Rescued from Certain Death

(Scripture Reading: Ephesians 2: 1-10 “By Grace you have been saved”)

In this Chapter of Ephesians, Paul is providing a sort of spiritual biography of the people he has been writing to – where they were in the past tense when they were outside of Christ and now in the present tense when they are in Christ.

Let’s read verses 1 and 2 again:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

According to the New Testament, we have a body, a soul and a spirit, but those three parts are distinct.

For example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul says: “May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless.”

We all know what our body is, that is very obvious, but additionally, we have a soul – that is the life that inhabits the body.

Paraphrasing Charles Price, an internationally known evangelist, his explanation is this:

The spirit is the part of which we are least conscious, but it is what makes us uniquely human. It is the part of ourselves that causes us to ask questions that animals would never ask. We ask ourselves questions of the meaning of life and wonder what is out there in the universe. The spirit is the part of us whereby we are designed to know and experience God.

It is not a question of intelligence, but rather a question of capacity. It is a spiritual capacity whereby you and I were created to know and enjoy God and experience God.

When God created human beings at the beginning and placed them in the Garden of Eden, he said “You can eat of any tree in the garden, except one”. “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat of it, you will die”.

You all know what happened – they ate of the fruit. But what happened? Did they fall over dead? Well, physically they did not die, but they did die spiritually. Later in Ephesians 4: 18 Paul describes it then as “being separated from the life of God.” In other words, the moment they acted in independence of God, the Spirit of God was withdrawn. Although they remained physically alive, they became spiritually dead, which is the hereditary condition in which you and I were born.

Let us examine the scriptures to follow this concept in a logical fashion.

1 Corinthians 15:22 says: “In Adam, all die”.

In Romans 6:23, Paul wrote: “The wages of sin is death”. Present tense. Note that. Not will be one day that you will die, but the wages of sin is that you are already dead, that is separated from God.

And this state of spiritual death is the state into which you and I were born.

In other words, that means that detached from God, we have no choice but to be swept along with the ways of the world, and as a result we are disobedient.

And in case we want to blame our separation from God solely on hereditary sin; therefore absolving ourselves, we must remember that in Romans 3:23 Paul writes: “all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God”. And in Romans 3:10 quoting from Psalm 14: he writes: “There is no one righteous, not even one”. We are all sinful creatures, and therefore are doomed to die because of our sins.

But you see, it is not so much what we do that is our real problem; it’s what we are in our condition of separation from God that is the cause of what we do. But now let’s look again at verse 3. Paul says that where this leaves us is by nature as objects of the wrath of God. “Because you were dead and you were disobedient, you are doomed by nature. Left to yourself, you are under the wrath of God.

Now the wrath of God is something we don’t like to talk about. We prefer to think of God as love, holy, righteous. But unfortunately, he also has wrath. He is also angry. You may remember that Rev. Mitch in last week’s sermon talked about the wrath of God in the Old Testament. While Moses was on Mt. Sanai receiving the 10 commandments, the Israelites were concerned because Moses did not return when they expected him to. They wanted to have a God to worship, so Aaron told them to give him all their gold and he fashioned a golden calf. Then he built an altar and they worshipped before that idol. God was so angry and full of wrath that he wanted to eradicate them from the face of the earth. Fortunately, Moses was able to intercede on their behalf and God changed his mind. The point of the story is that God does get angry and was full of wrath when the Israelites were disobedient, and is also capable of wrath and anger when we are sinful and disobedient. Let me try to explain.

The very attributes that we worship in God are the very attributes that are the source of his wrath. The fact that God is love, the fact that he is pure, the fact that he is holy and righteous is the reason why he is angry at sin, which violates and distorts and destroys what is his purpose.

There is only one place where we are sheltered from the wrath of God, - only one place. And that is in Christ. Outside of Christ we are not sheltered at all.

So, in speaking to the Ephesians, Paul has told them what they were - without Christ – dead, disobedient and doomed. But then he goes on to tell them what they are in Christ. Let’s turn to verse 4.

He says: “But”. (Fortunately, there is a but to come to the rescue) “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions” Think about that for a moment. We were dead and now we have been made alive with Christ!

Verse 6: “God raised us up with Christ”. You see, our first need is not that we are guilty and need forgiving (although we definitely need that too), instead our first need is that we are dead and we need raising! And God raised us up with Christ. He makes us alive in our condition of death by giving us Christ. He makes us alive with Christ.

That is why John writes in 1 John 5:11 , - This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. “He who has the Son, has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

So, if the antidote to being dead is being raised to life, and if disobedience is a result of being dead, then the antidote to being disobedient is that having been raised to life, we are then re-directed to good works, which God prepares in advance for us to do. Let us turn to verse 10:

For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So we are raised to life in order to be re-directed to good works.

Now, to be clear, Paul is not suggesting that we are saved by works. We cannot earn our salvation. Because none of us could fulfill the law, we would still be in our sins and would still be doomed to die. Our best works are as filthy rags in His sight. No amount of good works can achieve anything without Christ’s redemption of our lives on the cross.

But it is our response in thankfulness and gratitude for the gift of eternal life that makes us want to transform our lives to live in obedience to him and to love one another, doing good works.

But now comes the best part…. In addition to having learned that we have been made alive with Christ and are raised in Christ, and are re-directed to those good works God prepared for us to do, instead of being doomed, we are rescued! We are saved by grace through faith!

Verse 8 says: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith”. It is not from ourselves, it is not countering our bad works with a display of good works that is so impressive that it saves us, No, No.

“This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast”.

By His grace we have been saved. Just think about that for a moment.

Outside of Christ we were by nature objects of wrath. But His wrath was met and satisfied in the cross of Christ when Jesus Christ died for our sins. Jesus, who himself as a man was not under the judgement of his Father, was not spiritually dead and therefore did not inherit that state of death. He was born as man was intended to be, spiritually alive and obedient to his Father.

He is our substitute, he took our place before the wrath of God and endured his wrath on the cross. As our substitute, his body was broken, his blood was shed, and that satisfied the just anger and wrath of God for our sin that he took upon himself, once and for all. He became what we are, took our sins upon himself so that we might become what he is – so that we might share the righteousness of God in Christ.

Some of you may know that I am a lawyer. From a purely legal perspective, I suggest that Christ had to die. Since the wages of sin is death, we deserve the sentence of death for our sins. In order to stand as our substitute, Christ took our sins upon himself. That did not, and could not persuade God to overlook the just sentence and let Christ off the hook, so to speak. That would not be justice. Justice had to be served. The penalty had to be paid. That is why Jesus had to die on the cross, so that our just sentence could be properly served. He sacrificed himself for us because of his great love for us. God was rich in mercy and by his grace we are saved. We are redeemed! We have been purchased by his blood. We need only to believe to receive the free gift of eternal life. We need only to have faith and his grace saves us from a certain death because of his mercy to us.

In the early 80’s, when we lived in Cranbrook, Fiona and I attended what was then called the Presbyterian Men’s Conference in Banff.

At this inspiring event I was deeply impacted spiritually by a sermon given by the late Rev. Ed McKinley. The sermon was based on Ephesians 2, which ensures us that “by grace we are saved through faith”. It came home to me that despite all my faults, God through his rich mercy and great love, made me alive together with Christ. In effect I had received the assurance that when I died, I would go to Heaven. I was forgiven!

God was rich in mercy and by his grace we are saved. We need only to have faith and his grace saves us from a certain death because of his mercy to us. Mercy means to not give what we do deserve. Grace means to give us what we don’t deserve. We deserve death – but instead by His grace, we receive eternal life.

As wonderful as that recognition was, and as liberating as it was, much later I came to recognize that being assured of salvation when I died was not all that was promised by faith in Christ. We are promised a relationship with Christ while we are alive and on this earth – not just once we die.

If going to heaven is all that our accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour means to us, as important as that may be, we are missing out on so much. Instead we can enjoy a meaningful relationship with God every day while we are alive. God wants us to be in relationship with him in our daily lives. We need to experience God every day. He can walk with us in our daily lives and give us comfort, strength and help in our times of need. We need to trust God for everything, always.

So when we are in Christ, that is the only safe place to be. The wrath of God has already been met in Jesus Christ and we are protected in Christ. Instead, we become the recipients of his love, his mercy, his grace and his kindness.

To be saved, means to be safe! That is why we refer to Christ as our Saviour. He has rescued us from certain death if only we believe in Him. Isn’t that the best news ever?

In response to being saved, our lives should be transformed to obedience, and increase our appetite to love one another and live in a way that is pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Let us pray:

Lord, we confess our state of being spiritually dead, evidenced by the disobedience that we confess to you as part of our lives. But we thank you, that although by nature we were under the wrath of God, you stood in our place. You took the wrath intended for us and God’s justice was satisfied.

Create in us new appetites for what is good and right. Make us realize that we are safe, not only now, but for the coming ages, the generations that will pass, the centuries that will pass, until there is no more time, only eternity.

In Jesus’ name, Amen