Please read the passage carefully before reading the sermon!

Ephesians 2:1-10

YOU WERE DEAD ... BUT GOD … MADE YOU ALIVE

There is a current and fashionable view that sermons need a “hook” to get you interested; usually a story to excite your interest. Perhaps it’s a measure of a church’s spirituality to say “you were dead ... but God … made you alive” and see if that is enough to awaken the souls of the Christians.

We have already seen that God has gathered up a heap of treasure in Christ (1:1-14) and that even more is available to us in Christ (1:15-22) who has been raised up and glorified “for the church.” Chapter 1 and verses 22-23 are a powerful introduction to one of the two main themes of the letter, the church. Paul writes to the Ephesians about the excellence of Christ and the glory of his church – salvation is in Christ and glory is in his church

In chapter one Paul gushed lyrically (though not grammatically – 1:3-14 are all one sentence in the original) on the subject of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ Paul continues in chapter two with two pictures of conversion. Both pictures are dramatic, perhaps even stark and uncompromising Both involve a description of pre and post conversion and tell us what brings about the difference between the two.

The first picture is that “you were dead ... but God … made you alive”

• V1-3 DEAD

  Before becoming a Christian you were dead, helplessly stuck, fixed and not moving. Dead is clear enough. When you’re dead you’re dead. That’s Paul’s rather brutal description of the pre-Christian, someone who has not yet put their trust in Jesus Christ.

  Paul says we were dead in trespasses; we took the wrong route, turned off the path, went the wrong way and did the wrong things. He says we were dead in sins; we missed the mark, failed to achieve God’s righteous standard. It’s an uncompromising description of people following the course of this world which is opposed to God’s rule, following the prince of this world, the spirit of disobedience, the devil who is opposed to God’s rule and following the inclinations of our own hearts; the flesh (which is opposed to God’s rule)

  So not unnaturally we were children of wrath, destined to inherit God’s righteous anger. And God’s anger is never misdirected or extreme or disproportionate because he is always right.

  In the bible dead doesn’t mean without activity but without God. As dead men we were very active, we just did it all without God. Dead in the bible is not lifeless but Godless. Life without God is death, largely because of where it is headed; life without God seems OK for a brief moment but it leads to an eternity of separation in a place of eternal separation called hell.

  This is an important bible truth about humankind; dead, without God and without life. There is no half-way, half-good states. You are either dead or you are alive.

  You could respond to this in one of several ways. You might feel sad because you realise you are cut off from God. Perhaps you feel a sense of the depravity and sin that has been swept away, what the bible calls “repentance.” Some people might have a sense of thanksgiving because you have a new life that you don’t deserve and that will lead to a concern for others because those you love are still dead as you were once.

• V4-8 ALIVE

  Becoming a Christian means (in Paul’s rather stark picture) becoming alive. Notice by the way how Paul moves from referring to “you” to “us;” an important clue to the nature of the next picture.

  There is a clear difference between dead and alive. Paul knows that and wants to make the point. We are no longer dead. We have been raised up with the resurrection power that raised Christ (Paul uses the same terms in 2:6 and 1:20). Knowing, experiencing and enjoying this was Paul’s idea of life.

  He describes us as seated in the heavenly realms; real living. We are received and accepted into heaven’s blessings and into the presence of God.

  In Paul’s amazing picture of post-conversion life the dead inhabit heaven, something that was never allowed in the Old Testament. This is an eternal testimony to the glorious mercy of God; you and I held up as a display of God’s rich love!

  How does it happen? It’s an act of creative energy – God breathes life into lifeless dirt just as he did back in the Garden of Eden when he gave Adam life. In fact "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." Guess what it is? Heaven, where we will live out the full eternity of our new life, is more fantastic that we can imagine, more glorious than we can conceive, where we will stand in the presence of God where man was once forbidden to go And it’s in Christ, it’s all in Christ! Be alive! Live in Christ! Worship; practice for heaven where God will be at the heart of your life and where our God and Father of all … is over all and through all and in all.

• V5-8 BY GRACE

  Why does God do it; why has he been so generous? It’s simply because of his great love, just because. There is absolutely nothing that compels God to do it, no external pressure or influence of any sort has been brought to bear on him to influence him.

  Paul’s only explanation of this mystery is say that it is by grace, twice he says it. It is grace. You were incapable of any saving inclination (dead), saved because of Christ, not because of yourself, saved through faith (trusting him and not yourself), your blessing is a gift from God, and salvation is a gift and is not by works so you cannot boast. Grace is from God. The whole concept of grace is that it is undeserved favour and probably even involves some element of demerit.

• V10 PURPOSE

  God’s great, eternal purpose is to glorify himself. His extraordinary generosity in giving eternal life to undeserving people like us will certainly achieve that. But more immediately it seems God has a purpose in translating us from death to life; he wants us to be something and to do something. The life we now have in Christ is a purposeful life of thankful obedience and “good work.” We are not just recipients of his life but active participants in his life. It seems only natural that we should live lives of active engagement with Christ in his work.