Around this time of the year, every year, I find myself looking back and reflecting on what has been. I think there is something very healthy about that. In our spiritual lives there is something very healthy about that as well. We are often taught that we need to forget everything in the past, and there is something healthy about saying that, for Paul himself says, when thinking about the things he tried to do well before Jesus Christ, “This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, I press forward.” So, there is a value and a healthiness to forgetting things in the past sometimes.
However, the very same apostle who said that is most often bringing up who we once were before Christ. I think there is a reason for that, even as he does it here in Ephesians 2:10 starting out, “And you were…” referring to the past. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul again is not shy about bringing up his past. He says, “I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” So, he is remembering his past, but he follows that up by saying this: “But by the grace of God, I am what I am.” Paul remembers his past, remembers who he was outside of Christ. Why? In order that he might better understand the grace of God that has been shown to him in Christ Jesus.
So there is at the same time a call for us to forget the things that we have done while striving for good, for they are of no help to us, and there is a need for us to remember who we once were that we might better understand what God has done toward us. Thus, the more we understand who we once were, the more beautiful the gospel becomes to us. The reason we often do not delight in the work of Christ is because we do not know what has been accomplished in our lives. So, this morning as we look at the text, I simply want to look at four things quickly. They are: who we were before Christ, what God has done, what this means, and what then we should do in light of this.
If you are a Christian, this is who you once were. If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, this is who you are right now this very moment. Paul writes in verse one, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” This is an interesting construction. In English we cannot do this, but in the original text, there is no main verb here. It is simply, “You being dead in your trespasses and sins.” In fact, there is no main verb in this whole passage until you get to verse 5, and the subject there is God – “God made you alive.” Thus, from the very outset, Paul simply starts out, “You being dead in your trespasses and sins.” That is one’s state.
Before coming to Christ, a person is not simply mortally wounded in his sins. That is, it is not as if we are dying and we’re hurt and we are in sin, and if God can help us maybe even as much as 99% of what we need, we can come through with the other 1%. That is not the picture given in verse 1. We were dead, dead in our trespasses and sins. Sometimes I speak to my brother-in-law, or other people I know that are lost, and I think, “Do they not hear me? What is the deal?” The deal is that men are dead in their trespasses and sins outside of Jesus Christ, and so once were we. That is the reason preaching the gospel is so important. That is the reason that simply reasoning with a man is not the answer. We need the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to be preached, for that power is what will wake a man up, will make a man come alive. So, first, we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
Two, we were bound to the powers of evil. Look at verses 2 and 3. He says, “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.” Not only is a man dead in his sins, as if that would not be enough, but we walk outside of Christ according to the course of this world. That is, there is a pervading evilness about the world. Ephesians 5 says, “Do not be foolish … for the days are evil.” The course and age of this world is evil, and we were walking therein.
Not only were we walking in this course of evil, but we were being controlled by the evil one, himself. Paul writes of the spirit that is working in the sons of disobedience. That is, we are dead in our sins; we are walking according to evil; and at that, we are walking under the control of Satan. 1 John 5 tells us, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Outside of Christ, we lie in the power of the evil one. We are his. He is our owner, our possessor. Because we are dead in our sins, Satan has grasped us, and we walk according to his desire. Do not be fooled: there is no man who simply goes about on his own. He is either led by God or by the evil one, and in this case, everyone outside of Christ is not only dead in their sins, walking in the world, but they are under the power of the evil one, following their fleshly desires.
Paul writes there in verse 3, “indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” So, we are under the power of the evil one, dead in our sins, and indulging in our fleshly desires. Finally, in verse 3, Paul says that we were, by our very nature, children of wrath. Verse 3: “Among them we too formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, by nature, children of wrath, even as the rest.” At one point in time, all that we merited was the wrath of God. When God looked at us, he burned with wrath. Don’t be deceived and think that God is not looking with wrath upon those who are not his, for he does. In fact, Romans 2:5 says that we are storing up for ourselves wrath in the day of judgment. It is as if by walking in an unrepentant state, we have a big basket on our heads, and we are screaming to God, “Add more wrath here! Burn down on me!” That is how God once looked at us. That is why Paul can write – don’t look over his words – that we were once his enemies. God burned toward us in wrath because we were dead in our sins, walking under the power of the evil one and indulging in the desires of the flesh.
And not simply were we under his wrath, but we were by nature children of wrath. That is, in our very nature, we were commanding the wrath of God to come on us. How is it by nature? Most of you with children will easily acknowledge this. We are not born with clean slates. I am not born good. I am not even born neutral. I am born sinful and with a desire to sin. That is to say, even from my birth, my heart is opposed to God. Even from my birth, I am born dead in sin under the power of the evil one, wanting to indulge my fleshly desires. Why does this happen? Why is everyone by nature a child of wrath?
Paul elaborates on this in Romans 5:12. There is a doctrine here that I want you to understand. Many of us have probably heard this thrown around, but I want us to understand these kinds of things. You may have heard of the doctrine of original sin. It is simply referring to the idea that I am not born good or neutral and at some point in life I sinned and turned bad. The doctrine of original sin says that even from my birth, I am sinful because in Adam all men sinned. That is, in Genesis 3 in the garden, when Adam takes of the fruit that God commanded him not to, and he takes a bite of it and sins. Now, in some way, we were all there in Adam, participating with him. Physically, we all come from Adam. He is the head of the human race, so coming from Adam in some sense, we were all there in him sinning in the garden. So, the reason that when I am born, even as a newborn baby, I am sinful, and my heart is not neutral or good, but in rebellion to God is because I have already sinned in Adam.
In Romans 5:12, Paul writes, “Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered into the world, so death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” What is the wage of sin? The wages of sin is death. Keep that in mind, because it is key in Paul’s argument. Verse 13: “For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Adam is created in the garden. Now, Adam did receive a specific command: “Do not eat of the fruit.” He disobeyed God and sinned, but from the time of Adam until the time of Moses when the law is given, there is no law. That means if there is no law, you cannot impute sin to somebody. If there is no law to break, how can I be a law-breaker? So, if there is not sin imputed to men without the law, none of them should have received the wages of sin: death. None of them should have been dying, but Paul said death spread to all men. Verse 14: “Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam [that is even those who had not sinned by receiving a direct command from God and disobeying it] who is a type of him who was to come.” Summing up these three verses, Paul says this: If the wages of sin is death, and if sin cannot be imputed without law, and yet between Adam and until the law was given, men must have sinned somewhere.
There must have been a command given by God that they rebelled against because they were dying before the law had even been given. The answer: It is because in Adam all men sinned. You want to know why it is that I was not born good or even neutral? It is because I sinned in Adam, and sin spreads to all men, and death spreads to all men because all men sinned in Adam. Paul would later write in 1 Corinthians 15, “In Adam, we sin; in Christ we are made alive.” Therefore, I was born in sin; you were born in sin. If God blesses Lili and me with a child, he or she will be born in sin. Therefore, by nature, we are children of wrath before God. That is who we were. If you are not born again, God’s wrath is burning against you, by your very nature.
It is pretty hopeless and helpless, for if by our nature we are bound in the powers of the evil one, children of wrath, and are dead in our sins, then how can there be any hope for us? That is the right question. The answer is in what God has done.
Verse 4: “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 together with Christ Jesus.” Therefore, God has made us alive, raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places.
Does that sound familiar from a text we looked at last week? Turn back to Ephesians 1:18. “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe, in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” That is, God made Christ alive, raised him up and seated him in the heavenly places. So, God has made us alive with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places.
That is just as I was joined with Adam in his sin and brought sin and death to myself, so I have life by a similar union with Jesus Christ. God has taken us and he has made us alive by taking us from Adam and placing us in Jesus Christ. So, just as Adam sinned, and death came to me, so Christ’s righteousness and his life come to me. Our answer for how we can be blameless before a holy God is Jesus Christ. God has made me one with Christ, and he made him alive, overcoming death and seated him with himself in the heavenly places. So, in a sense we are there too. We have been raised. The only hope we have is that God would unite us with Christ. That is why Paul can write in 1 Corinthians 15: “Through Adam men sin; in Christ men are made alive.”
In a sense, we could speak of our salvation, “We were saved and are saved, and yet we are still awaiting our salvation.” And, Paul tells us we are all seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and at the same time I am here struggling with sin. Paul writes that because it is assured and has been done. In another sense, we still wait for it to happen. That is why Paul can write to the Romans, “All who are justified are glorified.” It is so sure; it will be there, but we are still in this life now.
Second, he has saved us to show us his kindness and grace. That is, all I merit by my very nature is God’s wrath, and he has saved me. Why? To show me his kindness and grace. Verse 6: “And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus in order that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” He has made us alive; he has seated us with Christ; and he has done this so that he might show his kindness toward us who only deserve his wrath.
Third, he has created us as part of a new creation for good works that he has prepared before the foundation of the world. Verse 10: “We are his workmanship.” That is to say, we are his masterpiece, his creation. “For we are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” We looked at the book of Genesis a few months ago, and one of the main things I wanted us to see from it is that the Bible tells a story. There is creation, the fall, redemption through Jesus Christ, and ultimately there is a new creation. That is what we wait for. We know how the story is going to end. We were created; we fell; we’ve been redeemed, and now we can await the new creation, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. What we are as believers right now are the first-fruits of the new creation.
When I was little, my parents had a couple of gardens in their back yard. We would plant different things. I remember being very impatient. I would go out day after day and walk up and down the garden just looking, and finally there would be some day that I would see something very little coming up. I would go get my dad, and he would walk out there, and I would say, “Is that it?” He would say, “No, that’s not it. But, that is the foretaste of it. You know it’s coming. That is just the guarantee that it will happen.”
We get a glimmer of hope now of what one day will be. We as Christians right now in the world, living in the old creation, are foretastes of the new creation. James 1:18 tells us: “In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we might be as it were the first-fruits among his creation.” Verse 10: “He created us anew as part of the new creation that we might be the first fruits of the new creation.” We ourselves are a little taste to one another and to the world of what heaven will be like. But, we have been created for good works. We who by nature and under the power of the evil one always indulged in the lust of our flesh and walked after evil works and did everything in rebellion to God, God has created us and before the foundation of the world has prepared good works that we should walk in them.
In essence, what God has done is he has taken everything that we are and everything we are inclined to and everything that we did and deserved, and he has changed who we are and changed what we are inclined to and changed what we do, and he has changed what we deserve. For what we deserve now, not of our own merit, but in union with Christ and simply by the grace of God, is to see the surpassing riches of grace because Christ died for us. So, we need to remember who we are, what God has done, and what this means.
Paul hits on it in verse 5 and comes back to it in verse 8. In verse 5 he does it by adding a parentheses here. He says, “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ,” and he adds, “By grace you have been saved.” He writes in verses 8 and 9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God, and not a result of works, that no one should boast.” What this means for us is that salvation is wholly a work of grace. It is crucial that we realize that. Because if the greatest commandment is loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (and it is, and Jesus tells us, “He who has been forgiven much loves much,”), then we must realize that we are saved by the grace of God. And, too, we must realize that there is no room for boasting now. An arrogant Christian strikes against the very nature of what has happened in our life. In a sense, this cannot happen. It is like brown wood being black. It cannot be both one and the other. To be arrogant and to boast as Christians is crazy. To sit and look at the man who does not know Christ and is a child of wrath, we should look on that man not in boasting but in pity and worship to our God because outside of his grace, we are just like him. I cannot say that I was greater, for I was inclined to evil. We must realize that salvation is a work of grace.
The second thing we need to realize is that we have power to live godly in Christ Jesus. The danger sometimes of remembering who we were is that we often think of ourselves there again. Even after we are born again, we sin, and Satan feeds us a line that says, “This is just who we are. This is what we do.” At one time that was true, but now being a new creation, it is no longer true. Behold, old things have passed away and all things have become new. When Satan feeds you the lie, we should stand up and say, “No, for I have been created in Christ Jesus and though once the spirit of disobedience was leading me, now I have been placed in Christ Jesus, and in fact, God has prepared good works that I could walk in them.” There are good works that you should be about doing that God has prepared specifically for you.
My dad, from as early as I can remember, would take me and say, “Lee, God has prepared great things for you. He is going to use your life powerfully.” I believed it my whole life. I believe it now. When I was fifteen years old, I remember sitting in the back of the church and God had been pounding my heart with the calling to do what I am doing right now, and I had kind of run from it, and I remember the thought coming to my mind that I was fifteen years old. Why would God be setting me apart for this work right here? And, I thought, “Wait, if what Dad told me my whole life has been true, it just makes sense.” Right now, I am probably one of the most idealistic people in the world. I am not going to settle for simply going about life. God is going to use my life. Why? Because he has said he would. But, it is not unique for me; it is the same for you. He has created good works before the foundation of the world that you should walk in them. The greatness of a person is not in being called to preach. The greatness of a person is simply being called to be a Christian because we can all point to Christ. God has good works prepared for you. Don’t believe it because I have said it. Believe it because of Ephesians 2:10. Next time you think he is calling you to something great, and you think, “I’m not sure. Who am I?” You think, “I am someone called to great works that he has prepared before the foundation of the world.” Though we once were people who were evil and by our nature children of wrath, what God did made us alive, created us anew.
Let me leave you with three answers to this question.
1. Live in humility. We are what we are by the grace of God. This leaves no room for boasting in ourselves, ever. Live as a humble people before God.
2. Pursue godliness. God has prepared good works for you to walk in and has created you for the task. Seek these works out in your pursuit to reflect the character of Christ in your actions.
3. Expect God to use you mightily. He has created and redeemed you for such. Believe his Word and expect him to use your life to greatly radiate his glory.
Grace be with you, Amen.