The Sin-Dead Raised to Life
Notes
Transcript
Notes
Notes
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
Prayer
Prayer
Adoration (the power of God as seen in Christ’s enthronement, etc.)
Confession (our failure to remember hope, inheritance, power, Christ)
Thanksgiving (unfailing mercy)
Supplication:
Benediction
Benediction
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.
Sermon
Sermon
(Read Eph. 2:1-7)
Dead in Sin
Dead in Sin
One famous and very influential pastor said,
“...most people are beaten down enough by life. They already feel guilty enough. They're not doing what they should, raising their kids — we can all find reasons. So I want them to come to [our church] or our meetings and be lifted up, to say, 'You know what? I may not be perfect, but I'm moving forward. I'm doing better.' And I think that motivates you to do better.”
This, he said, is why he doesn’t talk much about sin in his teaching. In another place, he said, “How you think determines how you live. Many people are being held back by wrong mindsets. You can't think negative, and live a positive life.”
Is this true? Is it counter-productive, as Christians, to talk about sin? Maybe talking about sin, over time, will turn us into gloomy people who live miserable, negative, and colorless lives. After all, sin is at very best, an unpleasant subject. Don’t we keep lids on our kitchen trash cans? Nobody wants the smell of rotting food wafting around the kitchen. So why would we want to take the lid off of sin and examine it?
And hasn’t Christ payed for our sins? So, what’s the point? Why bring up something so vile and disturbing as sin? Wouldn’t it be wiser to just focus on God’s grace and love, and leave it at that? Isn’t that what will actually lead people to Joy?
Unfortunately, there is a certain brand of Christian out there who want to keep bringing up the subject of sin. For example, the Apostle Paul.
OK. So then, something is wrong with everything I just said. Something is wrong with the idea that we shouldn’t talk about sin. True, sin has only been mentioned once in Ephesians so far as we’ve gone through it. It only came up once in chapter 1, and only in passing—no discussion of sin at all, but only of God’s grace and love.
And then here, in chapter 2, Paul suddenly plunges into 3 1/2 verses (or so) of a disturbing, bleak, and detailed portrait of sin. Why?
Or to phrase the question in another way, why is this so different from what we do? Where have we gone wrong, so that a detailed discussion of sin seems so counter-intuitive to us, while it was so natural to the Apostles and to the Lord Jesus himself?
What is the point of talking in detail about sin? Well, observing Paul’s portrait of sin closely, here in Ephesians 2, will give us the answer.
It begins in verse 1 with, “and you”—meaning the Ephesian believers, the Gentiles Christians. So this portrait is personal: it was about the very people who received the letter; it is about us.
And Paul waists no time. He immediately identifies the root problem: “you were dead” he says. Spiritually dead, “in trespasses and in sins.” Now, “Trespasses and sins” are two different words to describe the same behavior from two different angles. “Trespasses” focuses on how we violate God’s good law, and are condemned as a result; “Sin” focuses on how that traitorous act of breaking God’s law is a personal offense against God.
And you might say that this is just what spiritual death smells like. It isn’t a neutral thing. We are stuck in the sphere of sin and transgression like a dead body stuck in a tomb. And so, sin and transgression are simply how we naturally live, before redemption.
But here someone might object: “I am a good person, so this doesn’t describe me. “Dead in sin” doesn’t feel like who I am, or who I ever have been.”
Well, sin is very good at covering its tracks. My unbelieving friend, I would ask you, is it common to find someone who knows how bad they are, and is humbled by it? Most people either can’t see their sins, or minimize how bad the sins are, or else take pride in their sins. That is simply what sinners do—even believers often times. That is simply what sin does. It justifies itself. It covers itself.
But sin is not, at its root, about a set of actions you do in public, as important as actions are. Sin is not, at its root, about spectacular things like murder and drugs and grand theft auto. Sin is a condition of the heart: a condition of death, which is very good at hiding itself. But, the Good Physician was very good at uncovering and diagnosing it. He would say things like:
(Matthew 5)
English Standard Version Chapter 5
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment
In other words, if you’ve ever been angry with someone—if you’ve ever had an unjust or selfish or out-of-control anger—you’re guilty of heart-murder. Perhaps you’ve not gone as far as an actual murderer. But you’ve started down the same path—a path heavy with the odor of rotting spiritual death, and which our holy God detests. Or consider what James said:
(James 3:8-9)
English Standard Version Chapter 3
no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
After hearing a verse like that, please do not look down on hypocrites. How can any of us claim to be free from hypocrisy? But this is the stench of spiritual death, and many additional verses could illuminate, for us, many additional flavors of it.
But in verse 2, Paul says that these are sins, “in which we once walked.” There is grace even in this phrase: if you are a true believer, Paul is not so much describing who you are now as who you were before Christ or who you would be without him. You now, instead of being dead in sins, you struggle with them and fight against them, empowered by the Spirit of adoption.
But what did you do formerly? What did you do before Christ? Now, I understand that for some of you, if you grew up in a Christian home and believed early in life, may not remember a period of time in your life like this. And that is something to be thankful for. Nevertheless, you still struggle with sin, and this is still what you were saved from: spiritual death, walking in line with the deadness of the world.
But, notice here that picture has changed slightly. The picture of deadness is now a picture of walking, which means living a certain kind of life. And there are three things which define this life
First, again in verse 2, it is walking, “following the course of this world.” The idea here is that, before redemption, men and women just take their natural place within the fallen human race. We follow the way everyone thinks; we learn to love what everyone loves; and we follow the example of those around us, often into evil.
And the world is a powerful sin-factory. It speaks to our hearts in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different lies. For example, in our own culture, it disciples us to think that the good life is a life full of material things—a nicer house, the latest electronics, the most fashionable cloths, you name it—have these and you’ll be satisfied (rather than communion with God). Or it disciples us to place the Sovereign Self at the center of our own little universes, and to see self-expression and happiness as the ultimate goals of human existence (rather than knowing and worshiping God). This is the particular lie which undergirds transgender-ism and other aspects of the current gender revolution. And if that’s something you struggle with, by the way—personally or watching someone you love go through that struggle, please know: there is gospel hope. It can be a confusing issue, and it can take some time and thought to readjust our minds and hearts to the clarity of God’s own truth and grace on the subject. But there is great hope for such a person, just as there is for all of us sinners.
But second, again in verse 2, Paul writes that we used to follow, “the prince of the power of the air.” The phrase, “power of the air,” is another way to describe the dark side of the unseen realm. It is a synonym to, “the kingdom of darkness” from Col. 1:13. It is the rival kingdom to God’s kingdom. It is the kingdom out of which we have been rescued by Christ. But it is the kingdom which the unredeemed follow and live by, and ultimately are citizens of, whether they are aware of it or not. And so, they are under the shadowy influence of this dark prince.
And right at the end of verse 2, it calls this prince, “the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” This is a fascinating statement, because it is riffing off of two ideas that Paul gave us earlier in the letter. First, it says that this spirit—this dark prince—is at work in unbelievers. This is the same word he used in chapter 1 verse 20 to talk about God working his infinite power to raise Christ from the dead and enthrone him—power which God has also applied to our own lives. And so, this dark spirit is doing something vaguely parallel to God’s own Spirit.
Now, of course, this dark spirit—Satan—merely has great power, not infinite power. Not even close. And he does not work in human hearts in the same way as the Divine Spirit. He is merely a created being who as rebelled against the holy, Uncreated One. And so, he is not a real rival to God’s Spirit.
But the exact sense of this parallel can be found in the second echoed idea: the idea of sons. We have already seen that the Holy Spirit works in us, applying Jesus’ redemption to us and thus making us sons of the God the Father. But here, this dark spirit is at work in all unbelievers, so that they can be called “sons of disobedience,” and later in verse 3, “children of wrath.”
And this takes us right back to Genesis 3, where God pronounced to this same dark prince, right after he had successfully tempted Adam and Eve:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
So then, there would be an ongoing war between the offspring—the children—of Eve, whose name means life—between her children and the children of Satan. And, though, in one sense, Jesus is the ultimate child of Eve, who dealt the decisive blow to Satan at the cross, yet in another way, this conflict between Eve’s children and Satan’s children has carried on down through the ages until today. That is way Psalm 110:2 says about Jesus:
The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Jesus reigns, but his enemies are still there. The conflict is not over yet.
But now, there is an important pivot in verse 3. Up to this point, Paul has been saying, “you.” “You were dead in your sins… in which you once walked” etc. You Ephesians, you Gentiles. But now, he switches to “we.” We Jews. We once lived among the sons of disobedience, “in the passions of our flesh.” And so, Paul is letting them know: not only do Jewish and Gentile believers share the same hope and the same inheritance, but we also were rescued from the same spiritual death! The Jewish heart was not, at its root, any different than the Gentile heart. Both were filled with the rotting stench of spiritual deadness. Both the wild, immoral Gentiles and the respectable, law-abiding Jews.
And so we’ve seen how the spiritually dead heart walks in step with the world and with the devil. And here Paul adds the third thing: we walk in step with what he calls, “the passions of our flesh.” This does not mean, necessarily, our bodily desires. Bodily desires can be neutral, and are good in the right contexts. Rather, Paul is referring to desires that arise from the deadness of our hearts. Desires laced with pride, selfishness, or idolatry. Desires which usually twist something good into monstrous. And instead of fighting these with God’s help, unbelievers live in them.
And again, these are wretched desires. But they aren’t always “spectacularly” bad. They aren’t always desires of lust which lead to adultery, or of anger which lead to murder. They often work themselves out in quieter ways, such as a father who selfishly detaches emotionally from his family and throws himself into his work instead, because he has idolized carrier success. Or, in Paul’s case, a self-righteous adherence to religious forms, based on a prideful sense of spiritual accomplishment. Sin loves to cover its tracks, and present itself as respectable.
And so, Paul says, at the end of verse 3, we were children of wrath by nature, just like the rest. In other words, we Jews were ultimately no different than you Gentiles. This was a problem of human nature. Someone might say, ‘well, if we could just improve the environment that folks grow up in, then this sin problem would virtually disappear.’ But Jews grew up in a society shaped by God’s good law, and it didn’t elevate their hearts one bit as compared to their Gentile neighbors. Or someone might say, ‘we just need to educate people better, and society will reach a new level.’ But Jews had God’s good law and leaned it from a young age, and according to Paul they were still in the same basic condition as the Gentiles—spiritually dead. Children of wrath by nature.
And so, the sin problem is ultimately a problem of nature, of who we simply are. We are selfish and prideful. We are in rebellion against God. We naturally live in line with the world’s evil, we naturally follow our corrupted desires, and we naturally are children of Satan—Jew and Gentile alike. And so, we are also children of wrath, as it says in verse 3. Meaning, we are destined to encounter the burning anger of God, who in his goodness hates sin.
And then come two of the best words in Scripture: “But God.” And why are these words good? Because he is a God who is rich in mercy toward us, who were spiritually dead. He is a God who has loved us with a great love, as it says in verse 4. Not merely a love which adopted good people to be his children—or even mediocre people, or even bad people. But a love so great that he drew near to us when we were “dead in our trespasses”—he came to us and saved us while we were still covered in the filth of our spiritual deadness.
And in his love, he did not leave us in our state of spiritual death, but “made us alive together with Christ.” So then, this is the answer to the problem of spiritual death: God’s miraculous power to cause spiritual life in a heart where, before, there was only deadness.
And then Paul interjects, here, at the end of verse 5, saying, “by grace you have been saved.” In other words, this the meaning of God’s grace: that he gives spiritual life to the dead. It is not that he draws near to the kind of people who want him, who seek him—who are ‘spiritually sick’ you might say—and just need a little God in their lives as a kind of medicine for a spiritual flu. Rather, at first, he draws near to those who are spiritually dead, who want nothing to do with him at all. He draws near to people who are, at first, his enemies, and begins to graciously bring life to their dead hearts.
And so, this is reason #1 to talk about sin: if we forget about the dark and evil state of our former lives, we will lose sight of the depths of God’s grace and love toward us. He did not merely rescue those who needed some help, but those who were his willing enemies. This is the depth of his grace. He did not merely come to save a likable people and make them better, but to save rotting, spiritual corpses. This is the depth of his love.
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ironically, then, by avoiding the subject of sin we minimize the grace and love of God. And in minimizing the grace and love of God, we rob ourselves of seeing the true extent of the hope to which he has called us, and the full riches of his glorious inheritance for us. We make God’s love small, and so our faith and our knowledge of God becomes small, and basically we drain all of the power out of the Christian life.
But there is a second reason here for talking about sin. Notice, Paul does not stop at saying that God made us alive in Christ. But, (verse 6) he also raised us up with Christ and seated us (that’s enthroned us!) with Christ in the heavenly realms. Does that pattern sound familiar? Remember what we saw last week? Paul wanted us to know about the power of God’s great might,
Eph. 1:20-21 “that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named…”
And so Paul is really coming full-circle here. He’s talking about God’s power toward us in Christ again, but even more directly. When Christ burst apart the chains of death, he did not just defeat physical death, but also spiritual death. Therefore, in the power of his physical resurrection, we are raised to new spiritual life in him. And in his assertion into heaven, he did not merely enter heaven as its king, but as the head of a new humanity, thus giving us the undeserved right to enter there as well. And he was not merely enthroned by himself, but enthroned that we might reign with him. This is the power of God.
But if we forget the spiritual death from which we have come, then we won’t see the half of God’s power, and ironically, we will then be robbed of the comfort which could be ours. How powerful and how gracious is our God? I was spiritually dead, with a rotten heart, and then in the working of his great power, he took me all the way from there to enthronement in heaven with Christ. Surely, since our God has this much grace, his power will be sufficient for whatever else we might need.
So I would urge you, stay away from spiritual books and practices which dodge the issue of sin, or sideline it, or ignore it. And if you ever hear someone say that too much talk of sin is unhealthy… well, that’s when to start posting your spiritual guard. Certainly, talk of sin without talk of grace is dark and pointless. But talk of grace without talk of sin is just sentimentalism—not biblical Christianity, and not the kind of stuff which is going to prepare you for the darkness of this world by pointing you to the richness of God’s gracious power.
And there is even a third reason to talk about sin. Verse 7 says that he has done these things for us,
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.”
In other words, by redeeming us, God has put his grace on display forever. And, this verse begins with, “so that”—meaning, this is the most ultimate reason, the most ultimate goal behind God’s redeeming actions. Once again, as we have seen, he redeems us in his love and for his glory.
And in drawing this dark portrait of sin, Paul is really just showing us the extent of the glory of God’s grace. This is how bad, how rotten, how dead we were when he came to us. And so, this is the depth of his love for us. But then, if we avoid talking about sin, we will be found not only defrauding ourselves of comfort, but defrauding God if the worship that is due to him.
Have you ever gone out and looked at the stars in the night sky? If you tried while in the city, or even near the city, it was hardly worth the effort. But if you ever go stargazing at night deep in the wilderness, or at sea, far from land, the majesty of the night sky will mesmerize you. And so, a true sense and a true experience of the vast darkness of outer space is necessary before you can behold the glory of the stars. So it is with God’s grace. And this tells us two things:
First, when presenting the gospel to unbelievers, we cannot skim over the issue of sin—addressing it lightly or not at all. A gospel explanation that centers on “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” is not faithful. And this is difficult. I feel it myself. It’s not easy to look someone in the eye and say, you’re spiritually dead—a rotting corpse in God’s sight. And of course, we should still say these things wisely and gently and winsomely. But the gospel makes little sense until a person understands this: I am dead, and need life; until he or she is ready to say:
Full of truth and grace thou art,
And here is all my hope;
False and foul as hell, my heart
To thee I offer up.
Thou wast given to redeem
My soul from all iniquity.
Friend of sinners, spotless Lamb,
Thy blood was shed for me.
Nothing have I, Lord, to pay,
Nor can thy grace procure,
Empty send me not away,
For I, thou know’st, am poor.
Dust and ashes is my name,
My all is sin and misery.
Friend of sinners, spotless Lamb,
Thy blood was shed for me.
Second, if you are already a believer, do you want your heart drawn closer to God? We are those who still struggle with sin, often badly so. What, then, is the way to God? What is the way to experiencing his power? Confess your sins to him always. Own the darkness of your sins before his through—it is a throne of mercy. He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, will he not meet you with forgiveness?
And then, a forgiven sinner, standing always on grace, you will find your heart drawn more and more toward him. You will find yourself ready to worship him. Ironically, then, it is by delighting in grace that we receive the power to live in greater holiness, for his glory.
Debbie’s Baptism
Debbie’s Baptism
What is baptism? So much could be said. But at is most basic level, it is a symbol for entering into union with Christ. Paul says:
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
We are united with Christ in his death and in his resurrection, and so we are brought from death to life. And baptism is a Spirit-illuminated symbol of that.
Also, baptism is a symbol of our union with each other through Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
In other words, when we first come to Christ, the Spirit baptizes us into Christ’s body, the church. And water baptism is a symbol of that as well.
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Debbie, have you understood yourself to be a sinner, in need of God’s redemption?
Have you trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?
Have you renounced Satan, his kingdom, and his works?
Is your hope in Christ, your King, to bring you safely home to glory, and to one day make all things new?
Because of your testimony of faith, I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.