Walking in Good Works
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
One of my favorite pieces of information about Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is that it likely wasn’t written to the Ephesians. The words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ are missing from some of the earliest manuscripts. This is particularly interesting because Paul mentions a letter that presumably isn’t in our New Testament in his letter to the Colossians. Here is Colossians 4:16.
And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.
There is a probable but ultimately unprovable theory that the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Laodiceans are the same letter. The theory is that what we call Ephesians was intended as a circular letter to be read by all the churches in the Laodicean area, and for whatever reason, Ephesus, one of the cities in that region, got attached as the letter’s name.
Hauptbriefe
Hauptbriefe
I bring this up because in critical Pauline scholarship, thanks mainly to the Germans, there is a strong tendency to consider only four of Paul’s epistles as authentic. These letters are referred to as the Hauptbriefe, or chief letters, and they are Romans, Galatians, and First and Second Corinthians. The rest of the letters are labeled pseudo-Pauline, meaning they bear Paul’s name on the letter, but scholars don’t believe he was the author. So, if you want to do Pauline theology and know what Paul thought about something, you have to go to one of these chief letters (Romans, Galatians, or First and Second Corinthians) because these are the only letters that Paul wrote (so says the critical scholar.) The frustrating thing is that even among conservative scholars who reject this idea, they still play the same game. What I mean is that even among those who accept that Paul wrote all the Pauline epistles, they still treat Romans, Galatians, and First and Second Corinthians as if they were the chief letters of Paul, as if those letters are the places to go if you want the best exemplars of Paul’s theology.
Let me tell you why that’s wrong.
All four of those letters were prompted by specific historical circumstances. When Paul writes those letters, he is responding to something specific in these churches. However, Ephesians shows no signs of being Paul’s response to a specific situation in a particular city, and this likelihood is only further increased if Ephesians is intended as a circular letter to be read in not one but all the churches in an area. Think about the difference there. If you ask me a theological question or problem and I respond, my response may or may not indicate what matters to me theologically. My response is driven by your question, not by my priorities. But, if I’m casually talking, or if I’m giving a talk intended to be heard by lots of people in many different places, there’s a better chance that I’ll be talking about the things that matter most to me. The less what I say is tied to a specific context, the more likely it is that you’ll hear my theological priorities.
If this is so, we should probably turn the hauptbriefe on their heads. Rather than starting with Romans, Galatians, and First and Second Corinthians, what if we started with Paul’s more general epistles? What if we started with a letter like Ephesians? If we did, we might rightly see our reading this morning as one of the centerpieces of Paul’s theology.
After the customary epistolary greeting and thanksgiving, the letter begins formally in chapter 2, and it’s wrong that our reading this morning started in verse 4 because this whole section is framed by the words walked in vs. two and walk in vs. 10.
Paul writes:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
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—
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.
There’s a lot in every verse in this section, but let me quickly summarize. All of humanity formerly walked in trespasses and sins. We were dead, and we were following not the Holy Spirit of God but the evil force Paul calls “the prince of the power of the air.” To live like this is to live in the passions of our flesh, that is, the desires of our body and mind, and this makes us children of wrath, just like the rest of humankind.
But God… I love that phrase…
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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 in Christ Jesus,
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Notice in verse four that the Gospel starts with mercy and love. God loved you even when you were unlovable, and even when you were by nature a child of wrath, God had mercy on you. You were dead, walking around just trying to satisfy the desires of the flesh, unaware that you were following around the prince of the power of the air, but God did not abandon you to that fate. God loved you. God had mercy on you. God made you alive together with Jesus Christ. Notice in verse five how Paul interjects this phrase. It’s as if he can’t not say it. By grace you have been saved. You didn’t do this. You didn’t get yourself here today. You don’t deserve this. Do you know what the difference between you and the worst sinner in Largo is? God’s grace. That’s the difference. Not you. Not anything you’ve done. Not your moral character. Not your net worth. Not your skin color or nationality. It is God’s grace.
He made you alive when you were dead, and he raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places. And if you’re asking, when did this happen? When was I raised with Christ and seated in the heavenly places? The answer is simple. It happened when you were baptized. When you were baptized, you began to be “in Christ” so that what is true of him became true of you. If it’s not true that if we are in Christ then what is true of him is true of us, then help me make sense of verse six. “He seated us with him in the heavenly places in the Messiah Jesus.”
Why did he do this? So that in the age to come, God can show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Your heavenly Father wants to give you all good things, but now not. You don’t want your best life now. What you want is a cross now because the cross leads to glory.
Paul interjected it earlier. Now, he returns to the topic again.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
I know all the church growth books say I’m supposed to make you feel good about yourself, but you are not worthy of this. You are not special. You’re not good. You’re not righteous. You’re not holy. You have no reason to boast about your salvation or what God has done in you because you haven’t done anything. It is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.
And here’s the kicker. Here’s the part people don’t usually want to talk about.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
God didn’t save you because he thinks you’re exceptional. God saved you because he has a task for you. You are his workmanship, his creation. And Paul isn’t referring to the general idea of God as the creator. He is talking specifically about salvation. God, in his mercy, love, and grace, saves people so that he might bless them in the age to come and set them to work in this present evil age. You are his creation. He created (or as I prefer, recreated) you in Christ Jesus. Why? For good works — good works that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And now, the whole thing ties together.
We once walked in our trespasses and sins, following a malevolent force whether we knew it or not, but now God has saved us, rescued us, and redeemed us so that rather than walking in trespasses and sins, we might walk in good works that he has prepared for us.
I want to close there and leave us with this thought. God has a plan for this world. That plan goes back to Abraham. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. God chooses to fulfill that plan through human beings. He is so committed to fulfilling this plan through human beings that he became a human being to do what we could not. And he sets before his people (he prepares) good works for us to walk in, but what do we do? More often than not we turn our backs on those moments and chase after the desires of our flesh rather than walking the path that God has prepared for us.
Imagine if we looked at each moment of our lives as a moment God had prepared for us. He prepared for us to do good at that moment but left the choice to us. In every moment, we have a choice: to walk in our trespasses and sins or to walk in the good works God has prepared for us.
Every time you choose to disobey, you ignore the good work that God has prepared for you. Whenever you know someone needs your help and look the other way, you ignore the good work that God has prepared for you. Whenever you choose to fill your mind with garbage and your life with things that do not matter, you ignore the good work God has prepared for you.
And that’s the crazy thing that you see as a pastor. The right choice is always in front of us. It’s right there. God has prepared that good work beforehand for you to walk in, but so often, we prefer not what God has prepared but rather the desires of our flesh. That’s what the dead do. But God has already made you alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. In his mercy, love, and grace, he has saved you and set the path he wants you to walk before you. So walk it. It is for these moments that God has redeemed you, and we ignore them to our own peril.
Amen.