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You Were

In Ephesians 1:19-20 Paul wanted us to know about the power that was at work in Jesus’ resurrection is now being used towards us as well. Our passage gives us a great before and after picture of what life is like before and after having experienced that power.

Dead

Before we experienced the power of God, life wasn’t very lively at all.

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

¹ And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ² 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— ³ 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.

Bad news everybody. You died. Cut down in the flower of youth, you are now six-feet under. I know we’re all feeling like Bruce Willis at the end of Sixth Sense, but it’s true. We’ve been dead the whole time!

And let’s not dress it up and try to say things that make it sounds better

They’re sleeping
They’re not feeling pain anymore
They’re looking down on us

No, death is sad. We’re looking down on them in the grave. Quit trying to put the fun in funeral. Go ahead and call it a celebration of life but that life is over. I can promise you that if I preach any of your funerals I will weep because I hate funerals.

Here’s a person you loved

No longer moving
Powerless to keep the worms at bay
Growing ever more putrid over the coming days and years
Leaving us with nothing but the foul stench of decay

Being dead is no fun and Paul says that’s what’s happened to all of us.

But of course, we’re all here today. We’re walking and talking. We had breakfast today, the worms aren’t nibbling, and I smell lovely. So how could I be dead?

Because transgression and sin have separated us from the life giver. We died just like Adam and Eve were when they first sinned against God.

Here’s God’s single prohibition in the Garden of Eden:

Genesis 2:17 ESV

¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

But of course, the Devil, in the form of the serpent, says:

Genesis 3:4 ESV

⁴ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.

And sure enough, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit they are still alive. For awhile at least. God casts them out of the garden, away from him and the Tree of Life, and now they can’t be in his presence and slowly but surely they age, growing more and more feeble until one day:

Genesis 5:5 ESV

⁵ Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

We’ve all sinned like Adam. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. And we have been separated from the giver of life. Adam was able to last 960 years afterwards. We’re lucky if we make it to 100.

And if you die in your sin and transgression – you stay dead. In the book of Revelation John sees the coming judgment day when all are brought to life, the books are opened and we the people are judged.

And as for:

Revelation 21:8 ESV

⁸ But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Some people are going to die in their sin, and then be raised from the dead, only to be put to death forever.

And Paul says that’s where we are.

Who Killed Me?

When you hear someone’s died one of the first questions is usually, How?

What was the cause of my death? How did I die? Did I inherit a genetic disorder – original sin – that put me to death? Or, even worse, did somebody kill me? I didn’t want to die, but here I am dead. Who’s fault is this?

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

Following the Word

We died because we followed the ways of this world. And the ways of the world are opposed to God.

If you have an unwanted pregnancy – just kill the kid
If someone bumps into you – get mad and cuss them out
If you’re caught in a compromising situation – just lie your way out and pin the blame on somebody else
If you’re mad at your spouse get some revenge by sleeping with somebody else
If you’re sad about your spouse sleeping with somebody else just get drunk and beat them
If you think somebody is weird just start telling lies about them and make them a social outcast

All of these are things that the world openly endorses, not always in words but certainly in our behaviors.

This is the problem with what’s called ‘progressive’ Christianity – it’s abandoned it’s calling to lead the world following God, and instead abandoned him by following this age. Christian belief for thousands of years has been that only men serve as teachers and leaders in the church and that homosexuality is a sin. But now that these ideas are suddenly in vogue in the modern world, churches are suddenly realizing that the bible has actually endorsed these things since the beginning.

Who’s taking cues from who? Who’s leading and who’s being led?

We’re supposed to lead the world to God, but too many self-professed Christians have decided that the spirit of the age knows more about godliness than God does.

So let’s blame the world for killing us, those jerks! They convinced us that their way was going to make me happy, and self-fulfilled. They, just like the serpent, said that God doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. But all they did was lead me into a grave.

How could they have done this?

Following the Powers

Well, it’s because the world was following something itself. The Prince of the Power (or kingdom) of the Air – the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience – the spirit that is leading this world.

So in Jewish thought you have us here on earth, then you have the sky and space and all that, and above all that is heaven where God is. And it’s in that middle space – the air – that’s where the demons hang out and do their stuff. There are some old prayers and magic spells found in Ephesus that say things like “Protect me from every demon in the air.”

Later in chapters 6, Paul writes:

Ephesians 6:11–12 ESV

¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So here we have the Devil lumped into the same category as cosmic powers – same language in our passage, Ephesians 2:2.

As much as the world likes to claim its independence, rationality, and moral superiority over God, what they don’t know is that they’re just following the devil. No mater what you do in life you’re serving one or the other. As much as they claim to be free from the old superstitious powers like God, all they’re doing is offering themselves up as slaves to the devil.

It doesn’t matter how divided the world is against itself, waging wars (literal or cultural)against each other- they’re all serving the same master.

So when we follow the course of this world, take our cues and morality from modern sensibilities – then we’re not serving God anymore we’re serving the devil.

Following Our Passions

And so you might be feeling a little indignant about the world and the devil. You didn’t just die, you were murdered and you’re ready to draw up a homicide report for God.

But can we really shift the blame to anybody else but ourselves?

We followed the ways of the world
The ways of the devil
Because we wanted to follow our own passions

And now this murder is starting to look more like a suicide.

We can’t blame the world or the devil anymore than Adam and Eve could. All Adam could say was “Eve gave it to me! The world led me astray and it’s their fault that I’m dead!” And when God looked at Eve she just said “The serpent deceived me! He’s the one who killed me, blame him!”

But Eve never forced Adam to eat, and the serpent never forced Eve. All he did was get Eve to look at the fruit and let her own desires do the rest of the work:

Genesis 3:6 ESV

⁶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

And so we, like Adam and Eve, would love to stand around on the day of judgment pointing our fingers at everybody else. But the accusing finger of judgment will land on me – because I’m the only one responsible for my sins.

I died in my sins, and I’m the only one to blame.

But God…

Now, all of that is pretty bad news. But Paul isn’t trying to just make us feel bad. He’s giving us the bad news so that the we can really appreciate the good news.

Ephesians 2:1 ESV

¹ And you were dead in the trespasses and sins

Ephesians 2:4 (ESV)

⁴ But God…

That’s the power of the past tense. You were dead – but God did something about it. No matter how bad things are going, no matter how scared we are of the direction of the world, we need to always end those episodes with those two words – but God.

I don’t like that tolerance of sins is being made legally mandatory – but God
I’m scared because you have nations with nuke’s threatening each other – but God
I’m dead and rotting the grave as we speak…

Ephesians 2:4–8 ESV

⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

By Grace

Let’s talk about how cool God is for a minute. You were this rotting corpse that stunk to high heaven and God said “I’m going to fix that.”

Not because we were pretty – we were pretty rotten
Not because we were full of good works – we were dead in sins
Not because he owed us anything – we were the ones who killed ourselves with our own selfish desires

You were given life for no other reason than that God loved you. We see dead bodies and the typical reaction is one of revulsion. They make us uncomfortable, we’re afraid they’re gonna wake up and bite us, they stink, and they don’t look pretty.

That’s the revulsion we could expect God to have for us but instead of plugging his nose and running away he ran to us so he could make us alive.

Because he is:

Rich in mercy
Has great love for us
And an abounding amount of grace for us

It’s grace from beginning to end here

In verse 7 he did this so he could show off how how great his grace is. So he could show everyone and everything “You see those saints over there? Would you believe they were a bunch of dead bodies before I met them?”

But now…

We don’t stink anymore
The worms can’t get us
We’re not being thrown out of the garden anymore

And now we can put the fun in funeral and call it a celebration of life, because that person who’s going six-feet under is going to be raised up and seated with Christ. That person who is dead will have life eternal just like Jesus showed us when he got up himself three days after his death.

Dead Works

And in celebrating God’s grace – let’s make sure we give credit where credit is due. We aren’t alive because we raised ourselves. Remember – we were dead, and so were our works.

Go ahead and make a stop at a cemetery later today, and try to raise the dead. How would you go about doing that? Do start handing out medicine to all the bodies hoping that it will cure their fatal diseases? Do you sew limbs back on, pump hearts full of blood, start giving CPR? Would you grab a key-ring and a kite, hope that lighting strikes whatever corpse you’ve dug up? That’s all silliness. You can’t make a dead person person get back up. But you know what’s even sillier? Telling a dead person to raise themselves. But that’s what we’re saying we did when we say things like “I’m saved because I did this. I was dead but I just told myself to get over it, pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and here I stand before you!”

You were saved, you were made alive – but

Ephesians 2:9 ESV

⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Living Works

Now that we’re alive we actually have the capacity to do good works. And this is where Paul tends to lose some people.

We were saved…

Ephesians 2:9–10 ESV

⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

In one verse he tells us that our salvation isn’t at all because of works and then in the next he says good works are exactly what God has in mind for us.

The key difference is this phrase right here – “in Christ Jesus.” Remember, we were dead, but now that we’re in Christ, made alive as he is, our works are no longer just works – they’re good works.

That one word, good, makes a difference. Everywhere else that Paul talks about plain old works it is overwhelmingly negative:

They’re works of the law which don’t justify
They’re works that we can’t boast about
They’re works that nullify grace

All-in-all they’re not works that do anything for us.

But now that we’re in Christ, now that we have been made alive – our works have been given life as well. When Paul mentions “good works” specifically, he says that…

We should abound in them (2 Cor 9:8)
We should be increasing in them (Col 1:10)
They are proper for those who confess godliness (1 Tim 2:10)
We should be zealous for them (Titus 2:14)
We were created for them (Eph 2:10)

Before God all the “good” things we did didn’t mean diddly-squat. It is only now that we are alive in Christ that those works become good works.

When we were dead we were walking in our trespasses and sins. Now that we’re alive we should be walking in our good works.

Application: Live Life!

So let’s stop living like we still got one foot in the grave. Jesus made us alive so that we could walk in a new life doing good works. But unfortunately there are those who come to Christ who are more undead than alive. Zombie Christians! They aren’t really dead but it’d be a stretch to say that they were alive.

They move around – but barely. Just shuffling around with the crowd, distracted by the loudest noises
Unmoved by the church
Have a tendency to infect others

They are Christians who, yeah – they don’t walk like they used to in those sins:

They don’t sleep around
They watch their mouth
They don’t swindle
They come every Sunday to punch their time-card and drool through the rest of services

But being alive is more than having a heartbeat.

Have you seen those people who got polio decades ago and as a result had to live the rest of their lives in the iron lung? Here’s one of the last of them who just died recently. This is Alexander. He passed away at age 78. He was put in that iron lung when he was 8 years old. To be fair the Alexander, he did really well for himself over the 70 years he spent in that: he painted, worked as an attorney, I don’t mean to diminish his life or accomplishments at all.

But how many of us would feel like our life had ended if we had to be put into one of those? Would we say we were living life knowing that we were were immobilized and restricted in such a way?

How many of us are living in a spiritual iron lung? Yeah, we’re not really doing anything bad – we’re not walking in sin anymore – but are we walking in the good works God has prepared for us? Are we living the life God has raised us to?

God raised you from the dead to walk in the good works that he has prepared for us.

Meal trains
Flower fund
Cleaning the building – Kitty and Veronica
Hospitality – Gay and Barry
Helping to move – Seth
Visiting the sick and elderly – Ken and Mary
Adoption
Serving the wider community

We are God’s workmanship – his masterpiece that he has created to show off to everyone and everything! Just as God told Satan “Have you considered my servant Job? Have you ever seen anything as stellar as him?” He is now holding us, the church, as a display of his grace and character. We are God’s boast against the devil, against the cosmic powers, against the rulers of this world.

“Have you considered my servants at the church on Old Wire Road?”

That’s God’s intended boast for us. It is what he wants all of creation to see. Do our neighbors see it?

You were given life so that you could live!

Conclusion

In Christ you were dead. Outside of Christ you are dead.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. He is inviting you in to new life. You don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to accomplish any mighty feat. You are not raised because of who you are, but because of who God is.

If you want to accept that invitation to a new life, I want to talk to you. Whether it be after services or even now as we stand and sing.