Ephesians 2:4-7
Date: November 3rd, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Ephesians 2:4-7
Exegetical Outline
MIT: Salvation is an act of God’s grace as he unites us to Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and session.
2:4-5: God graciously made us alive together with Christ.
2:6-7: God graciously raised us up to reign with Christ in the heavenly places.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: Salvation is solely the work of God as he graciously unites us to Christ.
God saved us by grace alone. [What did God do?]
He made us alive. (5)
He will glorify us. (6)
He will make us reign with Christ. (6)
God saved us by grace alone to show us who he is. [Why did God do it?]
He is rich in mercy. (4)
He loved us when we were unlovely. (4-5)
He saved us to demonstrate his graciousness. (7)
Introduction:
In 1884, a man named Frank Foley was born. Foley was a very unassuming guy. As an adult, he was described as being small, slightly overweight, with round glasses and a pale completion. He was in every way a typical Englishman.
Foley grew up to work as a clerk in the British Passport Office in Berlin Germany. Foley was a pencil pusher, he dealt in paperwork and administration. Though Frank Foley was an unassuming man with an unremarkable job, Frank Foley was one of the great, unsung heroes of the Second World War, because Frank Foley was also the top Intelligence Officer for the British Secret Intelligence Service in Germany. He was a spy. And not only did he use his position to collect intelligence for the British Government, but he also used his position to falsify British passports, issue forged visas, and rescue over 10,000 Jews from concentration camps and the Nazi Party.
Given his secret vocation as an Intelligence Officer, Foley was never recognized for his heroism. In fact, Foley took on extra risk, beyond the typical citizen, because, as a spy, he did not have diplomatic immunity and would have been abandoned by the British government if he had been caught. This did not stop him. He hid Jews in his home. He went into camps with false visas to free enslaved Jews. And he did it all without compensation, without protection, and without the hope of even being recognized for his efforts.
Frank Foley died in 1958 at 75 years old. He has never been recognized for his heroism by the British government, but on the 24th of November 2004, on the 120th anniversary of his birth, Foley was recognized as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. At the ceremony was Elishiva Lernau, a 91 year old holocaust survivor that was rescued by Frank Foley. Speaking of Foley, Elishiva said:
His name is written on my heart… I owe my life to this man I never met, a man of humanity in a time of unparalleled inhumanity.
This morning and over the next couple weeks, we are going to be considering grace. Many times, we talk about grace as a character quality. We say, “God is gracious.” Or we talk about God’s grace like it is a third thing. An intangible reality that exists outside the character of God or outside of his actions.
As we consider God’s grace this morning, consider the grace of Frank Foley. The unmerited kindness that changed the life of Elishiva Lernau, that carved the name of Frank Foley on her heart, that makes her wake up every morning thankful for a man that she never got to meet, that grace was not a character quality, it some amorphous, intangible third thing, it was action.
Frank Foley stayed up late at night falsifying documents. He put himself at great risk when he walked into concentration camps with visas that were fake. He hid people in his home until they could escape. He did something.
Today, in Ephesians 2, we are going to see God in action. His grace is not something ambiguous or confusing, it is clear and purposeful. The free gift of his unmerited favor was exercised in what he did for us when were dead in our trespasses and sins.
So as we read our sermon text this morning, I wonder you to see God’s grace as his actions. There are three things that God graciously did for us, let’s see if we can count them. Let’s read Ephesians 2:4-7:
Ephesians 2:4-7
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.
What has God done in salvation? The main idea of our sermon this Sunday answers that question. The main idea of our sermon is this: Salvation is solely the work of God as he graciously unites us to the life of Christ.
If Paul makes anything clear in Ephesians Chapter 2, he makes it clear that salvation is, from beginning to end, God’s work. Every aspect of salvation, from eternity past, as we saw in Chapter 1, to exactly what takes place in each of our individual lives when we put our trust in Jesus, as we see this morning, is the work of God alone.
I have two questions that I want to answer to better help us understand the work of God in salvation. The first question is: when we say, “God saved me,” what did he actually do? The answer to this clear in our sermon text. The first point of our sermon is that God saved us by grace alone. But his grace is not merely an attitude of goodwill toward us. It is a definitive list of actions. God graciously did three things for us: he made us alive, he raised us up, and he seated us in the heavenly places with Christ. But here is the important thing to understand about these three actions, they are the same things that the Father did to Christ, and, in fact, Paul’s point, is that the way that God does these things to us is that he unites us to Christ resurrection, he unites us to Christ’s ascension, and he unites us to Christ’s session. God saves us from our dead nature by uniting us to the life of Christ.
The second question we want to ask of the text is: why does God do this? Paul not only wants us to see what God does in salvation, he wants us to understand why he does what he does. The second point of our sermon is this: God us to show us who he is. In the act of salvation, he shows us three things: that he is rich in mercy, that he loves us when we were unlovely, and that his gracious acts demonstrate his gracious nature. We will consider each of these and how they are revealed in God’s work of salvation.
Grace is action. God cares about his people. He favors them. He loves them. He is positively disposed to care for and cherish them. But how would we know that if he did not act on our behalf. God’s mercy, his love, and his gracious character are seen and savored by the Church when we consider what he did for us, how he united us to the life of his Son. As we think about salvation today, I want us to see that salvation is solely the work of God as he graciously unites us to the life of Christ.
God saved us by grace alone.
Let’s consider our first point: Salvation is an act of God’s grace, alone. What is grace? Jonathan Edwards famously said:
The only thing that you contributed to your salvation is the sin that made it necessary.
When we think about grace, we think about the character of God or his attitude towards us. He is kind and he looks at us fondly. This is true.
But Paul is saying something more profound. Paul is saying, the work of God to save is the grace. The free gift is the things that he did on our behalf. When we were far off, he brought us near. When we were rebellious, he turned us back to himself. When we were his enemies, he loved us.
The grace is the work that he did for us. If that is true, we should be taking a deeper look at the text and asking: what did he actually do for us? What is the gracious action of God that he performed on us in his great work of salvation? Let’s reread Ephesians 2:4-7 and find out:
Ephesians 2:4-7
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.
Paul tells us that God did three things for us: he made us alive, he raised us up, and finally, he seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. These three verbs describe God’s work of salvation. But the amazing thing that Paul is saying could be missed if we did not read carefully. Look back at the verse.
Each verb is paired with a prepositional phrase that is so important. God made us alive together with Christ, he raised up with him, he seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We saw this in Chapter 1, the means by which we are saved is Christ, but perhaps we did not grasp its significance.
When we say that Jesus is the means of our salvation, that means that we are saved by being united to him in his resurrection, ascension and session. Christ was resurrected so we will be made alive. Christ ascended into heaven so we will be raised to a place of glory. Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father, to rule and reign over all authority on earth, so we will be seated with him in heavenly authority. Since we are united to Christ, all the things that happened to him will happen to us, because we are connected to him. He is the head, we are the body.
As we have been saying from the beginning of our study in Ephesians, we were not merely saved from the consequences of our sins, we were saved to be united to Christ, in fact, we were saved by being united to Christ.
Consider it like this. My mom has always loved to cross stitch and needle point. She has recently taken on a massive project to stitch each of her grandchildren, she has 18 and counting, a stocking for Christmas. It is going to take her a long time, but in the excitement, NK has become interested in needle point. So, my mom has been teaching her how to stitch.
To do needle point, you take a piece of stiff linen that has a picture hand painted on it. The linen itself is a work of art and there are linens that are hundreds of dollars depending on intricacy of the pattern and the skill of the painter. Then you use a needle and thread to that matches the colors of the painting to stitch the picture onto the linen. When it is done, you have the same picture that was painted recreated in thread.
What Paul is saying is that salvation works in a similar process. In Chapter 1, we saw that God has a great cosmic plan for salvation from before time began. There is a pattern of life that the master painted onto history from before the foundation of the world was set. The picture is of an obedient Son whose death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and session would be the means by which salvation would come to all and the Father is sovereignly recreating that pattern in each of our lives so that we end up looking like Christ.
The problem is we couldn’t do it on our own. The thread could never be sewn into the pattern because it is too weak and flimsy. Have you ever tried to push a thread across a table? It needs something to go before it, to force it into the pattern. We are the thread. We have all fallen short of the glory of God, but when we are united to the Son, the Father can work us into his image. Christ, being the needle, is going before us and accomplishing what we could not. He is leading us and guiding us through the work of salvation according to the steady, guiding hand of the Father.
There has never been a thread that accidently transformed into a beautiful tapestry. It required the guiding hand of a master to work in the thread what the thread could never do on its own.
This is what Paul is describing in Ephesians 2. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We were born spiritually dead into a world of death. All we knew were dead things, and all we wanted were things of death. We weren’t looking for Christ, we didn’t want a Savior, we didn’t even know we had a problem. Like Lazarus in our call to worship, we were in the grave. The stone was in place and we had no hope at life.
But God…the two most beautiful words in all the Bible. Paul is saying that the only one that had a choice in salvation was God. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ. In the same way that he breathed the breath of life into the dirt that was Adam, he breathed the breath of his Spirit into the lifeless chest of every person he saves. He made Jesus alive so if you are connected to Christ, he will make you alive. This is why the act is called grace. You didn’t choose that, he just did it as an act of his free, unmerited, undeserved, unexpected kindness.
And he didn’t stop at resurrection, the same reward he gave to Christ, he gives to each of us. Because the resurrection is Christ’s resurrection and not ours, we also get the benefits of Christ’s obedience as if it was our obedience. So he glorifies us with the Son and he seats us with the Son in the new authority the Son has achieved.
This is the amazing thing about the salvation that God has worked. Since salvation comes by union with Christ, then what Christ experiences we experience. Listen to what Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:8-13:
2 Timothy 2:8-13
8 Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. 11 The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
What did Christ experience on this earth? He was homeless, persecuted, thought to be a mad man, accused of being a son of Satan. He was beaten, he was spit on, he was mocked, he was abused, and ultimately he was crucified.
We should not expect anything different. Being a Christian will make your life hard. Christ said in John 15:18:
John 15:18
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
Being united to Christ will make your life hard. It will make you look like Christ and the world hates Christ.
The problem is that most Christians have not experienced what I am talking about because they look too much like the world and not enough like Christ. They haven’t experienced persecution because they aren’t following in the ministry of Christ.
But like a long thread that is being pulled through the canvas by the seamstress that is working the needle, if the needle went through pain and suffering in this life, we should expect pain and suffering.
But Paul says, if we endure, we will reign with Christ. On the other side of the pain and the suffering of this life is resurrection, ascension, and session. We will come back to life, we will be glorified, and we will be seated with Christ in the heavenly places, because we are united to him. We get the reward for an obedience that was not ours, because we are connected to the head who is Christ.
This is grace. It is the work of the Father alone, done to us by being united to the Son. It is not our work. Paul says in Romans 11:6:
Romans 11:6
6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
It is irresistible. It is undeserved. And it is completely free to us. The price, the effort, the rewards all belong to another and are credited to us by the Father. The work of salvation is a free gift from the Father, a work that he alone works into the hearts of men as he unites them to his Son.
God saves us by grace alone to show us who he is.
Isn’t that amazing? We have seen what God does in salvation, but now I want to ask, Why does he do it? God could have accomplished salvation any number of ways, but he does it this way for a very specific reason that Paul explains in our sermon text. The second thing that we are going to see in our sermon this morning is that God saves us by grace alone to show us who he is. Let’s reread the text and try to see three things characteristics about God that are revealed in the way that he saves.
Ephesians 2:4-7
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.
Salvation reveals three things about God: he is rich in mercy, he loved us when we were unlovely, and he is a treasure worthy of our adoration. Let’s look at each of these individually, then we will be done.
First, he is rich in mercy. Since salvation is totally an act of God’s grace and we have done absolutely nothing to deserve his kindness and favor, then God must be a merciful God. Kids, here is an easy way to remember what grace and mercy are. Grace is receiving a gift that you do not deserve and mercy is not receiving a punishment you do deserve. And sometimes, one act can be both gracious and merciful.
In salvation, God gives us the new life that we do not deserve, and he mercifully pours out the punishment for our sin on Christ. So, in the one act of salvation, Christ stands in your place to receive the punishment you deserve [mercy], and you take his place to receive the reward of obedience that you do not deserve [grace]. Since salvation is solely an act of God’s grace, his character as a God of mercy is clearly on display. In receiving the benefits we did not earn, we also do not receive the punishments that we deserve.
Secondly, salvation by grace alone demonstrates God’s love. Last week, we spent an entire sermon contemplating the fact that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. God’s grace does not cooperate with our faith like Roman Catholics believe, because there is nothing there to cooperate with. In our deadness, we don’t know God, we don’t want God, in fact, we want anything and everything that is not God. We are slaves to our own rebellious and sinful desires, we live in a world of death, and we loved it. We were in the worst kind of prison, a prison of our own desire. A prison that we loved. If the door was thrown open, we would have shut it again. Everything that we were and everything that we wanted was absolutely and completely opposed to God, and this is the natural state of all men.
The love of God is seen in the fact that he was kind and gracious to us even when we were dead. When we were his enemies and in total rebellion against him, he gave us the greatest gift possible, the life of his own Son. Before the foundation of the world, God set his affections upon his people. Chapter 1, verse 3 says:
Ephesians 1:3-6
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
God’s love is an eternal reality, a free choice to be positively oriented to his people in such a way that he is willing to pay a great price for them in spite of their evil and rebellion.
Consider that the next time you are tempted to think poorly of yourself, the next time you are tempted to think you are a failure or that you’re not smart enough or not pretty enough. The God of the universe set his affections on you before time began. His love does not deny your ugliness, he loves you in spite of it.
The reality is we don’t know just how ugly we actually are. We don’t understand the repulsiveness of our own sin. The most self-deprecatory person that has ever lived views still does not understand the depths of their own depravity. God’s love does not find what is lovely in you and focus on that to the exclusion of your ugliness, he loves you in your ugliness. When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, God loved you. Understanding you better than you understand yourself, God chose to put you above himself and be obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. This is love. And God’s work of salvation by grace alone displays his love for you because the gift came to you at the height of your rebellion.
Third and finally, salvation by grace alone demonstrates that God is a treasure worth treasuring, he is a giver worthy of our thanksgiving, he is a lover worthy of our love and affection. We see this in verse 7:
Ephesians 2:7
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
This is the amazing thing about the grace that God has shown us salvation: it is so magnificent, so undeserved, so generous and kind that we will spend the rest of the ages considering, appreciating and cherishing his work of salvation. Salvation by grace alone is scandalous and inconceivable, that it will take innumerable ages to contemplate, to meditate on a God that could do such a thing. Heaven literally begins in the moment of salvation, because in that moment, for the first time, we are able to see God for who he truly is. He is not an enemy to be rebelled against. He is a God to be treasured and his work in Christ is a gift to be considered and appreciated for all eternity.
Which means, we can begin today. The work of salvation by grace alone introduces us to a God that we will be getting to know and appreciate for all of eternity, but we do not have to wait for eternity to consider the grace he has shown us in Christ. The Christian life is an intellectual life. If we want to love God, we have to know God. Reading his word, contemplating his work in Christ, encouraging one another with what we discover can begin today, and is the work of every Christian.
Which very practically means, Christians are readers and thinkers. Not solely. Our reading and our thinking serves and feeds our affections, but affection without knowledge is impossible. You cannot love what you do not know. Therefore, we must study what God has revealed about himself. We must know him through his word so we can love him for who he truly is. So be a reader. A reader of God’s word and a reader of books that help us think about God’s word. This is how we begin, even in this life, what we will be doing for all eternity in the ages to come.
Conclusion
This morning, we have seen that salvation is solely the work of God. He saves us by uniting us to the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ. If we are not united to the head, we are not united to life. Union with Christ is the means by which the Father graciously and irresistibly saves sinners. In that gracious act, we see him as merciful, loving, and a God worth treasuring and worshipping.
All that might seem really heady and theological, but consider Elishiva Lernau, the 91 year old holocaust survivor. Think about the life that she got to live. She was a young girl when she was rescued by Frank Foley. She got to have a long life. She had a family, she got to travel, she got to taste butterscotch ice cream. She got to stand at the end of her life and look back on all that was good, all that was sweet, all that was precious and dear, and she knew that she could only credit it to one man. One man that was humane in an age of inhumanity.
Elishiva understood grace on a human level. Our task is to contemplate grace on a cosmic level. James 1:17 says:
James 1:17
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Where would you be, Christian, without grace?
Let’s pray.