Not About Me

We are continuing our walk through the book of Ephesians, and we are seeing how God has brought everything together in Christ.

We first saw that God has given us incredible blessings of being in Christ.

Last week, we saw that we need his guidance to understand exactly what those blessings are and how they impact our lives. We can’t figure it out on our own.

To set the stage for this morning’s message, I want to go back and read through the last few verses we talked about last week.

Remember, Paul said that God has this incredible power working in us and through us.

Look back at Ephesians 1:20-23 to see what that power is capable of doing...

Hold on to the idea that God’s power raised Christ from the dead and raised him to sit in the heavens, ruling over everything in creation, because we are going to come back to that in a minute.

This morning, we are going to spend the majority of our time looking at Ephesians 2:1-10.

This passage is absolutely incredible, and it challenges so much of what we think and believe about what it means to be saved, or right with God.

You see, we are all naturally selfish people. From the time we are born, we are constantly looking out for ourselves, trying to make ourselves happy, and trying to protect ourselves from anything bad.

In case you don’t believe me, I would encourage you to take a shift in the nursery in the next month. We alway need additional volunteers, and it wouldn’t take you more than about 10 minutes of being in there to realize that kids are, by nature, selfish.

We don’t grow out of that, although we usually grow better at hiding it. We manipulate, we lie, we do good things so others will like us or so we will get something in return…we are naturally selfish.

The bad part is that we carry that same mindset into our relationship with God.

We want to stay in the center of our universe, so we think that being right with God means he is going to make me happy. He is going to satisfy my needs, and ultimately, he is going to do what I want him to do.

We get angry and confused when God doesn’t answer prayer the way we think he should. We want to give up when the place he puts us is too hard. We want him to act like we want him to, and we don’t want him to do anything else.

As we look at this morning’s passage, I want you to understand something: salvation isn’t about you.

You didn’t and couldn’t save yourself, and you weren’t saved for yourself.

In fact, that was the whole message right there.

We are going to draw those three points out of this passage, so let’s read it together.

Right off the bat, Paul hits us with a challenging reality:

1) I couldn’t save myself.

As soon as we open this passage, we are hit in the face with the reality that we can’t save ourselves.

Why would I say that? Because the Bible says you were dead.

You weren’t physically dead. When God saved me, I was 9 years old, going to school, studying, running around, and doing my thing.

However, before God, I was spiritually dead.

Think about this first in terms of physical death.

When someone is dead, they are separated from us. Not only that, they do not respond to any external stimuli. No matter what you do, they do not respond.

In the same way, someone who does not have Christ is spiritually dead. He is separated from Christ by his sin:

Isaiah 59:2 CSB

But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen.

Not only that, one without Christ is enslaved to sin and cannot obey Christ. She cannot come to Christ on her own, and cannot do anything but sin.

Wilfred and Priscilla taught this passage to the kids during VBS a couple weeks ago:

Isaiah 64:6 CSB

All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

Even the best things you do are still done out of a heart that is dead towards God, which is why Paul would compile a few different references when he wrote this to the Romans:

Romans 3:10–18 CSB

as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Apart from Christ, you are dead and cannot come to Him!

You can’t do anything to get back to God on your own, because your best deeds are still like a filthy, nasty rag that needs to be thrown away.

That runs counter to the way our world thinks, because we would like to believe that everyone is basically good.

However, that’s not what the Bible teaches us, and if we’re honest, we know that it isn’t true.

All of us lived life this way. In fact, this is just the natural course of life. Why is that? Look at the last part of verse 2.

Does this sound familiar? We have looked at this idea before in another passage:

1 John 2:15–17 CSB

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.

Back in Ephesians, we notice that we were not living this way on our own—This is how the prince of this world has twisted things to be. Satan knows full well that God is the one who deserves all our devotion, love, honor, and glory. He strives, then, to make us all live for ourselves.

He is trying to destroy everything God is doing in the world, and we play right into that with our selfishness.

Verse 3 takes it further…Not only are we living according to what Satan is trying to accomplish, all of us live based off what we want to do. We are all prone to live by our own selfish desires:

James 1:13–15 CSB

No one undergoing a trial should say, “I am being tempted by God,” since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.

You and I don’t need Satan’s help, because our dead hearts are twisted enough on their own.

Those desires run completely contrary to who God is! That’s why they are wrong.

When God found me, I was living according to my way of doing things. I didn’t consult Him; I didn’t ever ask how He wanted my life to go; rather, I did what I wanted to do.

Look at what that made me: a child under wrath! I was an object that deserved God’s wrath. Everything about who I was deserved to be condemned to hell forever!

As an aside, notice, if you are saved that this is how you used to walk. Are you still acting this way, living for your own desires? If you genuinely know Christ, you can’t live like this anymore. He has freed you from living under the power and dominion of the prince of the air.

If you’re here this morning and you don’t know Jesus, this is where you are: You are a child of wrath, who is dead to God, and living by your own selfish desires, playing into the hands of what Satan has been trying to do for thousands of years.

Before God brought you to himself, you weren’t just bad, you were dead! You couldn’t save yourself if you wanted to, because you were living just like Satan wants and letting your own selfish desires direct you.

There is no way you and I could save ourselves, so salvation isn’t about me.

In case that doesn’t drive it home enough, we also see that...

2) I didn’t save myself.

Maybe you still think that somehow you were good enough to earn God’s salvation.

You tried hard, you were raised in church, surely that must have added something to you getting saved, right?

Well, let’s go back to the text to see what it says. Start with me in verses 4-9...

That right there is one of the most powerful phrases in all of the Bible.

“But God, who is rich in mercy...”

Do you understand that today? Do you understand that the God of the universe, who has every right to condemn us and leave us separated from him forever, changed all of that?

He is rich in mercy, which means he doesn’t give us the punishment we deserve.

Instead, he took our punishment and put it on Jesus!

You didn’t pay off your debt; Jesus paid it for you!

Look at what that means in verse 5...He made you alive!

Think back to last week…remember what we said about the power working in you? That was the power that raised Jesus from the dead, right?

If you are here and are in Christ, you have been raised from the dead as well!

Spiritually, you are now alive to God. You can hear from him, you can respond to him, you can know him, where you couldn’t before.

That would have been mercy and grace enough, but he keeps going! Read verse 6...

He didn’t just make you alive and leave you to fend for yourself; he made you alive and seated you in the heavens with Christ!

Remember? Jesus is seated in heaven, ruling over every other power in all creation?

You’re seated in the heavens with him!

Philippians 3:20–21 CSB

but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.

You are already there! You are a full-fledged citizen of heaven at this very moment, but it wasn’t because of you!

Just in case you still think it was about you, drill down into verses 8-9 again.

He can’t make it any more plain than this: God saved you as a gift of his grace.

It wasn’t because you were good enough to earn it, and it wasn’t because you were smart or beautiful or powerful: he saved you because he is all that and more! He is rich and mercy and generous with his grace. He has a great love for us that makes us alive and raises us up to heaven and seats us with Christ!

Salvation isn’t about you.

You couldn’t save yourself, and even if you could, you didn’t! It was all God’s work in drawing you to himself.

“Yeah, but Sean, the day I got saved, I remember praying this prayer...”

I will be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand the intersection of God’s sovereignty and my will.

However, what I see from this passage and others is that God is the one who saved me.

I know the day that I cried out to him, it was because of what God was already stirring in my heart, where he was drawing me to himself and I responded to what my heart knew he was doing.

How all that worked, I don’t know, but I do know this: my salvation was by grace through faith, not of myself, but it was a gift of God, not by any works I have done, so I have no ability to boast.

See, salvation isn’t about me. I couldn’t save myself, I didn’t save myself, and there is one other key truth we need to see from this passage this morning:

3) I wasn’t saved for myself.

Have you ever wondered why God saved you? What was the point? What was the purpose of God saving you?

Go back to verse 7. He raised us and seated us with Christ, but why?

To demonstrate just how incredibly rich his grace is towards us.

God saved you, in part, so he could show just how amazing he is.

Sounds kinda arrogant to us, doesn’t it?

It would be if we did it. If I did something just so everyone would know how amazing I was, it would be selfish and arrogant.

However, it isn’t that way with God.

See, there is nothing in all creation that is greater than him. We are created to find our ultimate joy, peace, satisfaction, and meaning in him.

If that’s true, then the greatest thing he can do is help us see who he really is.

So, in part, he saves us so we can get a clear picture of his incredible character and nature.

That’s not all, though, and this gets us back to one of the ideas we hit at in the introduction.

Remember how we said we get mad because we are Christians but life doesn’t work like we want it to?

In those moments, we need to take a hard look at verse 10...

You see, you weren’t saved so God would do good things for you. He saved you so you would do good works for him.

There will be times when the things God calls you to do are hard, and irritating, and exhausting, and overwhelming, but as you honor him during those times, you are fulfilling the calling he placed on you when he called you to himself.

He saved you when you couldn’t save yourself, but he didn’t do it just so you would escape hell. He did it so you would honor him, as he deserves, as a citizen of his kingdom.

Does that thought scare you? Are you afraid of what it will be like to live out God’s plan? Are you worried about what it will cost?

If he would do all this for you, die in your place, rescue you when you were dead and separated from him, then why would you stop trusting him when life gets hard?

As Warren Wiersbe, a popular Bible teacher said about this passage,

“What does the future hold? We do not know, but we do know who holds the future. The same loving Father that chose me, called me, and saved me has also marked out a wonderful plan for my life!”

You can trust him, because he saved you when you couldn’t save yourself.

What are we demonstrating? The riches of his grace. What are we to do? Good works.

Does that sound terrible to you? If that’s why God saved you, do you think he is going to accomplish this through calling you to live a miserable life, or do you think he is going to do that by showing himself to and through you even on life’s darkest days?

Life is hard without Christ, and it is hard with Christ. The difference is the purpose behind the hardship and heartache. In the one, it is hard because you are trying to figure out life on your own. In the other, the hardships allow opportunity for you to demonstrate faith and trust in the God who loves and saves.

You see, salvation isn’t about you. It’s about what God has done and is doing. It’s for his name, his glory, his renown, which is ultimately your greatest good.

So, how does this work out practically?

Here are a few thoughts:

You can’t live like you used to live. Your life should be changed.

You can’t save yourself, so stop trying. Surrender and let God draw you to himself.

You didn’t save yourself, so stop thinking you have to keep yourself saved. His grace saved you, and his grace sustains you, even when you stumble.

With that said, remember that he saved you to honor him. Go back to the first application point.

Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1992), 542