Eph 2:1-10 = But God...
Grave clothes or Grace clothes?
Intro
Message
Apart from Christ, We Were Spiritually Dead
With Christ, We Are Spiritually Alive
This doctrine is so important that one commentator rightly called it “the heart of Paul’s religion.” John Murray wrote, “Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”2 Arthur W. Pink is even more emphatic: “The subject of spiritual union is the most important, the most profound, and yet the most blessed of any that is set forth in sacred Scripture.” But he also rightly notes that “sad to say, there is hardly any which is now more generally neglected. The very expression ‘spiritual union’ is unknown in most professing Christian circles, and even where it is employed it is given such a protracted meaning as to take in only a fragment of this precious truth.”
“The difference between the sinner and the Christian, the unbeliever and the believer, is not that the believer, the Christian, has certain faculties which the other man lacks. No, what happens is that this new disposition given to the Christian directs his faculties in an entirely different way. He is not given a new brain; he is not given a new intelligence, or anything else. He has always had these; they are his servants, his instruments, his ‘members,’ as Paul calls them in the sixth chapter of Romans; what is new is a new bent, a new disposition. He has turned in a different direction; there is a new power working in him and guiding his faculties. This is the thing that makes a man a Christian.”
In Christ, We Are God’s Workmanship
All we can do (but also must do) is take the pitcher God puts in our hand—and thank him because it is a lot better than anything we ever had before.
Catholic theology says: “Faith plus works equal justification.”
Protestants reply: “Faith equals justification plus works.”
Close
Are you wearing the “graveclothes” or the “grace-clothes”? Are you enjoying the liberty you have in Christ, or are you still bound by the habits of the old life in the graveyard of sin? As a Christian, you have been raised and seated on the throne. Practice your position in Christ! He has worked for you; now let Him work in you and through you, that He might give you an exciting, creative life to the glory of God.
How to Explain God’s G-R-A-C-E
G-oodness of God
R-edemption by God
A-ssistance from God
C-reated for God
E-ternity with God
Are you wearing the “graveclothes” or the “grace-clothes”? Are you enjoying the liberty you have in Christ, or are you still bound by the habits of the old life in the graveyard of sin? As a Christian, you have been raised and seated on the throne. Practice your position in Christ! He has worked for you; now let Him work in you and through you, that He might give you an exciting, creative life to the glory of God.