We are working our way through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
The series is called every spiritual
blessing and new life in Christ. We’ve worked our way over the last three weeks
through the first chapter of the epistle.
Paul's greeting, then in a wonderful exuberant paragraph long
sentence Paul speaks of God blessing us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Choosing us before creation, planning to have us reconciled with God through
his son, adopting us through Jesus Christ. Redeeming us, by Christ’s death for
our sins, lavishing his grace upon us, including us as we hear the gospel truth,
and marking us as belonging to God by filling us with the presence of the Holy
Spirit, to the glory of God. This causes Paul to break out into an equally exuberant
prayer for his readers. That that mind-blowing list of every spiritual blessing
would be a growing reality in their/our lives.
Then Paul begins to speak about how those spiritual
blessings are worked out in the lives of
the church, he will speak of the Church being this new creation in Christ, a
new people from across the main dividing lines of society in their day, and how
we live that out in practical everyday terms. But before that in the passage we
had read today Paul speaks of how we have been impacted by God’s grace as
individuals. Again in a paragraph long sentence, we have a concise, poignant
expression of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul does it in a way that we are probably quite used to
from the advertising world. Maybe in a way that they stole from us. He gives us
the before picture, I’m used to looking like the before picture when it comes
to weight loss programs or hair replacement therapy. Paul paints a stark
picture of the human condition without Christ. Then we have the product that
changes everything… After the first three verses we hear these amazing words…But
God…because of God’s grace. Then in the last three verses of this passage we
have the after picture, alive again in Christ, a life full of meaning and
purpose.
So lets look at this passage, the before picture (saved
from) the product (saved By) the after picture (saved for).
Saved from… Paul uses three ways of painting the before picture
(the human condition).
The first is that you were dead in your transgressions and
sins. In Greek there are two words for life bios, which means physical life,
it’s the root of words such as biology, and the word Zoe, from which we get the
words zoo and zoology, zoe speaks of a more spiritual vitality, that real spark
within us, being alive to God. Paul is
talking primarily of that spiritual deadness. Caused by our sin and
transgression. We may still have that bios life, but it too will end, but that
zoe life has died. Some people might speak of that as that aching lack at the
core of life… the God shaped hole. You were dead in your sins and
transgressions, separate from God, the source of zoe life.
The second way is slavery, We do not walk or live in the
ways of God, that please and reflect God rather we are dominated by this unholy
trinity… we walked in the ways of the spirit
of this age, in Greek roman times, Paul is peaking to his gentile audience,
that would mean things like pagan religion, relying on their wisdom in our own
time it maybe something like secular humanism or philosophical materialism, that
deny the presence and even existence of God. That allows us simply to do our
own thing, some good and some bad.
Paul goes on to talk of being under the ruler of the kingdom
of the air. First century Greeks and romans believed that the space between heaven
and earth was a place where spirits ruled, and they lived a lot of theirs live oppressed
by these spirits, trying to appease them or manipulate them to do their bidding,
by ritual and magic. Paul here ties it into the Jewish understanding that Satan
is the ruler of that dominion. He is saying people find themselves living under
the domination of these evil forces, that are at work in the disobedient. Those who do not acknowledge and know God find
as they disobey God they are open to these evil forces enslaving them. I couldn’t help but think of that bob Dylan
song of his gospel album ‘Slow train coming’ “you gonna have to serve
somebody’… it may be the devil it may be the LORD but you gonna have to serve
somebody…”
Then you may notice that Paul moves from speaking of you to
speaking of we as he moves to the final member of this unholy trinity. He says
we follow the desires of our flesh. As a Jew he would not have been so caught
up in the spiritual world of Greek roman times, he would have known God and looked
to follow the law. However here he acknowledging as in romans that all have fallen short all have
sinned. This final thing is being driven or ruled by our human desires. When we
think of the word flesh we do often think of sexual desires, but it is wider
than that. It could be a desire for comfort, being perfect by keeping the
rules, for wellbeing and significance or prestige, self-actualization. These
things of themselves they are Ok. But when the become the very focus of our
existence, they become idols that we worship. We use them to justify the wrong things we do
to achieve them and they can end up ruling us.
Finally, Paul uses a
judicial term, to express our condition… we were condemned worthy of God’s
wrath. We can’t blame it on the devil or on our environment, we have done
things that are wrong and against God. We are not comfortable with thinking of
God’s wrath because we have this image of wrath as being this unpredictable
outburst of anger and rage, a thirst for revenge. But in the judicial sense it
has to do with a righteous judgment… We’ve
done the crime we deserve the time… the wages of sin are death Paul says in
Romans.
I wondered how to illustrate this human condition and Mark Roberts
makes this comment that he wonders if Paul was writing in the 21st
century he might be tempted to use the idea of the zombies to express what he
is saying. I know most of you are not in the demographic of being into Zombie
movies. But please bear with me.
Zombie in Haitian folklore were people who by some evil
magic were killed and then reanimated. They have no soul no life no spark and
are doomed to always work unceasingly on their plantation, doing their masters
bidding, with no hope of freedom. They
are the walking dead. In modern pop
culture they are again walking undead, people with no soul who are driven by
their appetite, mainly for eating human brains. Dead enslaved driven by the
flesh… academics have wondered why Zombies
have become the monster de jeur, the popular monster in film and books
and comics and TV shows. In one article on the internet, which ironically I had
to prove I was human before I could access…they speculated that it is being
used as a metaphor for many aspects of modern life. One theory is that it
speaks to the spiritual numbness that comes from our industrialized consumerism
capitalist western society. That simply treats us as producers and consumers.
The famous 1973 film dawn of the dead is set in an American mall, the
cathedral of consumerism.
Lets move on to look at saved by… In some recent zombie
movies the narrative is that humans can solve the zombie apocalypse. They can
save themselves from this walking death. In
the 2009 film World War Z…(spoiler alert) the zombie problem is seen as
being due to a virus and is able to be overcome somewhat by the World Health
Organization developing a vaccine. Woe,
think COVID pandemic narrative. We are saved by our science. In the 2013 movie Warm
Bodies a zombie starts to regain his humanity through an act of kindness
and romantic love. Psychotherapist Travis Robinson even offers some sage advice
about resisting the zombification of consumerism and technological overload he
calls for “ a conscious movement toward
calming our nerves, relaxing our minds, caring for our bodies, reconnecting to
natural landscapes, re-visioning work schedules, recreation and leisure.”
But Paul would say that the human condition is beyond that,
we are all infected, we are all the walking dead, our capacity to love is not
going to save us, nor will our science, or simply slowing down and opting out, the
dead cannot save themselves…
In verse 4 of the passage this morning we have this
intervention. We are saved… By… and the subject of this long sentence, comes …
But God… the answer to the human condition is divine compassion. We are saved
because of God’s very nature and character, God’s great love for us and the
riches of God’s mercy. Love and mercy put into action through the sending of
God’s son Jesus Christ. This is spelled out in three verbs in verse 5 we were made
alive with Christ. The focus for salvation is often on the death of Jesus on
the cross, taking on himself our sins, and dying for us. But the emphasis for Paul
here is just as Jesus raised to life again we have become alive in him, even
when we were dead in our sins and transgression, we have received Christ’s
resurrection life. In John’s gospel in chapter 10 Jesus says he came that we might
have zoe life in all its abundance, a life reconnected with God. A life so
abundant that the end of our Bios life cannot stop it rather it will be lived
in eternity with Christ. Our bodies will not be reanimated but resurrected in
Christ.
The second verb is that we are raised with Christ, just as
Jesus ascended into heaven we are raised with him. It speaks to the fact that
in Jesus death and resurrection he won a victory over both sin and death, and a
victory over the evil forces in the spiritual world. We share in that victory,
we are raised out of that slavery Paul talked of, set free and now raised above
in Christ above the dominion of the air, our identity our life is lived in
freedom in Christ.
The third verb Seated with Christ in the heavenlies is bit
hard for us to comprehend. I think our Old Testament reading this morning, Psalm
113, helps us to picture it. You have the picture of God as the king of the
cosmos seated on the throne in heaven. But stopping down and looking and seeing
the state of humanity and reaching down drawing near, then raising up and
seating at the table of his princes. In Christ we are welcomed in and included
and seated as God’s family, his sons and daughters. No longer separated, no
longer sons of wrath and disobedience but welcomed in his son Jesus Christ. In
Ephesians 1 Paul uses the idea of adoption, being made part of God’s family. It
is a present reality that will have a future fulfilment.
Paul sums it up by then saying that we are saved by grace, through
faith. The heart of the gospel. It is because of God’s undeserved love shown in
the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Something we can not do for
ourselves or earn, but a gift freely given. We do tend to think that by faith picks up our
part but again in Greek it is a passive voice which means more that it is to do
with the one that we put our trust in, it is the faithfulness of Christ. We trust Jesus. Paul reiterates this by saying
again we are saved by grace, it is not by our endeavors or work.
Maybe we are more used to thinking of being saved by
applying to the idea of Jesus dying in our place … Paul uses the word kindness
and again we are used to thinking in terms of sentiment or attitude when it comes
to kindness, but here Paul uses it to offset the idea of being condemned of
being objects of God’s wrath, as again it is used as a judicial term. Kindness
has the idea of clemency. Being declared not guilty. We are accepted and
welcomed into God’s family because we have received God’s clemency. By Grace
Jesus Christ made it possible for us to be forgiven and receive his
righteousness.
Let’s move on to look at saved for the after picture. We are
saved by grace Paul here gives us something of God’s purpose for saving us.
Firstly, God does it to show the great richness of his
mercy. Just as in Genesis one we hear as God creates everything we hear it is
good, and when he creates humans, it is very good, is a way of saying it gives
praise to its creator. It shows the craftmanship of God, now this new creation
this new being given life in Christ shows again God’s greatness and goodness.
In fact that word used in verse ten is that we are God’s
handiwork, God makes us his masterpieces, it’s a Greek word we get the English
word poem from. God displays his goodness through us, through blessing us. John
Stott tells the story of a university administrator who has a portrait done
when he retires and when it is unveiled says ‘no one will ask who the man in
the painting is, they will ask who painted it”. The desire is that this new
life we have in Christ will shine so much that people will see the brush
strokes of God’s grace.
How is this to be accomplished, well says Paul we are not
saved by works, by our own effort, but God has saved us for good works, which
God prepared before in advance for us to do. In the scriptures of the Old
Testament you have this picture of God’s preferred future, of a world which can
only be described as the Kingdom of God, that reflects God’s goodness and character,
God invites us to live in that new way that that is expressed in everything we
do. One commentator used the example of jean Val jean from Victor Hugo's le Misérables. Who is forgive for stealing a silver
candlesticks from a catholic priest and is told by the priest that he has
brough Val Jean's life and he should go and live his redeemed life well. Val
jean becomes a good man caring for others, more than that he builds a factory
that treats its workers justly and fairly in a age of exploitation of the poor.
The town he is a paradigm of compassion and care for all people. That life he
has been given spreads out and impacts all areas around him. The goodness flows
from having been saved by grace… Paul in
Ephesians will go on to talk of a new people of God where jew and gentile live
together in harmony, a hope that the Church in Christ can offer to a world
split and divided. That the Spirit is at work for the church to be built up
into unity and maturity and will speak of ways of putting that into practice. We
are saved so we might show the wonder and grace of our heavenly Father.
How to finish… Once we were dead, enslaved, condemned, it is
the human condition according to Paul… but God… because of God’s great love
shown to us in Jesus life, death and resurrection we are made alive again, set
free in Christ and welcomed in and seated with Christ. It’s not through
anything we could do, it is a gift of God’s kindness. God then has good works
for us to do, things that express this wonderful new life in Christ, that paint
a picture for the world in this age and the age to come of God’s rich mercy.
Today you may feel like that zombie. You may know you are lost in that spiritual
deadness and need God’s grace. Don’t leave here without speaking with someone
and asking them to help you to connect with the life giving power and love of
Jesus Christ. Maybe you’ve found yourself slipping into a sleep state and have
forgotten the wonder of God’s grace and love. I know as I get older that I
forget things more readily. You need to again remember and experience afresh
alive again of Jesus. Lets us all give God praise and thanks for this wonderful
gift of new life by grace in Christ, and live it well.
