Ephesians 2:4-10 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Lent 4 March 11, 2018 “Rejoice in the Greatness of God’s Grace”
Grace. Clearly it is a very important word in the Bible. It also gives our congregation its name. But have you really thought about what that word means? Could you define it for someone? Many of us probably could. We’d say something like, “Grace is God’s undeserved love for sinners.” And that’s a fine definition. But defining the word grace and really understanding and appreciating it are two different things. Some have used grace as an acronym to understand the meaning better. They say Grace is G-R-A-C-E God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. That’s a great reminder that God’s grace led him to pay a price, and that we benefit from it. But it still doesn’t necessarily speak to our hearts about what grace really means. Grace is what sinners need, what they long for deeply if they only understand the hopelessness of their plight. It is what only God can give and what he wants to give freely to us. Grace is what you need when you are an Israelite in your wilderness camp and a venomous snake slithers near. It’s what you need as that serpent strikes and sinks its fangs deep into your flesh. That’s when you think about, when you remember your grumbling and your complaining. And you know that you deserve this fate. You know that you deserve to die from that wound because you did again what you have always done. You forgot God’s goodness. You acted selfishly and thoughtlessly. You turned your back on God even though he had never turned his back on you. And as your vision starts to blur and as you struggle to fill your lungs with one last breath of air—Grace is seeing a bronze serpent hanging high on a pole, and you look at it and know that God loves you even though he shouldn’t. And the sight of the metal serpent becomes clearer and sharper, and you realize that it is getting easier and easier to breathe again. And you know that you didn’t do anything to make God love you, because you were already as good as dead. But God loved you anyway, and he saved you again. That’s grace. That’s what brings us together around God’s Word week after week. It’s what leads us to rejoice even as we contemplate our sins and our Savior’s death. It is the heart and core of the central message of all of Scripture, a word that we should never tire of hearing and on which we do right to meditate regularly. That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, leads us to do in the words from Ephesians chapter 2 that provide the basis for our sermon. As you think on these words today, rejoice in the greatness of God’s grace. Rejoice because God’s grace brought us from death to life. In our Old Testament example of grace, life from death is clear and obvious. Without the intervention of the bronze serpent, the Israelites were perishing. But by God’s grace, they were kept alive. This very same theme of life from death is found in our verses today. These verses come from a summary of God’s plan of salvation which makes up the first part of Paul’s letter to Christians in the city of Ephesus. It is a plan that God had from eternity to rescue his people. In our lives, that plan plays out as God by his grace brings us from death to life. That contrast is one that Paul uses not only in these verses, but elsewhere in the book and in other places in the Scriptures as well. We were dead. It is true of every Ephesian, every Christian, every person today. When we are conceived and born into the world, we are dead spiritually. We are dead in our sin. Remember Jesus’ words to Nicodemus from today’s Gospel (John 3:14-21)? In the conversation that came before, Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again. It was not that he had to enter into his mother’s womb a second time, but that he required a different sort of birth. We come into the world spiritually dead. We inherit the sinful nature of our parents, just as they inherited it from theirs. And just as surely as a dead person cannot do anything to improve his position, so also those who are spiritually dead can do nothing to help or save themselves. And this is true even if unbelievers try to fool others by their actions. People who are spiritually dead may appear to be good, spiritually alive, even among the most outwardly impressive people we have ever met. But those who are spiritually dead are inwardly full of sin and decay, and without change will be apart from God forever. That’s why I need grace. That’s why you need grace. And God gives grace. “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy” – see how term after term is piled together to accentuate God’s
unexplainable favor for us! “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” When everything in you was only death, God loved you. When everything in you was only sin, God brought you to his Son who died on the cross for that sin. God made you alive. He saved you by grace. He brought us from death to life. And that means that he also brought us from earth to heaven. The greatness of God’s grace is found in this, is appreciated most fully only by knowing how low our beginning was and how high our God has taken us! We were dead. We were earthly. We were unspiritual, but God made us alive and raised us to the highest of heights! Our text continues, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Jesus says it this way: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18). Spiritual death, our natural condition, means eternal death and hell. But God by grace rescued us from the condemnation that we deserved and gave us eternal life in heaven. And he accomplished that by bringing us to faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, who died for us and was raised to life again. There is no higher place that we can reach than to be with our loving God forever! That is what Paul drives at when he refers to “the incomparable riches of [God’s] grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” This is God’s plan from eternity, carried out in history, and brought to us now in our earthly lifetimes for our eternal benefit! You were dead, but now you are alive! You were condemned, but now you have eternal salvation! How amazing and rich and full and great is the grace of God! You cannot take credit for any of it any more than the dying snake-bitten Israelite could claim credit for looking up at the bronze serpent. God did it all, by grace. God gave it all to you through faith. It is a gift, not a work. It is unasked, unearned, undeserved. That’s God’s grace. All that we are is his handiwork. And that also means that his grace has brought us from selfishness to service. Sinful natural human beings can only serve one master, and that is themselves. But those who have been changed by God’s grace now serve God and serve all those God places into our lives. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Our lives in this world are moment-by-moment opportunities to do good. God has prepared not just the opportunities, but the very works through which we can show how powerfully we rejoice in the grace he has shown to us. Jesus talked about that, too, didn’t he? He told Nicodemus, “[W]hoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” Neither in Jesus’ words nor in Paul’s is there any suggestion that the good things we do earn God’s grace or our salvation. Nowhere in Scripture is there even a hint of that. No, God’s grace comes first. And our actions are a result of the faith the God gives to us. And the more we appreciate the greatness of God’s grace, the more we are moved to action, to the good works that God has prepared for us. It is not necessarily difficult to define the word grace, but it is difficult to fully comprehend and appreciate it. God’s grace means life from death. It means heaven in the place of hell, salvation in the place of condemnation. It means service to others where selfishness once filled our lives. God’s grace is everything. It is everything that we have and everything that we need. It is something for which to rejoice today and forever! The Text: Ephesians 2:4–10 (NIV) 4 But
because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.