much more to this brand new life in Jesus than just waiting to die. Let’s dig in here and see what it is.

Look with me at the first three verses here. Ephesians 2:1-3:

Ephesians 2:1–3 “And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest.”

Look at how dead we were, according to Paul. He tells the Ephesian church, “You were dead, walking around in sin, constantly offending God.” We read this, and we’re like, “Well, how did he know? Did he know every person in that church personally?” No! He didn’t have to know them that way. All he had to know is that they were human.

Because what Paul is describing here is the default position of all humanity. In our natural state, we are spiritually dead. We’re enslaved by sin, following the trajectory of everybody else in the world—living for ourselves, pleasing ourselves. We’re controlled, whether we realize it or not, by what Paul calls “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Today, we call him “the devil.”

We’re following the world, following the devil, and following our flesh. Paul even includes himself in this. He says, “We too ALL previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” ALL—everybody—again, this is our default position. We shape morality around what feels right instead of what God says is right.

All of this is what it is to be spiritually dead, and Paul says that, in our brokenness, in our our addiction to sin, in our death, we are “by nature, children of wrath,” just like everybody else. In other words, as we are, apart from Christ, the only connection we have to God is as objects of His wrath.

He is set against us because of our willful rebellion against Him.

Again, if you know Jesus today, that’s who you WERE. And if you don’t know Him, I’m sorry to say that’s who you ARE. You’re dead, spiritually dead. But don’t worry; the sermon is not over yet.

But for those of us who are believers, we need to stop right here. Even though we’ve been given new life, even though we’re walking, again, in a “brand new life,” We don’t need to gloss over this. No, on the contrary, if you are a believer, if you’ve surrendered your life to Christ and found life in Him, you don’t forget your past. No! Instead, you…

Remember who you were.

That’s the first point of application that I want us to take home today. As people who have been buried with Jesus in baptism, and raised to walk in a brand new life, we can’t forget where we’ve come from, what we’ve been saved from. Why? Two reasons.

First, remembering who you were keeps you humble. You’re not tempted to see yourself as better than other sinners, because you’ve been there. You remember the struggle. You remember the failure time and time again, and you the remember that if wasn’t for Jesus and His saving work, you’d still be there.

Second, remembering where you were makes you more compassionate. It will help you to sympathize with people still stuck in sin. Instead of dehumanizing them, seeing them as an enemy, you see them as where you yourself would be if it weren’t for Jesus.

Some of y’all have seen this picture (show old photo of Fred and Jennifer). Some of y’all are like, “Who is that dude with Mrs. Jennifer?” Believe it or not, that’s me. This was our first date back in November of 1996. Looking at this picture reminds of so many things from back in that season of life. There are so many things that I’d love to tell that kid today.

But that’s what Paul is doing here. He’s showing us where we’ve come from. He’s giving us an image of who we used to be, because who we used to be is dead in our offenses and sins.

That’s the bad news, but again, don’t worry; there’s more. It gets better, and it gets better, infinitely better, with 2 words. Pick up in verse 4:

Ephesians 2:4–7 “But God…(maybe underline that if you haven’t already, because these two words are everything your salvation hinges on.) But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, 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 ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Again, this is the good news. This is what brings us here every Sunday. This is why we worship. “But God”. What does Paul tell us about this God? He’s rich in mercy, ridiculously wealthy in mercy, and He would have to be, because why else would He go through everything He went through to save us?

But Paul says that it was BECAUSE of this great love that God, seeing us in our emptiness, seeing us in our sin and death, God made us alive with Christ, RESURRECTED us with Christ, and then seated us with Him, assigned a place for us with Him in eternity!

We were dead, but God made us alive! And that’s why, not only do we remember who we were. We also…

Rejoice in God’s work.

We rejoice. Or at least we should, those of us who are in Christ, because after all, we have SO MUCH to be thankful for! You know this, right? You know that there is no room for pride in the life of a Christian, don’t you? I mean, nothing will rob you of joy like pride, thinking that you had something to do with this.

Imagine this. You’re at the beach, and there’s a problem. You disregarded the warning flags and got caught up in the undertow. No matter how hard you swim, you keep getting pulled back under. You try to call for help, but you can’t get a breath. You can’t keep your head above water long enough, and you just know that this is it. This is how it’s gonna end.

But just as you start to think about how long it’s going to take for someone to find your dead body, a strong arm wraps around you, pulls you up out of the water and drags you, exhausted, back onto the sandy shore. You lay there; the lifeguard is asking you questions, and by this time a crowd has gathered around.

Imagine this. Instead of looking at that lifeguard with gratitude and humility, you stand up, stick your chest out, and say to the crowd, “Did y’all see what I just did? Did you see how I held my body just right, so he could put his arm around me and save me. I mean THAT’s the way to be saved right there. Y’all could all learn something from me.”

Of course you wouldn’t do that. But that’s the equivalent of taking pride in the fact that we’re saved and looking down on those who aren’t. No! Salvation should bring nothing but celebration and joy—not pride, and certainly not guilt! You’re not who you were anymore. You’re are a new creation in Christ. Again, that old you is DEAD! Now you have LIFE! Rejoice in that. Rejoice in what God has done.

Pick up in verse 8. Believe it or not, it gets even better:

Ephesians 2:8–9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

If these verses sound familiar, it’s because I quote them ALL. THE. TIME. This principle of grace is so important. Guys, look. We don’t, we can’t earn our salvation. Again, we were DEAD in our offenses and sins. Dead phones can’t restart themselves, and dead people can’t raise themselves. Dead people can’t work their way back to life. It has to be granted to them, a gift as Paul calls it here.

That’s the beauty of the gospel. That’s what makes it good news. And that’s why, as people who have received this new life, we remember who we were, we rejoice in what God has done, and third, we…

Rest in God’s grace.

You do not have to earn God’s love. We’ve been talking about this a lot in our Midweek Bible Study on Galatians, the book right before this one in the Bible. If you are in Christ, if you have been saved, there is nothing that you can do to make God love you more than He already does, and there is nothing that you can do to make Him love you LESS than He already does.

When God looks at you, He doesn’t see you as you are; He sees you as you will become, the finished work of Christ in you. So, rest in that. Don’t measure yourself by your performance, and don’t measure others that way either. Rest. Rest in the goodness of God. Rest in God’s grace.

Verse 10:

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

So, here, Paul shifts gears a little. Up to this point, he’s made it very clear that we don’t save ourselves. Again, we’re not saved by the work we do. Salvation is a gift. We don’t work our way into heaven. We don’t serve our way into heaven. We don’t go to church our way into heaven. Jesus has already provided the way into heaven. The only thing we have to do is receive it.

But I can imagine Paul, through the power of the Holy Spirit guiding him what to write, I imagine Paul thinking about how you and I might respond to this news.

“If I don’t have to do anything to be saved, why should I do anything? If I don’t have to work in order to be saved, why should I work? If I don’t have to serve in order to be saved, why should I serve? Serving’s a hassle. It can be a pain. If it’s not necessary for our salvation, why mess with it?”

Again, “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus FOR good works.” We are His design. God formed us. He molded us, and the fact is, if you know Jesus Christ, He’s still molding you even now. He’s taking your old, selfish way of doing things, and He’s gradually transforming that into love and compassion for others. He’s giving you this brand new life.

And what is He doing that for? What purpose did He have when He designed you? Paul says He created you “for good works.” That word “for” is important. He didn’t save you BY your good works, or THROUGH your good works or WITH your good works. No, God saved you FOR good works

And they’re not just random good works that mean nothing in the whole scheme of things. No, these are YOUR good works, but they’re works that God “prepared in advance that you should walk in them.”

And that brings us to something else. What does it look like to have been powered up in Christ, brought from death to a brand new life in Christ? Remember who you were, rejoice in God’s work, rest in God’s grace, and fourth…

Walk in the life God designed.

Again, God is building you, creating you to be the man of God, the woman of God, that you are destined to be. Your designer is not finished with you. No matter how old you are, He’s still working on you. You are His workmanship.

And He’s designing you for a purpose! And I’ll just tell you, that purpose is MORE than just going to heaven when you die. It’s more than just staying out of Hell. Paul says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

The reason we are saved is so that we will do good works! So that we’ll minister to people, so that we’ll serve our church, so that we we’ll serve our community, so that we’ll put into practice the things that God prepared for us to do! And here’s the best part. You don’t have to search for them. You don’t have scour the internet to figure out the good works that God prepared for you. All you have to do…is walk in them.

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I don’t know, specifically, what your destiny is as a follower of Jesus, other than one day you will go to heaven. I don’t know, specifically, what works God has prepared for you, but I do know that He has something special in store for you, something that you, and only you, can accomplish in just the way He wants you to.

All you have to do is live obediently and be open and available to walk in them. It’s easy to get boxed in when we think about what it means to serve God. The fact is, the best way for you to practice this brand new life is just to live your life in a God-centered way.

Sometimes that means volunteering at church, sometimes that means taking on a responsibility at church, sometimes that means volunteering in the community, sometimes it means simply means doing your job, living your life, with integrity.

Living your life, as best as you can, like Jesus.

You know that, right? That’s what a brand new life is; it’s a life lived, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with Jesus Christ at the center. Again, remembering where you’ve come from, rejoicing in what God has done, resting in God’s grace, and walking in the life that God designed just for you.

This morning, we’re going to celebrate the life that we’ve received through of Jesus by taking communion together. Just like all the other good things that God has for us, communion doesn’t save us; but we take communion BECAUSE we’re saved. If you haven’t made the decision to follow Jesus yet, I hope you’ll do that today. But if you haven’t, for now, we ask you to abstain from the Lord’s Supper.

Deacons, Let’s take this time to prepare communion.