Our Deliverance

We faced a major dilemma: We were “dead in our trespasses and sins.”  Major dilemmas require major resolutions.

In these verses (Eph. 2:4-6) Paul assured the Ephesians—and us—that God provides a salvation that fully resolves our spiritual dilemma.

Our Assurance Rests on the Foundation of Our Deliverance.

Verse 4 tells us our deliverance is founded upon the love of God, “the great love with which he loves us.” 

Paul never ceases to marvel at the wonder and wealth of God’s love.  He knows God doesn’t love us because we are loveable (remember those “trespasses and sins”); God loves us because he is “so very rich in mercy.” 

The love of God should never be treated with casual nonchalance, as though it were something we have a right to expect.  When we take seriously the charge that “we all were by nature children of wrath” (2:3), we will be very hesitant to speak of anyone being beyond the love of God. God’s love is surprising and unexpected.

God’s love is not some abstract feeling or inclination toward humanity.  God put his love into action to meet the needs of unworthy humanity.  Anyone tempted to doubt the love of God should look at the cross.  Indeed, when Paul mentions our salvation the cross looms in the background.

The love of God overruled the wrath of God in an act of grace; “by grace you have been saved,” Paul tells the Ephesians.  We who were most unworthy have been most clearly loved. The love of God cannot be purchased and it cannot be denied.  That should inspire devotion and assurance.

Our Assurance Rests on the Fullness of Our Deliverance.

The Biblical pictures of what God has done for us through Christ are varied.  Paul uses two here.

He enlivened us.  God, “even though we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive.”  Did you get that?  The only antidote for death is life.  Our problem was death; the solution was life.

 Spiritually we share in the resurrection of Christ.  Life comes through union with Christ.  That’s why we urge people to seek this relationship with him.

As a result of God’s saving action you are more alive now than you have ever been.  Where once you had no capacity for the spiritual in life, you do now.  Paul’s words recall Jesus description of his mission found in John 10:10—“I’ve come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  In the words of the Common English Bible, Jesus came so we “could live life to the fullest.” 

At the same time, He enthroned us.  The Ephesians were familiar with thrones.  They were literally seats of power; those who sat on thrones had power.  Now, Paul tells us that believers are “seated with Christ in the heavenly reams.”  It seems strange until we recall what Paul said a few verses before.  He spoke of our being under the influence of “the ruler of the power of the air.” This ruler is Satan—the malevolent one who seeks only our ruin. 

Now, Paul tells us that seated with Christ we have the power to overcome “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” the three forces enslaved us when we had no relationship with Christ.  We moderns have sometimes scoffed at such talk but we unconsciously recognize our vulnerability to being controlled.  Take a psychology or sociology class and you’ll learn how varied forces, inside us and outside us, pressure us to behave in one way or another.  We sometimes argue our bad, even self-destructive behavior is to be laid off on these influences.  Remember Hank Williams, Junior’s excuse for his drinking; he was “keeping up an old family tradition.”

Paul is telling us that the Christian does not have to give in to

--peers who would lead us into hurtful lifestyles, who would urge us to be indifferent to spiritual matters;

--a flawed culture that would fill us with hatred for other races and cultures, a culture that believes the accumulation of wealth is all that matters;

--the inner promptings of an “addictive personality.”

Indeed, our new life in Christ even allows us to say “No” to Satan. 

That’s how full our deliverance is.

Conclusion:

You ought to be confident the salvation God provides will meet your deepest spiritual needs.  If you’ve trusted Christ, don’t allow anything to shake your confidence.

If you’ve yet to commit yourself to him, allow me to encourage you.

Escape your state of spiritual death and let God give you life.

Escape from your powerlessness and let God give you power to live the life he give syou.

Our Dilemma

In The Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom tells the young singer Christine, “Close your eyes to the truth…for the truth isn’t what you want to see.”  Life has occasions like that, occasions when we don’t want to see the truth.  This passage (Ephesians 2:1-3) contains several such truths.

In short, the passage is about sin.  But it tells us our problem is greater than our being guilty of occasional moral missteps.  It speaks of the root of such behavior. 

This behavior, which Paul describes in the words “transgressions and sins,” is evidence that we are dead.  In fact, we might be said to be the truly living dead.  Outwardly, we give evidence of being alive but within our deepest being, our souls, we are unresponsive.  Any check for spiritual vital signs comes up negative.

Now, we can push this imagery too far—Paul elsewhere reminds us that we can see evidence of God’s existence in the world around us.  But, in the words of Skevington Wood, “the most vital part of mans personality—the spirit—is dead to the most important factor in life—God.”

As Paul continues to discuss Christ’s work later in this chapter, he rejoices in the capacity Christians have to enjoy a relationship with God and with fellow believers.  The condition Paul describes in the opening words of this passage would make such relationships impossible. You can’t have a relationship with the dead.

Further evidence of our sinful condition is found in the domination often seen in the lives of our fellow human beings—and in our own lives.  When Paul speaks of “the ruler of the kingdom of the air,” he is speaking of Satan.  Jews and Christians believed in Satan.  This was not the horned imp with a pitchfork we see in cartoons; they saw Satan as a malevolent entity opposed to God’s plan and purposes for humankind. 

Many moderns shy away from affirming belief in Satan but some, like Archibald Hunter, insist there is no logical reason to deny Satan’s existence.  If we grant the existence of a benevolent God, there is no reason to question whether there might be another being whose agenda is far from benevolent.  The Bible denies what is called “dualism,” that notion that God and Satan are equally matched, but it does present the evil one as a formidable enemy.  Without denying that some writers have gone too far in describing demonic influence in the world, there’s no doubt Jesus, the apostles, and most Christian thinkers until modern times believed in his existence.  Maybe it would be good to keep in mind Verbal’s final observation in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”

Paul’s mention of Satan may be especially relevant in this letter.  There is evidence of a cult in Ephesus and much of Asia Minor that worshipped the serpent.  This included the serpent mentioned in the story of the Fall.  In fact, several of the churches specifically addressed in Revelation struggled with what appears to have been the worship of the serpent.  If this is what he has in mind, Paul is telling his readers that the power some of them may have been worshipping is the power that has been enslaving them and keeping them from the freedom God wants them to know.

Further evidence of our sinful condition is found in our depravity.  Paul speaks of our “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following that nature’s desires and thoughts.”  This doesn’t mean every act we perform is evil but is does mean every human capacity we possess is tainted by sin.  In one-way or another we live in such a manner that follows “the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature.” (NLT) Whatever evil our minds (“thoughts”) conceive, we act on. 

We can find a venue for evil in every talent we have, in every expression of our personalities.  The hand that can caress can abuse.  “Social media” may allow old friends to reconnect or allow bullies to torment the vulnerable.  The voice that can sing a beautiful hymn can blaspheme.  Simple love of country becomes mindless nationalism.  Religion that can be a voice of love becomes a voice of hate.

Just this past week I read stories of parents from two very different cultures who murdered their children.  I would like to believe such behavior belongs to another place, another nation.  Yet, these acts took place only a few hundred miles from where I live.  Only the most naïve parent or grandparent doesn’t worry just a little about their children or grandchildren walking home from school everyday; we know there are strangers who may sweep into the “safe” community and shatter its illusion of safety.  And though such stories are hardly new we still shake our heads in wonder asking how such things can happen. 

But even without such tragic, news-making evidence we know something is wrong.  Every time you walk back downstairs to be sure you’ve locked a door or wrestle with the shrink wrap around a product you’ve just bought, you see further evidence—evidence we’ve lived with so long we’ve learned to ignore it.  These things are part of life because we live in a broken world, a world where rebellion against God is the order of the day. 

This truth we’d rather not hear cannot be escaped by embracing any culture. 

Paul lets us know this in a subtle but significant way as he changes pronouns.  He moves from “you” to “we” in his description of the human condition.  Here’s how Mounce translates verse 3: “Among them we also all once lived in the passions of our flesh, gratifying the desires and impulses of the flesh….” Paul may be writing to a church in the Gentile world but he does not let his own people off the hook; they, too, are sinners. 

The Bible does not promote racism—indeed, the Bible does not seem to recognize the category of “race,” like we do.  We are all God’s creation and all living estranged from him.

So, Paul brings us to the terrible outcome of our condition:  “we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

Let me put this in plain language:  All of us deserve to be recipients of God’s wrath. 

We don’t care for the notion of a “wrathful” God because we’ve come to think of God in some very un-Godlike ways.  God is a buddy, a pal, “a slob like one of us.”  We no longer think of God in the words of the great hymn: “Holy, holy, holy…there is none beside Thee.” 

As sinners, we cannot stand in the presence of such a God.  We know this so we devise various ways to minimize the “infinite, qualitative difference” between God and ourselves.  We tell ourselves that with enough good works God can be won over to our side, that God will forget our rebellion and be reasonable.

Yet, the Bible makes it clear that nothing we can do can overcome the impact of our rebellion.  All our attempts to be good enough, “righteous,” to use the Bible’s word, will fail.  Because we are broken we can produce only inferior works.  We are “by nature” deserving of God’s anger.  And can anything change that?

Paul begins this passage be reminding the Ephesians of their former dilemma, the condition they were in before Christ.  The very fact he puts these words in the past tense reminds us that something has happened for the believer.  We will examine that later but for now, here’s how The Message renders the passage we’ve just looked at.

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.

It’s a bleak picture of the human condition.  But it’s not all there is to say.  When you shake your head at those headlines, remember there is a word of hope that can be spoken to the situation.  Things are bad beyond our ability to fix, “but God….”