This Week's Sermon Manuscript

A few years ago, If you’ve ever wanted to live in a castle, this was your chance. The state of Saxony in eastern Germany had a dozen castles for sale, each priced at one Euro.

There is a catch, however. According to a New York Times article, the historic structures are in advanced stages of disrepair, and buyers must restore each property “consistent with its historical architecture.” Estimates for restoration run from $7 million to $60 million per castle.

It has occurred to me that buying a fixer-upper’s nightmare gives us a picture of what God has done for each of us in Jesus. Ephesians 2:1 bluntly states our condition without Christ—”dead in trespasses and sins.” But the hopelessness of the human condition never deters God’s love.

The renovation and renewal the Father carries out in all who receive His Son begins with new life. “But God, . . . even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (vv.4-5). And what God purchased at the great cost of His only Son, He gives to us freely (vv.5-9).

Like derelict castles restored far beyond their former glory, our transformed lives point others to God, who is rich in mercy, grace, and love. (Daily Bread August 12, 1998)

Last week we talked about Paul’s reverential awe of God’s power and glory. Paul reminded his readers about the power of God manifested in the resurrection of Christ Jesus. We were invited to join Paul in singing to the praise of God’s glory. It was a moment of awe and wow. The grand vision in Ephesians has its foundation in the life of Jesus and in an understanding of the mind of God.

Paul now shifts into the territory where we live our lives. It is the place we call home for now. Paul wants to remind us of how our lives were before Christ -- dead and then contrast it with what it is now in Christ -- because of Christ the focus is life, not death; freedom, not slavery. The motive is love, not oppression. The initiative flows from God's compassion. Our passage uses words like love, grace, mercy, a number of times. This big vision is enough to bring the diverse cultures (Jews and Gentiles) together. Not that they cease to be Jews and Gentiles. In the vision and its image - lived out in Christ our head, the template for this new creation - there is room for people to be what they were created to be.

When we focus more sharply on the contrasts we can see why the author speaks of the need for such a vision. Christian life is examined in terms of a "before and after" contrast resulting from divine intervention. The enactment of divine love and grace has radically altered everything about who we are and whose we are, about how we live, why we live, and even where we live.

In Ephesians 2 Paul takes us from the depths of the Death Valley of the soul and then up to “the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Paul shifts from the cosmic scene to the earthly scene and looks back at our human past, which was under the power of a contrary cosmic power. The transition is abrupt. “You were dead.” (Ephesians 2:1) Because we were by nature dead children of wrath, only God through his mercy and grace in Christ could do anything about it. Paul’s language is in black and white, “death and life.” Before we lived under the influence of Satan and his kingdom. It was this spirit that left us for dead. But now it is the spirit that raised Christ from the dead that makes us fully alive. Having said that, we still need to live out the resurrection life, against a present evil empire that is very much still at work opposing the gospel of King Jesus. This evil that Paul is speaking about is more than humanity out of control; it is demonic.

We are moving from being sin-dead to continually becoming resurrection alive. All of this is possible because we are victorious in Christ, it is He who now sets the standards by which we live and now the ruler of the kingdom of the air. It is time to stop being spectators looking on from the roadside of resurrection life and get into living the resurrection life that is ours in Christ. It is time to grow up!

Paul opens our text with a kaleidoscopic depiction of our former reality and conduct by speaking of living people being dead. (verses 1-3). Previously we were dead because of our trespasses and sins by which we conducted our lives (verses 1-2a). Such existence was also a matter of utter bondage to malevolent powers, which the text describes variously in verses 2b-3 as "this world," "the ruler of the power of the air," and "flesh". 
 The death in which people lived is characterised by being dominated by destructive powers. Paul is clear here he doesn’t mean that they were merely in danger of death, but that they were in a state of real and present death.

In the cosmology of Ephesians, "this world" refers to the present age in enmity with God (cf. 1:21). Here "air" is understood to be the zone between earth and the heavens, which is inhabited and ruled by antagonistic forces exercising control over the world below. Later in Ephesians, this ruler is labelled the devil (4:27; 6:11). The term "flesh" depicts the human condition so turned in on itself that one's passions, cravings, and mindset are in total disrepute and disobedience thus marking us as children of wrath (verse 3). While this was the former existence of Christians, it remains the current reality of all non-Christians (“those who are disobedient” verse 2b).

One could reduce Paul’s thought here to demonology, but the author locates it very much within and among human beings. Careful not to give the impression that only non-Jews were and are in such a plight, the author affirms that the same applied to Jews (2:3). It assumes people are swayed by values and powers, which they do not question and whose vision is different from God's.

The globalisation which Ephesians envisions is not one which exploits in the interests of a few, but one which includes and cares in the interests of all. It produces spirals, which lead out of conflict and distrust, whereas the globalisation of the world's empires exacerbates conflict into war and to protect its interests needs to be able to discount others and treat them as expendable collateral to its aims.

Whether grand political powers, or the individualised motivations of a single human being, these are the forces which argue for self-gratification and protection of self-interest. They are not generous (except if there is some reward) and depend on assumptions that some people do not matter: sharing of resources with others can be at most incidental and 'useful' investment.

Paul paints a picture of warfare with 'powers' holding a very significant role. There is still tension in living out the reality of Christ in the world. For Paul, the believer has been transferred from one realm of existence to another. Before new life in Christ humanity existed under the lordship of the world, the devil and the flesh. In being transferred to the holy realm of existence in Christ, the audience is reminded that each one is to project the reality of that transference into the midst of their former realm.

Eugene Peterson warns us of the danger of creating a hybrid of American-Christian. He makes the case that in the ancient days God’s people were countercultural to the fad of the present age of their day. They worshipped a crucified Saviour as the revelation of God. He believes that we have cross-fertilised American with Christian, therefore creating the hybrid “American –Christian.” In the art of cross fertilisation there is always the danger of creating something worse than the best in both species, therefore, a mongrel. Peterson goes on to say, “The Latin hybrida, literally translated, is just that, a mongrel, the offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar. When the wild bull of American ambition is bred with a tame Christianity with no cross, the result is mongrel Christianity – a “Christian” with both the image of God and the crucified Saviour lost in the cross breeding. The distinctive element in the human is lost. The distinctive element in Jesus is lost. An anti Christ?” In others words, – dead.

The threefold slavery to the world, the flesh and the devil had held Paul’s readers bound. Hence, they needed a deliverer – Jesus the Christ and so do we.

In the face of our disobedience, God has shown us His mercy and love through His Son who is at the heart of the cosmos and its powers. In other words, God intervened! Christ's cosmic standing has given us a place in the Father's future plans for us to become 'sons of obedience' through that power that raised Christ from the dead. While we were dead and enslaved to the world the flesh and the devil Christ Jesus steps into our situation and makes us alive. From this truth of freedom and empowerment by the Holy Spirit shall all teaching and ethical guidelines flow in the latter chapters of this letter. . 

Paul links this 'move' from death to life with the death and resurrection of Jesus. The execution of Jesus was not a major event for Rome or the local Judean authorities. It was little more than a bit of tidying up in the interests of the empire and its interests. The death symbolises all deaths caused by injustice. The resurrection is a blatant defiance that death is the end of the story. Those who enter the death, see it at work on themselves and in themselves (including in their group, family, community and nation), have a chance to move from death to life. The being of God is the gift, which persuades people to choose the offer of life.

The power in Jesus’ resurrection keeps us from making ourselves and puts the formative work in the hands of Christ who overcame death.  Eugene Peterson says it perfect, “When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are.  When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do.”

Though we were children of wrath, God acted out of the wealth of divine mercy and abundance of love (verse 4). This divine conversion had nothing to do with how loveable we were, but with how incredibly loving God is. Thus, God made us alive with Christ, raised us with Christ, and sat us in the heavenly places where Christ now rules over all powers and dominions (2:5-6 echoing 1:20-21). In the Greek, the three verbs "made alive, raised, and seated" all have a prefix meaning "with," highlighting how God did to us what God had previously done to Christ. This emphasizes the divinely wrought solidarity shared between Christ and Christians.

Snodgrass quotes R. Tannehill: 'Christ's death and resurrection are not merely events which produce benefits for the believer but are events in which the believer himself (herself) participates.'

The story of Christ becomes the story of his followers. These verses present a radical change in our walk as we move from death to life. It is a serious call to relational faith and participation in Christ. In Paul’s words, "6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

3. The Gift of New Life by Grace and Faith (Through His Favour and our Faith in Him)  

Therefore, we are saved not by our own works, but by God’s work in Christ. In fact, we are his workmanship, not our workmanship. Work is first of all what God does, not what we do. As his workmanship, our purpose in God's plan was not merely for him to purchase us and give us a position in his plan, but for us to serve through "good works." Eugene Peterson notes, “Resurrection Christians are not rewarded the bonus of a reduced worksheet . . .. So what changes when Paul sets “work” as a companion word alongside “grace” if the next day, having been “raised with him,” we return to the same jobs, the same responsibilities, the same workplace conditions?’ This: we are no longer working for General Electric, the government, the school board, the hospital, Safeway. We are God’s work and doing God’s work: ‘we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.’”

Paul’s language here shows that it is really about God's creative generosity (Gen. 1-2). God's intention all along has been that people become what they were made to be and the 'earth be filled with the glory of God'. God's glory is God's goodness. The move which the passage celebrates is not a move from this world to the next, from the outer to the inner world, from the world to the church community, but a move from a death way of being to a life way of being - here and now. 'Created for good works' (2:10) might also be 'created to work well, to be in good working order'.

The 'good works' are not to be reduced to a list of moral 'do's which match a list of moral 'don't's. Throughout the passage 'good' is about God's goodness and generosity. It is about finding life in which we know ourselves to be made for love and compassion. The choice of life and death is often not a choice between blatant opposites, but between what masquerades as good and what truly is good for humankind and our world. That is why it is so hard for people to make the move. 

God has transferred us from the dead, present course of this world to a Christ's course in the heavenly places because of his kindness and grace. As a result, his purpose in us can be met, which is for us to serve him. 

One of the strong emphases in the Bible is that God’s grace is not given to us merely for our own benefit, but is something that is to be shared with others. It could even be said that it is given to us for the very purpose of benefiting others. When God appeared to Abraham at the very beginning of Israel’s spiritual history, he made him two promises: “I will bless you…and you will be a blessing” (see Genesis 12:1-3). In his excellent and challenging book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Miroslav Volf says of this passage: “The same double blessing is given to us. If we just enjoy good things without passing them on, if we are blessed without being a blessing, then we fail in our purpose as channels. We are givers because we were made that way, and if we don’t give, we are at odds with ourselves.”

Eugene Peterson shares the following story, “In fifty years of being a pastor, my most difficult assignment continues to be the task of developing a sense among the people I serve of the soul transforming implications of grace – a comprehensive, foundational reorientation from living anxiously by my wits and muscle to living effortlessly in the world of God’s active presence. The prevailing North American culture (not much different from the Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman cultures in which our biblical ancestors lived) is, is to all intents and purposes, a context of persistent denial of grace. “ (PR, p. 96)