Made Alive
Ephesians 2:1-10
Main Idea: By grace, God makes dead sinners alive through faith in Christ for His glory.
I. Dead in Sin (2:1-3)
Ephesians 2:1–3: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”
3 enemies or causes of this deadness of soul:
The World
The Devil (Prince of Power of the Air)
The Flesh
“Consider the overall impact of these three verses. Paul is not speaking of sin the way we often do: “I messed up,” “I made a mistake,” “I’m struggling with … “; Paul identifies sin as the comprehensive, enveloping, inexorable flow of our lives. Our sins are less like an otherwise healthy man occasionally tripping up and more like a man who is disease ridden head to foot–or, if we take the language of Ephesians 2 seriously, dead.”
~ Dane Ortland, Gently & Lowly (pg. 175)
II. Alive in Christ (2:4-7)
Ephesians 2:4–7: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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 coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”
Who He Is - “mercy, love, grace, and kindness”
“Because mercy is who he is. If mercy was something he simply had, while his deepest nature was something different, there would be a limit on how much mercy he could dole out. But if he is essentially merciful, then for him to pour out mercy is for him to act in accord with who he is. It is simply for him to be God. When God shows mercy, he is acting in a way that is true to himself. Once again, this does not mean that he is only merciful. He is also perfectly just and holy. He is rightly wrathful against sin and sinners. Following Scripture’s lead in how it talks about God, however, these attributes of moral standard do not reflect his deepest heart.”
~Dane Ortland, Gentle and Lowly (pg. 173)
What He Has Done - “made us alive, saved us from death, raised us up, seated us with Him”
2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”
Romans 2:4: “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
III. All For His Glory (2:8-10)
Ephesians 2:8–10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not 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, that we should walk in them.”
John 6:28-29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
“The work we are called to do is to rest from our own work to make ourselves right with God and believe in the work of Jesus on our behalf. We are saved by faith in Jesus’s work, not our own. We all live by faith in someone or something. And everything that we are and do is a result of what we believe. Our behaviors are the tangible expression of our beliefs.”
~ Jeff Vanderstelt (Gospel Fluency, pg. 78)
“Good works are indispensable to salvation–not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence... Thus the paragraph ends as it began, with our human ‘walk’, a Hebrew idiom for our manner of life. Formerly we walked in trespasses and sins in which the devil has trapped us; now we walk in good works which God has eternally planned for us to do.”
~ John Stott
Romans 7:15–16: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see
Was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed
Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far
And Grace will lead us home
And Grace will lead us home”
