Why We Need a Savior
Why Do We Need a Savior
Ephesians 2:1
July 1, 2007
A retired minister tells this story:
As a young minister, I was asked by a funeral director to hold a Grave-side service for a homeless man, with no family or friends.
The funeral was to be held at a cemetery way back in the country, And this man would be the first to be laid to rest there.
As I was not familiar with the backwoods area, I became lost; and being A typical man did not stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late.
I saw the backhoe and the crew, who was eating lunch, but the hearse was nowhere in sight.
I apologized to the workers for my tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave, where I saw the vault lid already in place.
I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long, but this was the proper thing to do.
The workers gathered around, still eating their lunch. I poured out my heart and soul.
As I preached the workers began to say "Amen," "Praise the Lord," and "Glory"!
I preached, and I preached, like I'd never preached before: From Genesis all the way to Revelations.
I closed the lengthy service with a prayer and walked to my car.
As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers Saying to another,
"I ain't never seen anything like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
Shows you the error of jumping to conclusions doesn’t it? Well, on to more serious pursuits; we’re continuing our study of Ephesians. Two weeks ago you received, in your bulletin, further study material on the book of Ephesians. It was intended to give you a deeper understanding of what we’ve been covering the last month or so. Did you find it helpful? Did you do it? Would you like more?
Let’s read today’s Scripture passage. Please turn in your Bible to Ephesians chapter 2 and we’ll read verse 1, I’m reading from the New English Translation: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,”
So, there are two reasons why we should remember our great need for a Savior.
The first reason is that the more keenly we feel our need for a Savior, the more precious will be the coming of the Savior.
Picture two people in a car out for a drive along Highway 40. The rider knows that there is a time bomb in the trunk and that any second might blow the car to pieces. The driver doesn't believe there is one, and thinks that his rider is insane. The RCMP have been alerted that the car is indeed loaded with a bomb that will soon go off. They begin their search and pursuit.
The rider suddenly sees the RCMP car far in the distance to the rear racing toward the car. His heart leaps with hope for possible rescue! If you are the rider who knows that there is a bomb in the trunk, the flashing red lights in the distance are very precious, and the closer they get, the more precious they become. But if you are the driver and you don't think that there is a bomb in the trunk, the flashing red lights are a threat.
I think that the most loving thing I can do for you this morning is to help you remember and feel your need for a Savior, so that as he approaches, your heart will leap for joy.
The second reason for remembering our great need for a Savior is that the Word of God commands us to. Ephesians 2:1–10 describes how God saved us by grace through faith when there was a time bomb of sin ticking in our soul. Turn there now and we’ll read it: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly 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 formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. That’s the bad news as we heard about a couple of weeks ago; but, remember, there is good news. Let’s read on:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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 surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as 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 so that we would walk in them.”
Verse 11 commands, "Therefore remember!" Remember what? Verse 12 tells us: “remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. " But the key word, practically speaking, is "Remember!"
Paul really believes that even after the RCMP have caught your car and saved you, you shouldn't forget that awful chase. You shouldn't forget what it would have been like if they had not pursued you. You should remember what you were and would have become without a Savior. Part of our ongoing devotional life should be the obedience of Ephesians 2:12—Remember! Remember! Remember that once we were cut off from Christ, without any citizen-rights to heaven; no promises applied to us; we had no hope and no part in God.
We are commanded, "Remember this! Bring it to mind again and again". And surely the reason is so that it will have a vigorous and lively role in causing us to love Jesus Christ, our Savior. It is a simple psychological fact: unless we feel a great need for a Savior, we do not feel that he is a great Savior.
The first reason we need a Savior is that without a Savior we are all dead in our trespasses and sins. Paul says this twice in the text. In verse 1 (literally): "You being dead in your trespasses and sins . . . " Verse 5: "Even when we were dead in our trespasses . . . "
If you were to ask most people why sin is a problem, and why we need a Savior from it, they would say that sin makes us guilty before God and brings us under condemnation; and so we need a Savior who can forgive our sins and take away our punishment. And that is absolutely right. But that is not the point of Ephesians 2:1 and 5. That is not all we need.
The reason we need a Savior is not just that we are in the doghouse with God and need to be forgiven for offending his glory. We need a Savior because we are in the morgue. In the doghouse you might whimper. You might say you are sorry. You might make some good resolutions. You might decide to cast yourself on the mercy of God. But what can you do if you are in the morgue?
What Does "Dead in Trespasses and Sins" Mean?
If this means what it looks like it means, we didn't need just any ordinary Savior, we needed a great Savior. What does Paul mean when he says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins?
Let's look at the context first. There is a phrase in verse 3 that shows the seriousness of deadness. At the end it says,
“Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." In other words the things we have done to bring the wrath of God upon us we have done by nature. We need a Savior not just because we have sinned, but because we have sinned by nature. We are by nature sinners. Remember, that sin nature began with Adam, the first sinner in God’s eyes. We have Adam’s nature. It has been passed on as a congenital defect from generation to generation.
At the end of verse 2 it says that we are "sons of disobedience." Which is another way of saying that disobedience is in our spiritual genes. Rebellion runs in the human family. It is part of our sinful nature.
Now what does that have to do with being dead? It sounds like we were very much alive and active in our rebellion and disobedience. Indeed we were. But in being alive to disobedience, we were dead to obedience. In being alive to rebellion, we were dead to submission. In being alive to unbelief, we were dead to faith. We had no living spiritual nature to incline us to do anything for the glory of God and in reliance on his power. And lacking that spiritual nature, we were dead: dead to righteousness, dead to holiness, dead to obedience, dead to faith.
Spiritually speaking I was dead. Without a Savior I had no spiritual inclinations at all. For there was no spiritual life at all. And therefore I needed a Savior not only to forgive me for my sins, but also to give me spiritual life so that my heart would incline to trust God and obey him.
You can see this implied in verse 10 also. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.." Note the word "created." Do you see what that implies? The condition we were in before we had a Savior was so bad that we needed someone not only to forgive us but also to create us. This is an even more radical image than the one in verse 5. There we were only made alive out of our deadness. But in verse 10 we were created as though out of nothing. The point of both these images of conversion is that it took a miracle like resurrection or creation to give us spiritual life. It was non-existent, and had to be created. We were dead and had to be raised, supernaturally.
So we weren't just in the doghouse with God. We really were in the morgue. And whatever thoughts we thought or whatever feelings we felt or whatever deeds we did—they were not the thoughts and feelings and deeds of the Holy Spirit but of the flesh. Nothing that we thought or felt or did was spiritual, because we were dead spiritually. Everything we thought and felt and did came from what we were by nature, and by nature we were children of wrath.
Do you begin to see how utterly horrible was our condition without a Savior? Since we had no spiritual life within us but only death, everything we did was sin. For what is sin but falling short of the glory of God, and who does anything for the glory of God when he is spiritually dead? And so before the Savior came, before he quickened us and made us alive, all we did was gratify the sin nature.
But someone will say, "This can't be, because I know many unbelievers who do good deeds." Ah, but when you say that, you do not have a view to God. When you judge what is sin and what is righteousness, don't just think of man! Think of God. We were made for God! He is worthy of all our love and trust and honor and thanks and obedience and worship. We may well build our hospitals and feed the hungry and educate the ignorant, but if it doesn't spring from trust in God, and if we don't do it to give him glory, and if we don't have a view to the salvation of others, all we do is sin with respect to God. For further verification, turn to Romans 14:23. What does it say?
It says: “For whatsoever is not from faith is sin falling short of the glory of God is sin” . And therefore presuming to do good to men without pointing them to God is sin. All that any of us can do without a Savior is sin. For by nature we are spiritually dead. And until we are made alive by our Savior, nothing we do is spiritual, everything comes from the flesh. And therefore without a Savior all our so-called good deeds are rags and ashes. What does Isaiah 64:6 say about our righteousness? “We are all like one who is unclean, our righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight” Pretty stark image, isn’t it? This who chapter in Isaiah is full of stark imagery about what we are with God and without God. Read it for yourself sometime.
In Romans 8:6–9 Paul spells out in more detail what this spiritual deadness means. “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”
In other words, until the Savior comes and makes us alive by his Spirit, we are simply "in the flesh" (verse 9). That is, we simply have "the mind of the flesh"; and the mind of the flesh is in rebellion against God (verse 7). It is so much in rebellion against God, in fact, that it CANNOT submit to God's law (verse 7), and it CANNOT please God (verse 8). Therefore, verse 6 says, "The mind of the flesh is death." Spiritual death is the condition of being devoid of God's Spirit and therefore being unable to submit ourselves to God (verse 7) or please God (verse 8). In other words, without a Savior, everything we do is insubordination against God and displeasing to God.
I could go on and on multiplying passages that make the condition of spiritual deadness more vivid and terrible. For example:
1 Corinthians 2:14 “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised..”
Without a Savior to quicken us and make us spiritually alive, we are so perverted in our values that when we hear the truth of the gospel, we will think it is foolishness. And so our perverse sense of values will make us unable to grasp the truth for ourselves and be saved.
Romans 3:9–12
“What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE."
Without a Savior we are ruled by sin. We have no inclination to seek God. None of our deeds is good. All is the veiled expression of sin. We are useless.
Romans 6:17–18
“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. .”
Until the Savior set us free, we were slaves of sin.
Ephesians 4:17–18 “So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; .”
Without a Savior, our hearts were so hard that they gave rise only to spiritual ignorance and futility and exclusion. This darkness is the death spoken of in Ephesians 2:1, 5.
But let's draw the message to a close by looking at a word from the Savior himself concerning our deadness in sin. Was this just Paul's idea or did he learn it from Jesus?
In Matthew 8:21 a disciple approached Jesus and said, "Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father." And what did Jesus say to him? “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead. Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant?
Paul didn't originate the idea that there are people who are alive and yet dead—spiritually dead. Leave the dead to bury their own dead.
But what did Jesus think of this deadness? Was it excusable? In Matthew 23:27–28 he said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. "So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
So here is an example of the "righteous" dead man. A man clean and religious on the outside—like a whitewashed casket in the county morgue—and inside rotten bones and filthiness and death. No, our deadness is not excusable in God's sight. It is abominable. Our inability to submit to God and please God does not excuse us. The reason we can't submit without a Savior is because we don't want to. The power of our CANNOT is the depth of our WILL NOT.
And Jesus gives us the most sober warning and the most encouraging hope as we close.
He warns here in Matthew 23:27 that you can have your life squeaky clean on the outside and still be dead on the inside. We need a Savior not just to cap off our good deeds, not just to forgive our sins. We need a Savior because we are spiritually dead and helpless without him, no matter how good we look on the outside.
An Encouragement
And finally the Lord encourages you who are still dead in your sins, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” says John 5:24–25.
If you have any spiritual life within you, you owe it to the sovereign voice of the Savior. And if you don't yet have life in Christ, the voice says in Revelation 22:17,
“The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.”
Let’s close with this short story, told by Sellwyn Hughes in Every Day With Jesus: “A businessman took over the small factory of a company that had gone into liquidation and hired a completely new workforce with no knowledge of the factory. On the first morning he tried to get the machinery going, but despite pulling all the levers within reach and turning every wheel he could see, the machinery remained motionless. "Try oiling the bearings," suggested someone. He did, but nothing happened. `Let's get rid of all this dust, said another. Still there were no signs of movement. All kinds of advice was given and possible solutions tried, hut to no avail. Then some of the workers went into the boiler room and discovered that there was no fire in the boiler. So they opened the furnace door, put in some wood and started a fire. Soon steam, rushing into the cylinders, hit the pistons, and within an hour or two the great wheels began first to tremble, then turn. Fire was the answer.
After the service I went to the home of the church secretary for a meal, and on the way he said to me, 'You described the condition of our church. We have everything you would expect a church to have - except the fire. I’m afraid it has gone out: There is nothing sadder than a church where the fire has gone out. Unless the fire of the Holy Spirit is at work in a community there will he no movement and no real progress. It takes fire to get things going - and the fire must never be allowed to go out.”
Let’s pray: Oh Lord, send holy fire to this place. We want to burn for you, not burn in hell.