EPISODE 177 EPHESIANS CHAPTER 2 "The Gospel of the Grace of God

Welcome to Share the Word, a Great Commission project. Have you ever heard of grace described with the acronym God's riches at Christ's expense? Well, today the podcast speaks of grace and salvation, and I'd like to begin by asking, do you believe in Christ, and have you accepted Him as Lord and Savior? Ephesians chapter 2, the gospel of the grace of God. Welcome back to Share the Word. I was glad to have my friend Professor Jeff Arthur sitting last time as we began the epistle to the Ephesians.

Jeff emphasized in his lesson on Ephesians chapter 1 that God blesses those who are in Christ, and enumerated several ways He does so. Being in Christ is one of the most important themes in the epistle of Ephesians. In fact, in only six chapters, Paul refers to the concept of being in Christ about 40 times. To be sure we wrap our minds around that important concept, I'm going to offer up an analogy of sorts. When I was in junior high, I really wanted to join the Y. You know, the YMCA.

Several of my friends were members, and they told me about all the cool things that they did there. I convinced my parents this is a good place to hang out after school because, for one thing, it's only a couple blocks from our junior high, and I told them about all the wholesome supervised activities I could get involved in there. I really wanted in the Y because there were sports leagues, and I was into sports at the time, especially basketball. You could also swim in their Olympic-sized pool or just hang out with buddies in their rec room, play some ping pong, shoot some pool. I really wanted to do all this stuff with my friends, but the only way I could was to join the Y. The benefits were only for members.

There were some minimal requirements and a reasonable fee, of course, which I needed my parents' help with, but fortunately, they signed on, and I became a member. And once I was in the Y, once I was a member, I then had access to all those benefits, and I spent a lot of time there, having a lot of fun there during that period of my life. That's similar to what the Apostle Paul means by being in Christ, only, of course, on a much more profound level. Once we are in Christ, we have the benefits of the membership in God's family. In chapter 1, verse 3, he began this idea, saying, Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Then he goes on to tell us of some of the amazing benefits.

For example, we have the forgiveness of our sins and are accepted as holy and blameless in God's sight. We're adopted into his eternal family as his sons and daughters. We're sealed with the Holy Spirit, meaning we are secured into this position forever. We have a sure hope for the future because we will be raised up after death just as certainly as Christ was. And we have a glorious inheritance awaiting us in heaven once we get there. Wow.

You listen to those benefits, and I hope everybody listening is serious enough about their life and their future to want in. I would hope you're thinking, How do I join? What are the requirements? What is the fee? On Share the Word, you often hear us use the term gospel. That's common shorthand for what Paul calls in Acts chapter 20, the gospel of the grace of God.

He was speaking then to a group of second-generation Christian leaders he'd entrusted leading churches around Ephesus with. He summarized his own calling in life to ministry this way: I don't count my life as dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, the ministry I was given by the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Gospel, as you probably know by now if you've been listening, means good news. So Paul said he was given the assignment to testify to the good news of the grace of God. Grace, such an important word in the New Testament. It's connected to the Old Testament concept of undeserved favor.

A good definition would be, grace is God's freely given and undeserved love and favor. Write that on something you can stick on your fridge or have tattooed on your right arm. Grace is God's freely given and undeserved love and favor. Why do we need the grace of God? Well, here's how Paul puts it in the first few verses of chapter 2. You were once dead in your trespasses and sins.

You previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who even now works in the yet disobedient. He's referring to Satan there. We all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath, along with the rest. That language is very reminiscent of Romans chapter 3, isn't it? Remember when we worked our way through that important doctrinal epistle? Paul quoted extensively in that chapter to make quite an indictment of the human race.

He said, There are none who are righteous, not even one. There is no one who truly seeks after God. All have turned away and become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sound too harsh? I'm aware that's not how sociologists would see it.

The prevailing modern consensus is that evil and good themselves are just societal constructs, meaning they are relative ideas and interpreted and applied differently in different societies. I think most people in my society would agree with Luke Bryan's popular country song came out a couple years ago titled, I Believe Most People Are Good. That's what we like to think about ourselves and would like to imagine is true of most others too. But that's not the divine perspective. That's not the way God sees. His Word says, not most, but all people have a nature infected with evil, and that's why we all sin.

Some people learn how to manage and cover it up better than others, sure, but that's all. Not even the best of us is truly good. If we quit comparing ourselves with others and instead compare ourselves against the righteous standards of God, we would admit this. We learned all about this in Romans, so if you've just jumped into our podcast recently, I suggest you go back to Romans in our archive, the most important doctrinal book in the New Testament, and listen to the podcast covering these big ideas in the first several chapters. The Apostle Paul explains there that evil infected our world because of deliberate sin from almost the very beginning, and that when people sinned, their vital connection with God, their Creator, was severed. Subsequently, everyone born since has been a sinner, both by nature, which we inherit, and by the choices that we make.

And unless something intervenes, we're all like the walking dead. We're separated from God with lots of sin on our records, and we're moving toward inevitable judgment. As Paul puts it here, we are children of wrath. If you feel that sounds too harsh to describe you, if you just don't see yourself as separated from God or worthy of any judgment, then, I hate to tell you this, you're really not even at the starting gate with God yet. Again, we've explained these important concepts in earlier podcasts, but if this part strikes you as wrong, I'd suggest you listen to what Jesus taught on this, recorded in Luke chapter 7. In that place, it describes how he was invited once to a prominent religious man's home for dinner.

Man's name was Simon. And Simon had also invited some of his friends from the religious sect of the Pharisees. Picture them eating together in Simon's courtyard when a sinful woman, as they describe her, found her way in who'd heard Jesus was there. She was a prostitute, most likely, someone with a bad reputation in town. But she came to Jesus that evening, sick of how she'd been living. She was sorry for her sins.

She knelt near him, crying. Simon and his friends were shocked that Jesus didn't rebuke her and send her away. Doesn't he realize who this woman is? That she's a shameful sinner? Of course he did. And importantly, she realized it too.

That's why she was there. But Simon and his religious friends, they didn't see themselves that way. But Jesus was just bold enough to point out to them how they were sinners in other ways, like how they had no compassion on her, for example, and felt superior to her, and frankly, how they felt they didn't need anything Jesus could do for them. They had hard hearts. They were full of pride because the woman admitted her neediness and came to Jesus sorry for her sins. He assured her that she would be forgiven by God.

But them, they were still far away, far away from where they needed to be, not even, as I said, at the starting gate yet. You see, the very starting place with God is agreeing with what He says about us, recognizing the effect sin has had on us, the grip it has on our hearts. In Paul's words here, admitting that we are no different than the rest, no better than anyone else. We're by nature children of wrath who, like that woman, need to admit our sinfulness and feel genuine sorrow over it. That's what the Bible calls repentance. We need to get to that place to be even at the starting point with God because without God's intervention, we're all heading for judgment no matter how we feel about ourselves.

But thank God, He did intervene. The very next verse begins, But God. But God. That's a familiar, hope-filled refrain throughout the Bible. We see it over and over again. Adam and Eve, our original parents, disobeyed Him and tragically brought sin into our world.

But God gave them a way to make an atonement. Israel was cruelly pressed into slavery by their enemies, the Egyptians. But God raised up a deliverer named Moses and through the plagues broke the Pharaoh's grip. The Persian king Ahasuerus, known to history as Xerxes, he was manipulated by an extreme anti-Semite to decree the destruction of all the Jews living in his kingdom. But God used a young woman named Esther to foil his plot and save her people. The apostle Peter boldly preached in Jerusalem in 33 A.D. within earshot of the rulers who made this happen, You put Jesus to death by nailing him to a cross, but God, who through his foreknowledge knew all this would happen, raised him from the dead again.

So in our case here, Paul goes on to explain, but God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive together with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses and sin, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places, so that in the ages to come he might show the boundless riches of his grace in kindness toward us who are in Christ Jesus. The term there, together with, in verse 5, he made us alive again, raised us up from our spiritual deadness, seated us in heaven, together with Christ. That word Paul used, translated together with, comes from the same root as our word synchronize. You know what it means to sync two things together, right? Like right now, for example, I need to sync my desktop computer at home with my smartphone.

Why would I need to do that? Because I want what's on my desktop to also be available on my smartphone. I don't know how to do that because I'm technologically challenged. But if I can ever figure it out and get them synced, whatever data or programs I have on my main computer at home are then going to be available to me on my phone. In the same way, Paul is saying that because of his mercy and love, God takes us, spiritually dead sinners, and syncs us with Christ. And once that vital connection occurs, just as Christ was made alive again, we are too.

Just as he was raised up from the dead, we will be too. Just as he is now seated in heaven, we in fact are too because we are in him and he is there, even though we're not literally there yet. We're as good as there, Paul is saying, because we've been synced with Christ who is there. That's the idea. Whatever God has done in Christ, he will do in us so that, he says, in the ages to come he might show the boundless riches of his grace in kindness toward us who are in Christ Jesus. When I read that line, I feel so completely unworthy.

Do you know why? Because I am completely unworthy. I know I do not deserve any of the things God has promised those who are in Christ in the ages to come. By that, Paul means the wonderful things God has in store for Christians in the future, in the new heavens and the new earth. But that's part of the reason it's the gospel of the grace of God. Grace is God's freely given and undeserved love and favor, remember?

I may not know how to sync my desktop and my smartphone, but I do know how this works, how we can be vitally connected to Christ so that God sees us as in Him, synced up to Him. Are you sure you're connected with Christ like that, that you've been made alive spiritually, that you know for certain you'll be raised up one day to live eternally in heaven with all the believers from the ages in the past who will be enjoying the wonders God has in store for His eternal family? How that connection with Christ is and isn't made is explained in verses 8 and 9, where Paul writes, For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. That's how it's put in the very literal New American Standard Bible.

In a more colloquial translation, it's put this way: God saved you by His grace when you believed, and you can't take credit for that. It's a gift from Him. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Paul states this all in the past tense because he was writing to people who were already Christians, people who had already believed into Jesus, were already in Christ. How that had happened for them, Paul stresses, is because of God's grace. It happens when we put our faith in Him.

It happens the same way for us. He explicitly says it's not a reward for the good things we have done. It couldn't be, because in ourselves we're spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, remember? Dead people can't do anything good. They can't even do anything to help themselves. Certainly can't save themselves.

We are like that paralyzed man Jesus met by the pool of Siloam. Remember him. He was helpless. He had lain there 38 years when Jesus met him that day. And Jesus offered, Do you want to be well? He offered him a new life, no strings attached, just graciously offered to do it for him out of compassion and love.

That's the kind of offer God makes to us too, for a new life, a spiritual rebirth, and all the benefits of being in Christ that follow that. And he offers it to us because of his great love, as a gift of his grace. Thank God his love for us was greater than his hatred for our sin. If you've never quite understood the gospel of grace before, or why you'd need it, I hope I've made it clear enough today. And if you feel the need to respond to it, that's God's Holy Spirit making you the offer. The way we receive God's gift, Paul says, is by faith.

Repent and believe the gospel. Are you ready to turn your life toward following Jesus? If you are, then believe that God loved you enough to send Christ to pay for your sins. Put your faith in him to save you, and he will. No one who comes to him in sincere faith will he ever say no to. Before I let you go, I don't want to miss the end of verse 9, where Paul underscores that this is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

In Galatians, Paul wrote, I have nothing to glory in except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the gospel of the grace of God, after all, not a message about what we can do in order to earn God's favor. Grace means, again, God's freely given and undeserved love and favor. No one someday in heaven is going to sit down beside you in the shade of the tree of life and say, I don't think we've met before. I'm Gary. If you've got a minute, I'd like to tell you about all the things I did to deserve to be here.

Or, Hello there, I'm Valerie. My mansion is right down the street from yours. Can we get together for dinner sometime? You know, I'd really like to hear about all the good deeds that earned you a spot here. Huh. Nothing like that will ever happen.

Eternity is a long time, but throughout all eternity, there will never be one conversation that goes anything like that, because if we're there at all, it will only be by the sheer grace of God, only through the sacrifice of atonement Jesus made for us at the cross. All we will say then, and I'm sure we'll say it over and over and again and again, is, Worthy are you, O Lord, to receive glory and honor. Blessing and honor and glory belong to the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever. For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. This is Paul for Share the Word.

Thanks, Paul, for an incredible podcast. I recently had a conversation with someone who told me that they had a lot of work to do in order to be able to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It's such a sad misconception that breaks my heart every time I hear it. It's like saying that in order to be able to go to the gym, you have to be fit before you go. In Romans 10, it clearly tells us what we need to do. It says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

It's that simple. For with the heart a person believes, and it results in righteousness. And with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. If you're ready to accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, please take a moment and pray with me. You can pray with my words or your own, saying, Heavenly Father, I know that I'm a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. You came and lived a sinless life, and You died for my sins on that cross.

And on the third day, You rose and conquered death. And now I turn from my sins and ask You to come into my heart and my life and be my Lord and Savior. In Your name I pray. Amen. If you prayed that prayer with me for the first time, we'd love to hear about it, and we would love to send you a gift. Simply send us your name and contact information and let us know that you made that first-time decision to follow Christ.

Simply send an email with that information to info at sharetheword.org. We're excited to hear from you.