LAWSON: The topic that has been assigned
to me is "The Necessity of Grace." And so, I want you to take your Bible and turn with me
to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2. This seems to be the right passage for us to look
at tonight, Ephesians chapter 2. And I want us to look, Lord willing, at verses 1 through 10,
and I want to begin by reading this passage, and I want to set it before your eyes and
before your hearts again, and we'll spend our time working our way through this very
important passage on the necessity of grace. Beginning in verse 1, and this is God's
inspired, inerrant, infallible Word. The Apostle Paul writes, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that
is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in
the lusts of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were
by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of
His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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 ages to come He might show forth the surpassing riches of His
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.
And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not as a result of works, so that no man can
boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them." In these verses, we very clearly see that we will
never know how great God's love and God's grace is until we know how great our sin is. In other
words, we will never fully grasp the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ until we have come
to see the bad news of our condemnation and sin. The darker the night, the brighter the light. And
the darker we see what we once were, the more the grace of God will shine brighter than ten thousand
suns in the sky above. It is seeing the darkness of our depravity that causes the brightness of
the grace of God to shine forth so brightly. We will never even begin to scratch the surface
of understanding the grace of God until we know the depravity of our sin. And that is
Paul's case that he is making here. And I just want to lay out, basically,
the outline that we'll be walking through as we look at these ten verses. In verses 1
through 3, we will see what we were, the pit in which we once lived and where it was that the
Lord found us. It's not just that He found us at a church camp, it's not just that He found us
in a Sunday school room, it's not just that He found us in a worship service, or
in your bedroom with your parents reading Bible stories to you. No, verses 1
through 3 is the spiritual understanding of where we were when the Lord found us. We were
hopeless, we were helpless, and we were doomed. And then, in verses 4 through 6, we will see what God did, as the grace of God
and the mercy of God and the love of God did a dramatic divine intervention in our lives and
literally resurrected us from the grave of sin. And then, in verses 7 through 10, third and finally, we will see why God did
it. Why did God intervene in our lives? So, let's walk through this passage together
tonight. The grace of God is, in fact, the word "grace" is mentioned in verse 5, "By grace you
have been saved." It's mentioned in verse 7, "The surpassing riches of His grace." It's mentioned
in verse 8, "By grace you have been saved." So, what is grace? "Grace," I'm sure that all of
us here tonight could define what it is. It is the free gift of God to those who are so undeserving,
those who could not save themselves, those who could not merit or earn acceptance with a holy
God, those of us who were under the wrath of God. God chose to show mercy and to show
love to those who were so unlovely. So, let's walk through this text together
tonight. Roman numeral I, "What We Were." We can never understand the full magnitude of
God's grace until we grasp the full depth of the sin in which we once lived. And this is
across-the-board true for each and every one of us. And I want to give you six words
right now that will line up and help us understand where we were. And if
you're a believer in Christ tonight, these are your BC days, before Christ.
It's true of each and every one of us. The first word is "dead." Paul
writes in verse 1, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins." And down through
the centuries, different Bible teachers and theologians have taken different perspectives
of where was it that God found us. And some, like Pelagius, said, "Well, we were good.
We were well." And then others, who are like semi-Pelagians have said, and Arminians have
said, "Well, we weren't good, we were just sick with a little ability in ourselves
to grab hold of and raise ourselves up." And the only other option is the third, which
is, "We were dead." And when you're dead, you have no life in you, you had no moral ability, you had
no mind that could think, you had no heart that could desire, you had no will that could choose.
You were dead. And very clearly here, in verse 1, which is kind of like a topic sentence over a
paragraph, and everything else that will follow in verses 2 and 3 really hang under this, and more
carefully define, "We were dead." If you're dead, you're unresponsive. If you're dead, you have
no desire. If you're dead, you have no ability. That's where we once were. I remember the day in seminary when my entire
theological framework just came crashing down, the professor throwing one little pebble into
a large window glass, and the whole window was shattered and came tumbling down with
this one question, "What can a dead man do?" And at that point, I was right there in
the middle, "Man is just kind of sick." And it became deathly silent in class, and I
was waiting for one of my fellow students to answer the question, "What can a dead man do?" And
from the back row one student yelled out, "Stink." That's all a dead man can do,
and that's what we once were. Even if you grew up in church, even if you had
joined the church, even if you were baptized, whether as an infant or as an adult or
whatever. Before you became a Christian, no matter who you are, where you live
geographically, you were spiritually dead. You can walk up to a corpse and put a pin into the
foot of the corpse, it's not even going to move. You could play music for the corpse,
there is no capacity to respond. You can witness to the corpse, you could talk to
the corpse, you could preach to the corpse, there is no response whatsoever. And that's your
spiritual biography, and that is mine as well. And Paul says, "And you were dead," he's referring
to the elect believers, "You elect believers, you were dead in your trespasses and
sin." And that little word "in" I-N, is very important. Large doors swing
on small hinges, and that little, small word is very important because it indicates
the realm and the sphere in which we once lived. We lived in a world of sin.
Just like a fish lives in water, before our new birth, we lived in a world of
sin. Here "trespasses," which is a departure from an appointed past, and "sin" which is a
failure to hit the mark. Every one of us, we have all sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God. So, that's the first word, "dead." In fact, that's the only word we really need, but Paul now builds his case as a master
theologian. And the second word is "deviant." He says in verse 2, "In which you
formerly walked according to the course of this world." You were a dead man walking. You were
a spiritual zombie. You were a walking corpse. And when he says, "According to the course
of this world," you were on the broad path headed for destruction, even if you grew up in
Sunday school before you were converted. And when he says "the world," he's talking about the
evil world system with its godless ideologies, and you were entrapped in the system. When
you were born into this world, you were not born into the kingdom of God; you were born into
the kingdom of this world, and you were like a dead body floating downstream,
going with the flow of this world. And then, the third word is "devilish."
He says in the middle of verse 2, "According to the prince of the power
of the air." We know who that is. That is Satan. And there's only two families, only
two spiritual families in the world. There is the family of God, and there is the family of the
devil. And there's not a third or fourth family. And when we were born into this world,
we were born into the family of Satan. That is why you have to be born again in order
to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And the fact that you must be born again is an indictment
of your first birth that you were born in sin. In Psalm 51, David says, "In
sin did my mother conceive me." Not that the act of conception was sinful,
but that the sin nature was passed down to you while you were in your mother's womb. You came
into this world speaking lies, Psalm 58 says. And so, not only were you dead and not only were
you walking according to the course of this world, you were also a child of the devil. And you were
in the grip of a real devil as he was snatching God's Word from your heart whenever it was being
sown, perhaps in church. As he was blinding your eyes, 2 Corinthians 4:4, so that you could
not see the truth, how it relates to you. And you were being held captive by the devil
to do his will, 2 Timothy 2 verse 25 and 26. And then to compound it, in verse 2,
is the word "disobedient." Deviant, devilish, disobedient. Notice at the end of
verse 2, "Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." Everyone who
is unconverted is a son of disobedience. It's the mark of an unbeliever. They
live a disobedient life to Scripture. And then in verse 5, a fifth word, "defiled."
He says "among them," meaning the whole lost world of sinners, he says, "among them, we,"
us, who are believers, we were just like them. We were floating down that same stream of the world,
under the control of the devil, spiritually dead, deviating from God's Word. We were just like them.
Now, we may have dressed up a little bit nicer and been more respectable. But as God sees it, as God
looks into the heart, God sees exactly the same, even in the elect before they were
converted, as in the others who are unsaved. He says, "Among them, we," the elect, "all
formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh." Our sinful appetites were unrestrained.
Strong desires overpowered us, and flaming passions for sin and
cravings for that which God forbids. He says, "Indulging in the desires of the flesh
and of the mind." Even our minds were incapable of thinking correctly about
who I am and my need for grace. And so this leads to the final word I
want to give you. It's the word, "doomed." At the end of verse 3, he says, "And
were by nature, we," the elect of God, "were by nature," meaning in the very
fabric of our nature, "children of wrath," and that's a euphemism, a Hebraism for children
deserving wrath. We were sons of disobedience. We were children under the wrath
of God. Romans 1:18 clearly states, "For the wrath of God is revealed against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," and that's right where we once were. We
were no better than anyone else in the world. We were just as doomed, just as
dead, just as deviant, just as devilish, just as disobedient. We just may have dressed
up and looked a little bit nicer on the outside. But as God looks upon the heart,
there was no difference. Dead is dead. It doesn't matter if you have been dead for a
day, for two days, for a year, dead is dead. And so, that's where we were. That's the truth.
That is the pit from which God rescued you. That is the fire from which you and I were snatched.
It's worse than we probably thought it to be. And our outward lifestyle may have
been somewhat more respectable than when compared to others but in God's
eyes, as we were weighed in the balances, there was no difference whatsoever.
We were drowning in the same ocean of sin, sinking in the same quagmire of
transgressions, buried in the same grave of sin. You were going to hell, and I was going to
hell, and we were strutting there like a peacock on our merry little way to damnation.
That's the truth of the Bible. And when the doctor comes into your hospital
room and gives you the report, he has to tell it to you straight, "You have pancreatic
cancer." You've got to know how bad it is to have any hope whatsoever of survival, and
this is how bad it was for you and for me. Now, praise the Lord, he doesn't stop at
verse 3, or we would all just be without hope. So, I want you to note, beginning
in verse 4, what God did. Because what God did is almost unimaginable. Verse 4 begins, "But God." You know,
I love what Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "Praise God for the 'buts' in the Bible." Praise God for that negative conjunction
that turns it in the other direction. Lloyd-Jones says, "these two words, 'but God,'
in a sense, contains the whole of the gospel." Here is the entire forest in one nutshell, "But
God." And please note, it's not, "But God and me," not "But God and you," "But God and us," But God
and the church," "But God and this," "But God and that." No, it's "But God and God alone." That's
how bad it was, only God could have rescued us. It says, "Being rich in mercy," incomprehensibly
wealthy in mercy is God, possessing vast fortunes of mercy, limitless storehouses of mercy,
possessing oceans of mercy, galaxies of mercy. Mercy is that God felt pity on
those who are in such dire need. In Romans 9, God says, "I will have mercy upon
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion." And it is
the mercy of God, moved within Himself toward spiritual corpses who had no hope whatsoever of
ever resurrecting themselves out of this grave. God was moved with mercy. And then he says, "Because of His great love
with which He loved us." Not just love, but incalculable love, incomprehensible love, love
that is not based upon the merit of the one loved. It is God loving us not because of us,
it is God loving us in spite of us. It is a love that originates within God Himself.
Who is it that God has loved? It is those who are dead and devilish and disobedient
and defiant, that's who God chose to love. It says even when we were dead in our
transgressions in verse 5, which reinforces, by the way, verse 1. Just so that truth will
not escape us, he repeats it now in verse 5 that we would have that really drilled within us
that we had nothing but the stench of sin in us. And notice what God did, the two keywords.
I hope you've got enough light out there to see in your Bible. Three times in verses 5 and 6
he says, "With Him," "With Him," "With Christ." We've been raised with Christ, seated with
Christ, made alive with Christ in verse 5, the whole key is "with Christ." This is what
God has done. God has done it with Christ. And this is the doctrine of union with Christ, that all grace has come into our life through the
person and work of Christ. He is the sole mediator of saving grace. There is not one drop of grace
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only condemnation and wrath, justly so, outside of
Christ. But in Christ, because of His sinless life and substitutionary death, we have grace. So
he says three things here, that we have been made alive with Christ, we have been raised up with
Christ, we have been seated with Christ, and all three of those are very important. And what they
do is they parallel the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the enthronement
of Christ. Those three, all three of those. That's what has happened to us. And we've done
nothing. God, in Christ, has done everything. So, it begins in the middle of verse 5 with this
spiritual resurrection. He says, "He made us alive together with Christ." And Paul here, probably,
is coining a new word that has never been used in the Greek language before. It's what we call
a compound word. There are three words joined together to make one word. And where it says,
"made alive together with," is just one word in the original Greek language. It takes
five words to translate it into English. And what it is, is that as Christ was raised
out of the grave because of what He has done for us and because we are in Christ, we have
been made alive with Christ and raised out of the grave of sin with Christ. It's a spiritual
resurrection. You were spiritually dead, and now God in Christ has made
you alive. It's unbelievable. And think of it this way, justification simply
changes your status. It doesn't change you, it just changes your status, your standing before
God. No longer condemned, now accepted by God, clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
It doesn't do anything to you personally, it just changes your status. You got out of
this line, God has now put you in this line, and you have favor with God. But this truth right
here is really the doctrine of regeneration. It is the doctrine of the new birth, which
actually changes you from the inside out. You become a new creature in Christ. The old
things passed away, behold new things have come. It is the life of God in the soul of a
man. And it is as if you have been just in a coma, you've been dead, and in a moment,
and this takes place in the twinkling of an eye, you suddenly were made alive as if a lightning
bolt of grace just struck your heart, coming out of heaven, and you suddenly
sat up and you were alive in Christ, and you were made alive with Christ. Just like
when Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, whose body was dead, and Jesus
said, "Lazarus, come forth," and in that moment, life surged
through the corpse of his dead body. That is exactly what happened in your
life, and it happened in a moment. On the Day of Pentecost, three thousand
souls were made alive in Christ. It wasn't the month of Pentecost, it wasn't the year of Pentecost, it wasn't the decade
of Pentecost; it was the Day of Pentecost. And at the end of Acts chapter 2, it says, "And
day by day, the Lord was adding to their number those who were being saved." Some were being made
alive on Monday, some were being made alive on Tuesday, some were being made alive on Wednesday,
but there is a point in time on the timeline of your life when you suddenly came alive with
Christ, and the life of God and the life of Christ suddenly filled you. And he says at the
end of verse 5, "By grace, you have been saved." It's all of God and all of grace. We have
been saved from God, by God, for God. And then, in verse 6, a spiritual ascension,
this is very important, I want you to see this. In verse 6, "And raised us up with Him,"
do you see that? It's another compound word, two Greek words merged together to form this one
word "raised up with Him," it's just one word in the original Greek when Paul wrote this. And it
is not speaking of the resurrection of Christ nor our spiritual resurrection; it is referring to
the ascension of Christ. After the resurrection, the ascension. And what happened at the
ascension? Christ was lifted up out of this world in a resurrected, glorified body,
no longer in this world, now lifted up and ascended to heaven and now
seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. No longer in this world,
now in a resurrection body in heaven. And what this means for you and me is that
as we have been resurrected with Christ, we, by grace, we have been raised up
in the sense of ascending with Christ. We are no longer a part of this
world. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. And we are no
longer walking according to the course of this world because we're no longer of this world. In
fact, we are strangers and aliens in this world. And our citizenship is in heaven, from which we
eagerly await a Savior, Philippians 3:20 and 21. So because of Christ, we've been made alive,
and because of Christ and God's grace, we're no longer a part of the system over which
Satan presides. We now belong to a whole different world, and that world is mentioned here, referred
to at the end of verse 6 as "the heavenly places of Christ Jesus." It's the realm of
grace. It is the realm of salvation. It is the realm in which God
bestows the fullness of His mercy. Earlier in chapter 1 verse 3, Paul wrote,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." All of those blessings are in heavenly places, referring to the kingdom of God. And so, not
only have we been made alive, we could have been made alive and just left a part of the world
system but no, not only have we been made alive, and now we've been taken out of the
world though we bodily live in the world, we have entered into a new realm, the
heavenly places, already, and we live in the kingdom of God. But more than that, please look at the end of
verse 6. He says, "And seated us with Him." Another compound word, "seated us with," one
word, and Paul just packs it all together. And Jesus, after His resurrection, after
His ascension up into heaven, He is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, the
place of highest authority in the universe. And all authority in heaven and earth has been
entrusted to Him, and He is now coequal with the Father in heaven, and we now
are seated with Him in heavenly places. So, what does that mean? It doesn't mean that we have become little gods
or that we are sovereign or anything like that. What it means is for us to be seated with
Christ at the right hand of the Father, it means we now know the Father. We now have a
personal relationship with the Father that we never had before. We now have an intimate
relationship with the Father by which we can come before the throne of grace, the Spirit of God
crying out, "Abba, Father" within us. We now know God because we are now seated with Christ, right
next to God, with access to know the Father. This is what God did in your life. It was
big. It couldn't have been any bigger. Never did anyone start out
so low and end up so high. You have gone from the grave of sin to the
right hand of the Father. That is amazing grace. And you don't deserve it, and I don't deserve it. Now third, and finally, why? Why did God
do it? Was it because God was lonely? He could have done a lot better than us. Well, Paul tells us why God did this, and there
are two words that are mentioned three times, "so that," "so that," "so that." It's in verse 7,
verse 9, verse 10, I hope you can see that. So, Paul tells us why God did not leave us in the
grave of sin, which would have been right and just, and why God raised us up and seated
us with Christ in heavenly places. Why? Well, look at verse 7. He tells us why, "So
that," that means, "in order that." It denotes purpose or an end or an aim. "So that in the ages
to come," meaning throughout all eternity future, world without end, "He," God the Father,
"might show," the idea is to showcase, like you would put a trophy on a
shelf and just showcase your trophy. "So that He might show the surpassing riches of
His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Here is reason number one, God did
this because it magnifies His grace. If God had simply saved good people, people who
were just a little bit better than other people, then what God did, His
grace, would be very minimal. But for God to reach all the
way to the bottom of the barrel, for God to reach all the way down to the depths
of the grave to a rotten, stinking corpse that had the stench of hell upon it, and for
God to raise up such a corpse and seat that corpse next to Him with the Son in heaven, that is
mind-boggling grace. That is unimaginable grace. Listen, if you elevate man and if you
lower God, grace is just a step away, man to God. But if you have man down here, where
Paul says he is, in verses 1 through 3, and you have God way up there, holy God, then the grace
that it took to span from the grave to the throne is so great that someone like John Newton when he
wrote his hymn, it's amazing, it is bewildering, it is astonishing grace. And that is why we'll
never know how great His grace is until we know how wicked our sin once was. And I want to tell
you, every time you come to the Lord's Table, you need to remember the prison
house in which you once lived. You need to remember the grave from which
you were dredged up and made alive by God. Then, verse 8. We all know verse 8,
"For by grace you been saved through faith and that not of yourselves," etc. This leads
us, really, to the next reason. Not only does all of this that we've been talking about in
verses 1 through 6, not only does it magnify grace, but it humbles man. We had nothing to
do with it. We're just along for the ride. Verse 8 begins with the word "for," which
introduces an explanation of the previous argument, so he's just expanding his argument.
And by the way, "for," F-O-R, is probably Paul's favorite word. As you read epistles, just
keep your eye out for how many verses begin with the word "for." It just introduces
an explanation of the previous sentence. "For by grace," listen, electing grace,
predestinating grace, redeeming grace, reconciling grace, forgiving grace,
justifying grace, regenerating grace, sanctifying grace, preserving grace, glorifying
grace. "For by grace you have been saved." The word "saved" means to be rescued from ruin.
It means to be delivered from destruction. "For by grace you have been saved through
faith," that's the instrumental cause, "and that not of yourselves." And the
question is, "What's not of ourselves?" For the grace was not of ourselves
and the faith was not of ourselves. "It is the gift of God," at the end of verse 8,
that refers to the entirety of what preceded in the verse, both the grace and the faith is the
gift of God. And if you want to be technical about it, the antecedent is the closest to "the
gift of God," or the word "it," it would be faith, it would be even that the faith is the gift of God
before it would even be the grace, but it's both. Now, look at verse 9, "Not as a result of works,
so that," here's the second "so that," "no one may boast." It couldn't be more obvious. If God
saved good people, then it's a joint venture – us and God – look what we did. But if God is raising
spiritual corpses from the grave of sin, then no man can boast. You and
I have absolutely nothing with which to boast. We were no better than anyone
else. We were just as dead as the reprobate. And now, here's the final "so
that." It's in verse 10. And not only does it magnify God, it humbles
man, and it fulfills God's purposes. He says in verse 10, "For we are His
workmanship." The word "workmanship" there, poiema, it's an interesting word. You can
almost hear "poem," we are His poiema. The idea is we are His masterpiece. We are His showpiece with which He has crowned
us with His grace, and we are His supreme work. "We are His workmanship created in Christ
Jesus," and that is the idea of the new birth, the doctrine of regeneration. We have
been made a new creature in Christ. And now he says, why have we been so created?
And he says, "For good works." So please understand this, we are saved by grace,
through faith, in Christ, for good works. There is a purpose for which God has saved you,
and it is to put you into His employment to be His servant to carry out His eternal purpose
and plan so that you can be a part of how God is working in the world. That's why He saved
you. Now, sure He saved you to get you out of hell and to get you into heaven but that's, in
a sense, somewhat secondary. He has saved you to magnify His grace. He has saved you to humble
man. He has saved you so that you can be a part of carrying out what God has predetermined
from before the foundation of the world. And so, he says at the end of verse
10, "So that we may walk in them." This "so that" gives us this third reason.
So, what should this produce in us? When we get up here in a little bit
and you go back to your hotel room, what's the point? What's the application?
What are you supposed to do with this? Well, number one, "humility." How could we ever
become puffed up with ourselves, knowing this? God is opposed to the proud, He gives
grace to the humble, 1 Peter 5:5. And those who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted. What we have just looked at here, when you
put your head on your pillow tonight in your hotel room, you have every reason to go to sleep
tonight dressed in humility, lowliness of mind. The second is "holiness." You once walked
according to the course of this world, you have been raised up now and put into
heavenly places. How can we ever succumb to the lures of the world and want to go back
from that pit from which we have been raised? And then, the last would be "honor." To give
God the honor, to give God the glory for what He has done in our lives. There's no
reason in us for what God has done. It has all originated in God Himself, because
He said, "I'll have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion upon whom
I will have compassion." And God has done this to display what a gracious God He is. May tonight, you and I be once again
intoxicated with the grace of God, overwhelmed with His grace.
Let us close in prayer. Father, we see the necessity of grace.
Oh, do we ever see it. You have made it loud and clear. And we must lower ourselves
beneath Your mighty right hand and look up and give You the honor and give You
the glory for this so great salvation. We praise You for what You have
done in Christ. In His name. Amen.
