Resurrection Recreation

Ephesians 2:4-10

Riptide in Malibu

I was doomed… then I wasn’t.

We are dead

We don’t want to live in the place of doom and death and sin and sadness.

We reflect on the darkness so we can be blinded by the light.

Resurrection Recreation

Ephesians 2:4-10

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

But God…

The great contrast of sin. We were doomed, we were helpless in our sin. By nature we were sin and death, our culture taught us sin and death and superior spiritual forces were ensuring our sin and death.

But… God was not content with this situation.

Rich in Mercy

God could afford mercy… because He is rich in it. He has a lot of it. He has an abundance of it, in fact. He could afford to act… but why would He?

Great love

Because of the great love with which He loved us. Because He loved us. Because He loved us with a GREAT love. He agaped us. We could just stop here. He, God, loved us. Not only a fond feeling toward us, but an absolute commitment to our well being.

Because He loved us, He was motivated to save us. Because He was rich in mercy He could afford to save us…

We were dead… made us alive with Christ

So He saved us. Even while we were dead, He reached down, actually He walked down and saved us Himself.

And, a parenthetical hint for later, it is by grace you have been saved.

Tandem Parachuting

Years ago I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. I was not wearing a parachute.

I was strapped to another dude and he was wearing a parachute. When his parachute pulled, it pulled me up with him and saved us both.

It’s like Christ jumped out of the plane after us, into certain death. And we linked up to him in our death, in His death all together. Then when God pulled Christ up and out of death, we are raised with him.

But it gets better.

Raised us up with him… and seated us with him…

He wasn’t finished, God raised us up with him and, then He glorified Christ, seating him above all others. And it says He seated us with him.

As if the parachute doubled as a hot-air balloon, we are now higher than we ever were. Higher than the prince of the power of the air who gave us so much trouble. Exalted and glorified with and in Christ.

In coming ages

IN contrast to the age of this world, the spirit of the age that we live in now, now we look forward to ages, age upon age.

Immeasurable riches of grace

You thought He was rich in mercy, wait till you see how much grace He has.

Mercy is limited by how creative we are in sinning. Grace is limited only by how creative He is in giving.

He saved us by grace and by grace He glorified us and by grace He wants to show us blessing upon blessing for eternity.

By grace through faith

“For by grace you have been saved through faith”

Here we find these two pals. Grace and faith. Grace is God’s unmerited favor by which He gifts us salvation. He offers it and we are saved, the verse says “it is a gift of God.”

Faith is the act of apprehending that salvation, grabbing onto it, receiving it, but having received it stepping out and walking in it. It is a response, but a necessary response. This is the part that at least feels like our part, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like an easy part. We trust our life to the parachute. We, by faith, trust our life and future and self, by faith, in Christ.

No boasting

“This is not your doing” – the “this” refers not to our faith or His grace which are both feminine nouns. It refers grammatically to being saved.

And it immediately implies that people have a tendency to boast. We have a tendency to think our works deserve salvation. And this faith business is, perhaps, the trickiest of avenues for this. If I interpret “my faith” in such a way that it is a work, an achievement of my effort, then I have reason to boast! Paul says “No!” So obviously I have gone wrong somewhere.

You did not save yourself. You couldn’t. You were trapped in the undercurrent, trapped in the riptide. You were falling without a parachute. You could not save yourself, you were saved by Christ in Christ. Whatever part your faith plays in the equation, it doesn’t leave room for boasting.

His workmanship, created for good works

So we are saved… what are we saved to?

We are His workmanship. I always thought of this in terms of God’s Creation of me, stretching back to Creation. But it refers here to God’s recreation of me in Christ. The new me.

Recreated in Christ Jesus, a new Creation. Re-natured, re-souled, re-spirited, a new act of Creation and destined for good works.

You Are Awesome. You Didn’t Do It

So, from sin and death to grace and glory and salvation and amazingness. That’s quite a change. This is Resurrection. This is Recreation. This is everything different.

But… everything around us did not change. And that sin nature that doomed us in the first place rears its ugly head and attempts to distort our apprehension of this new life and creation. The spirit of our age continues to teach and influence. And Satan does what he can to distort our understanding. There are two Salvation truths that get really easily distorted.

You are now glorious and recreated for good works.

You didn’t do it.

You struggle with at least one of those. And maybe, if you struggle with one of those, you don’t even need to hear the other.

Some Christians get stuck in the wretchedness of the sin and death from which they were saved. “Oh, it’s true, I am a wretched sinner…” and stay stuck in that brokenness. And we need to recognize our sin… but God saved us from that, and raised us up in Christ and seated us with Him, and prepared good, glorious works for us to do as His remade workmanship. Which says this: You are no longer wretched, you are amazing. You are recreated and ready to do good, glorious works.

Some of you, You know you are awesome, you love doing good works… but you need to be reminded constantly that you didn’t do it. By grace you are saved. By God’s gift alone. You need to hear over and over that you didn’t save you lest you start working out of your own power. Lest you start walking out of the good works He prepared for you to do and start doing your own thing.

Both of these things are true, walk in them both, really lean into the one you have trouble believing.

You are amazing. God has recreated you in Christ to do good works, and He has it all set up for you.

You didn’t do it. God saved you by grace alone, through faith that leaves no room for boasting.

We Are Awesome. We Didn’t Do It.

As a church body, we hold on to this truth. We are each recreated to new life, we are ALL recreated to new life. We are each God’s workmanship, created for good works… but we are ALL created for good works which God prepared beforehand.

And we are to walk around in that new sphere.

We, as God’s community of people, are called to do amazing things, good things, and God has set it all up for us. He wants us to be AMAZING! And while we are being amazing, we remind each other that we can do all these things IN CHRIST, because only in Christ do we have this new life from which we can live and do good works.

By grace through faith.

And here is the beauty. You have trouble believing you can be AMAZING, but you are never boasting. Whereas you see and get excited about doing amazing, awesome things… but you can slip into the idea that it’s all you.

But if you’re working together, see, you spur him on and you keep him honest and together, the body of Christ does amazing things in Christ, by grace through faith alone.

What are the amazing things, the good things God has prepared for us? More about that in coming weeks?

But how do we walk in them, how do we enter joyfully into the new life, our recreation life.

Latch on to whichever of these you have trouble believing and walk in it.

You have been re-created to do amazing things.

This is not your own doing.

The new You is Awesome. You didn’t do it.