AMAZING GRACE (Ephesians):

                                                      (1) Destined In Love (1:1 - 6)

 

This is Marathon Sunday. It is also called - sometimes facetiously by clergy - "Low Sunday", the first Sunday after Easter. The two have a similar message: the one who perseveres wins the prize, the loneliness of the long distance runner brings its laurels. It is not amid the crowds of Easter that our faith is proved, but in the quiet demonstration of a ruggedly persistent faith that is prepared to go against the traffic. Any of us who are disciples in more than name know the discipline of climbing Heartbreak Hill. The race is not to the swift, the crowd-pleasers, the excited or the excitable.

 

Last Easter Sunday one of our speakers was my cousin Mary Edgar - the children may remember her with the parasol. She left our home the week after Easter, returned to her family in England where her husband Bill was the highly respected International Director of the Leprosy Mission. She'd commented to us about a "tummy bug" Bill had complained of, but "nothing serious". On June 23 last year a biopsy confirmed that Bill, a strong strap­ping man of 50, had liver cancer. On July 20 he was dead. Mary wrote me this past Easter Monday in a letter I received yester­day. She speaks of a "gloomy January and February which were a bit tough, especially with quite a few personal anniversaries (very tough, actually)". But there's also a note of hope: "I've been thinking so much of my time with you last Easter, and of the steady rock of God's covenant love to us, and the reality of Christ's resurrection, and ours. We couldn't survive otherwise."

 

What is it that gives us the courage to run the marathon of life, past the Heartbreak Hill, to the finish? It's not the crowd cheering us, the sense of achievement, the glory, the shame of not making it. It's the deep gut feeling of being committed to something that is larger than ourselves. It's the sense of knowing the truth, of being grounded in Reality, of having confidence that we have staked our lives on something - or Someone - Whom we can trust. It is the conviction that we have received something that is true, no matter what difficulties we face on the way.

 

My cousin Mary expressed it well: "the steady rock of God's covenant love." And that is why Christians have often turned to the book of Ephesians when they need a reminder of God's commit­ment to us. And at the heart of that confidence is this stagger­ing sentence - one of the longest in Scripture, 202 words in the original - which speaks of that hoary doctrine of predestination.

 

Now don't be scared: I know that that's a taunt, a jest, something thrown in the teeth of Presbyterians. But - rightly and Biblically understood (and resist all attempts to caricature it) - the understanding that there is a sovereign Lord at work in my life Whose purposes cannot be foiled except by my will-fulness and sin is - as the Anglican or Episcopalian seventeenth article of their Thirty-nine Articles of Faith states it - "full of such sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in them­selves the working of the Spirit of Christ ... drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it greatly establishes and confirms their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it fervently kindles their love towards God."^[i]

 

This sentence at the beginning of Ephesians can be broken into two sections: verses 3 through 7, our faith as seen from God's view (a "heavenly" perspective) and verses 8 through 14 (an "earthly" view).

 

I THE AUTHOR OF OUR SALVATION - the triune God

 

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The traditional blessing of the Old Testament and of Hebrews sabbath by sabbath in their worship is now used to extol the Messiah. And - to complete the trinitarian analogy - it is a Spiritual blessing.

 

God is the author of our salvation. It is His word that tells me that I am a member of the new covenant people, chosen as Israel was as God's old covenant people. I am "elect", "chosen" by God. This is not my word - I could not have imagined anything so utterly inconceivable: it is God's description, a desire of His that I be called and am called - as is stated in verse 1 - to be a "saint". Less likely material could hardly be imagined. So the knowledge that I am "elect", or "chosen" by God is no grounds for presumption or pride, it is a cause of the profoundest humility. Beyond comprehension: that God "in the heavenly place" could have determined that I should be His child is beyond my comprehension. I embrace the truth finally because God has revealed it. And I find in it the most humbling reality - that there was nothing I could do to influence that choice. Indeed, quite the opposite. Only God was powerful enough to save me from my sin.

 

II THE NATURE OF OUR SALVATION - electing love

 

"We were chosen ...  before the foundation of the world." Wait, you say to me. "I chose God. I made up my mind to follow Him." "Yes", I reply, "you did. But only because God chose you first." And someone else  may pipe up: "I decided to follow Jesus." "But", I reply, "only because Jesus in eternity first decided to follow you."^[ii]

 

Election and the sovereign will of God is not blind, capri­cious, malevolent, hate-full. It does not turn us into automata, but rather it releases us to be ourselves. Why? Because it is premised on love: "He chose us .. before the foundation of the world ... in love He destined us". As we used to sing in that wonderful old hymn in the 1955 Hymnbook:

"I sought the Lord and afterward I knew

He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me;

It was not I that found O Saviour true;

No, I was found of Thee.

 

I find, I walk, I love, but O the whole

Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!

For Thou wert long beforehand with my soul;

Always Thou lovest me."^[iii]

 

III THE PURPOSE OF OUR SALVATION - holiness

 

Does this then mean that we can coast through to the end, considering ourselves to be - dreadful word - "eternally secure"? Is it immaterial how I live, now that I'm "in"?

 

Paul says emphatically "No". God chose us for one purpose only: "to be holy and blameless before Him". Holiness is the only evidence that I have that I am chosen as God's child. If anyone claims to be among "the elect" but lives in sin he is - as John states emphatically "a liar". The prominent New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce said: "The predestinating love of God is commended more by those who lead holy and Christlike lives than by those whose attempts to unravel the mystery partake of the nature of logic-chopping."^[iv]

 

IV THE CONSEQUENCE OF OUR SALVATION - adoption

 

"He destined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters." That is why God chose us - to be a part of His family, children by nature and adoption. Why did God go ahead with creation when He must have known we would fall? God had a higher destiny for us than simply being His  created children. He wanted us to enter into the intimacy of being an adopted child.

 

But intimacy does not absolve us of responsibility. As those who have now taken His name we are called, as His children, to behave as those who imitate our heavenly Parent "as beloved children"^[v]

 

V THE EFFECT OF OUR SALVATION - praise

 

And why did God chose us? The answer is to be found in verse 7 - "unto the praise of the glory of his grace which he has freely given us in the beloved". What God has done for us "in Christ" - that's a key word that repeats itself in verses 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, twice in 10, 11, 12 and twice in 13 - should move us to the most profound experience of praise and worship.

 

It was A. W. Tozer who complained, a generation ago, that "The church has substituted her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping man. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us." Our praise is lacking depth because we forget from where we have come, it lacks height because it cannot soar to a God whose purposes it ignores, and it lacks connectedness because it fails to see the wonder of a called-out community where sisters and brothers have experi­enced a common mercy which is not based on performance or perfec­tion.

 

On the 1st of May, 1558, John Calvin mounted the steps of Eglise St. Pierre in Geneva to preach a series of forty-eight sermons on the book of Ephesians. The previous year he had gone through the tragedy of Servetus. His health was in serious decline. Throughout the congregation that Sunday morning there were refugees whose presence reminded him of the defeats and triumphs of Reformed believers all over Europe. His domestic situation was a shambles^[vi]. But he stood up that day and simply stated:

 

"... the reason why St. Paul sets down the word 'blessings' is to cause us to know that whereas the devil lays many traps to ... turn us out of the way, God has made provision for all that, for he has such a store of blessing that he can overthrow and destroy all that may ever be against our salvation ... Let us fall down before the majesty of our God .. praying him to acquaint us more and more with them ... and seek to find in our Lord Jesus Christ all that we need, and not for one day, or for a mere brief moment, but continually and steadfastly to our life's end. And whatever happens to us, let us always assure ourselves that we have good cause to praise our God."^[vii]

 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

 

 

                                               AMAZING GRACE (EPHESIANS):

                                                     (2) Riches of Grace (1:7 - 14)

 

Perhaps on this Sunday, as our eyes may be turned toward Washington, it would not be inappropriate for me to reflect for just a moment, as a preamble to our discussion on Ephesians 1:7 to 14, on the American obsession with individualism and rights. "Individualism", one observer notes, "has come to define American culture."^[viii] Alasdair MacIntyre of Notre Dame points out that rights language has come to replace virtue language^[ix]. Friendship be­comes an opportunity to pursue personal goals. Marriage is regarded a rela­tionship that furthers my growth, my rights, rather than an opportunity for service and mutuality.

 

But there is a terrible price that we pay for this. The observer I quoted concludes that "the major single problem for American social life is the problem of relationships - we do not understand them and cannot maintain them"^[x]. We are supposed to be strong, tough, self-sufficient but we struggle with how to deal with those around us. He reflects sadly on "Our failing marriages, our pro­found loneliness, and our desperate search for ourselves"^[xi]. All three are evidence that in some way we have lost the Way. Rights have replaced relationships - with God and with my fellow creatures made in God's image.

 

The profound truth of Ephesians 1:3-14 is that our Creator made us for one purpose only: that we might enter into a rela­tionship, first with God and then with each other. And this reflects the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The 202 words in this single sentence are unabashedly trinitari­an. We have seen in verses 3 through 6 the Father Who calls us into a relationship with Him. We go on now in the remaining verses to discover a Son Who redeems us and a Spirit Who seals us. The interconnectedness between Father, Son and Holy Spirit reflects the reality that we are called into a community of love and responsibility.

 

I THE SON WHO REDEEMS US (verses 7 - 10)

 

The key concept of verses 7 through 10 is "redemption". And it is the son Who is specifically mentioned here as our Redeemer, "in Him we have redemption through his blood".

 

"Redemption" is on of those Biblical words that is an essential part of the vocabulary of anyone who wants to under­stand the Christian faith. But it is not a word that is very intelligible today. Twenty years ago a group of students from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago went out and asked randomly in a shopping center what certain words at the heart of Christianity meant to the woman or man on the street. "Redemption", in those days of giving out coupon books, meant only one thing - S and H green stamps.

 

Seventy-seven years ago Benjamin Warfield, one of our great Presbyterian teachers of systematic theology, spoke to incoming students at Princeton Seminary and urged them to retain that word which even then was going out of fashion. He stated: "There is no one of the titles of Christ which is more precious to Christian hearts than 'Redeemer.'"^[xii] And as evidence of that he went to the hymnbook, citing -  among many others - the hymn we have just sung:

"O for a thousand tongues to sing

My dear Redeemer's praise."

 

What does "redemption" mean in its New Testament context? Simply this - to quote one commentator^[xiii] - "deliverance as a result of the payment of a ransom". "Now" - you say to me - "salva­tion is free." You find distasteful the idea that God would have to pay for my forgiveness - it demeans God as being a cheapskate. But the word redemption is rich in its Biblical imagery: it goes back to a cultural tradition, found in the Old Testament, when slaves could be bought back from bondage. We have many chits with the standard language:

"Date. 'N. N. sold to the Pithian Apollo a male slave anmes X. Y. at a price of .... minae for freedom (or on condition that he shall be free)." Then the witnesses' names follow."^[xiv]

 

Now Jesus Christ comes and says^[xv]: "The Son of Man did not  come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."  And the early church affirmed the same: Titus 2:14 tells us that Jesus "gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness". Or I Peter 1:18: "it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed ... but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect".

 

The imagery is simple: Christ bought us back from the slavery of sin, redeeming us by the payment of His life, freeing us into "the forgiveness of sins". The freedom for which we have been redeemed is a freedom that comes from knowing that Christ has wiped the slate clean. "In Jesus Christ we are forgiven". And this forgiveness is "lavished" upon us by the riches of the grace of which he has been continually speaking.

 

And what is the purpose of God in so redeeming us? Look at the second part of verse 10: "... to bring all things together under one head, even Christ". Six words "to bring together under one head" in English translate a single Greek verb of seven­teen letters. And, as Martin Lloyd-Jones points  out, it does not even include an important prefix in that word. "To bring together again under one head" might be more accurate.

 

We believe that everything was under a single Head before the Fall. And that headship has been, is being, and will be, restored in Christ's redemption. It is that reality that sustains us amid all the contradictions of our life here below. We see a world disjointed, uncoordinated, full of dissonance and disorder. We ask God - sometimes as we shake our fist at the deity - "Why?" And then we read these words: "when the times .. have reached their fulfillment (He will) bring all things in heaven and on earth together again under one head, even Christ".

 

"The perfect harmony that will be restored will be harmony in man and between men. Harmony on the earth and in the brute creation! Harmony in heaven, and all under this blessed Lord Jesus Christ who will be head of all! ... That is the message; that is God's plan ... These things are so marvelous that you will never hear anything greater, either in this world or the world to come."^[xvi]

 

II THE SPIRIT WHO SEALS US (verses 11 - 14)

 

But in the mean time, you say to me. "It is hard to believe, hard to receive, hard to accept, hard to lives as a Christian - particularly when I think that it is - to journey's end."

 

Ephesians gives us a single answer: the Spirit of God is the one that "applies" our salvation to us. And it uses a single concept: that of a "seal". We are sealed by the Spirit of prom­ise: "You were marked .. with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance" (verse 14).

 

A seal - according to Charles Hodge  - does several things for us. It confirms the genuineness of a document or possession. It establishes ownership. It makes something secure. The Spirit of God does all three: it affirms that we are indeed God's children, it marks us as God's special property. And it secures us until that day, "guaranteeing our inheritance".

 

And the Spirit Who seals us does four things for us:

 

(1) "Effectually calls"  - verse 11 is different from verse 4 - the chosen-ness of the believer means in this context that God will work His purpose out in our lives as the Holy Spirit works within us "in conformity with the purpose of His will".

 

(2) Glorifies Jesus - "for the praise of his glory" is repeated twice - verses 12 and 14. That is the Spirit's task - to draw attention not to Himself but to Jesus. And He does this practi­cally by producing Jesus-like qualities in our lives " "we" are for the praise of the glory of Jesus.

 

(3) Makes one new people - "we who were the first to hope in Christ" (verse 12) are now joined to Gentiles who "were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth". The Holy Spirit establishes a new community, breaking down barriers, a single body, establishing peace, restoring relationships.^[xvii]

 

(4) Helps us understand the Bible - the Holy Spirit speaks through "the word of truth" and can never be separated from it. For when people like David Koresh of Waco, Texas, say that they have truth aside from Scripture or interpret Scripture according to their whims (or self-interest) what they say must always be interpreted through the Bible as the Holy Spirit illumines the sacred page.

 

One of the great Presbyterians of our century is John Alexander MacKay who was from 1936 to 1959 the President of what was then the largest Presbyterian seminary in the world, Princeton. In some profoundly moving words he stated categorically: "Apart from  ... the vision that met me in the Epistle to the Ephesians, I am nothing, and my life has no meaning."^[xviii] And then he explained his amazing claim.

 

On holiday in the summer of 1903, in the Highlands of Scotland, he met Jesus Christ in a service during what Highlanders call the communion season, in a service conducted in a glen as hundred were seated in rows under the shade of some large trees.  He went out and purchased, for a coin which was called a "bun penny" (a picture of Queen Victoria with a bun at the back of her head) and started to read. He was arrested by this very book we are studying. And he concluded:

"My personal interest in God's Order began when the only way in which life could make sense to me was upon the basis of an inner certainty that I myself, through the operation of a power which the Ephesian letter taught me to call 'grace,' had become part of that Order, and that I must hence forth devote my energies to its unfolding and fulfillment."^[xix]

 

Grace. Amazing grace. Grace that calls us into God's new order: life in relationship, relationship to a Trinity: a Father who chooses us, a Son Who redeems us, a Spirit who seals us.

 

"The Lord has promised good to me,

 His word my hope secures,

 He will my shield and portion be

 As long as life endures."^[xx]

 

In him we have redemption  ... the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace which he lavished on us ... marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit .. a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance ... to the praise of his glory.

 

 

 

 

                                                 AMAZING GRACE (Ephesians):

                                                 (3) Grace-Filled Praying (1:15-23)

 

You are familiar with the pollster who asked a passer-by: "Is it true that the two biggest problems facing the United States today are ignorance and apathy?"

 

"I don't know and I don't care", came back the response.

 

Several weeks ago pollster George Gallup, Jr., in an article titled "Empowering The Laity" declared that the biggest problems facing American Christians are ignorance and "an undeveloped prayer life". I quote:

"An undeveloped prayer life, coupled with ignorance of Scripture appears to have caused us to turn away from the living God and choose the substi­tute gods of the modern age -- money, possessions, fame, drugs, and a self-indulgent lifestyle. We say we believe in God, but it would appear that at the same time we reject a supernatural basis for life ... There is a break in our vertical relationship with a higher power, or God, and conse­quently a break in our horizon­tal relationship with other peo­ple."^[xxi]

 

His prescription?

 

"Of the primary spiritual needs of the American people, surely one is the need for practical help in developing a mature faith. Americans pray and believe in the power of prayer, but we do not give our prayer life the attention it deserves ... A culture with an emphasis on instant gratification and character­ized by a noisy roar and constant bustle does not make medita­tive prayer easy. Its penchant for fast foods and quick credit does not produce people who are adept at waiting patiently for God's presence to touch them."^[xxii]

 

And so his conclusion is a simple one:

 

"Deepened prayer life, coupled with rootedness in Scripture, can lead us to new dimen­sions of faith, and at the same time, a new openness and accep­tance of others."^[xxiii]

 

At the end of Ephesians chapter 1, Paul's concern for First Century Christians to whom he writes is remarkably similar to that of George Gallup as American Christians face the Twenty-first. He prays - and in his praying models true prayer, for lessons in prayer are better caught than taught. And his prayer? He wants believers to have more knowledge about their faith in order that they might be truly empowered to live for God.

 

 

I KNOWLEDGE (verses 15 - 18)

 

"For this reason": Paul begins his prayer in verse 15 holding before them all the truths that he has taught in that cascading sentence that is verses 3 through 14. He continues: "I thank God and I never give up praying for you."^[xxiv] And what is it for which he prays? The kernel of his prayer is to be found at the end of verse 17: "that you may know Him better".

 

To know God. What does Paul mean? Paul would be the first to say that knowing God is not knowing about God. You can know a great deal about the Bible, even about God Himself, even discover these great truths of which he has spoken in the first 14 verses, and still not know God.

 

Knowing God, according to James Packer who wrote a book with that title, consists of three things: one, personal dealing - dealing with God as He opens up to you and being dealt by Him as He takes knowledge of you; two, personal involvement in mind, will and feeling; third, grace, because the initiative in that relationship is always God's. And then Packer concludes that what matters is not so much that I know God by "that He knows me".^[xxv]

 

But it is also a knowledge of God's salvation. Look at verse 18 to see the dimensions of what God has done for us:

 

hope - "the hope to which He has called you" or, as Phillips has it, "a hope like that". Like what? Like everything he has said earlier: being "holy and blameless in his sight" (verse 4), the adoption to which he refers in verse 5, and that we are called "to the praise of his glory" (verse 12) Or as John says in his letter^[xxvi] "Here and now we are God's children. We don't know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He is." Hope is our assurance.

 

inheritance - "the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints". What is the legacy God has given to us as His adopted children? Thomas Goodwin answers that "An inheritance you know is a thing for a man to use freely and to one's top the uttermost for his comfort; you shall have God and all his attributes set before you. Lo, there is your inheritance."

 

power - "the resources of His power open to us who trust in Him"^[xxvii] And then he goes into the second part of His prayer for them - that they will experience the empowering of the divine presence.

 

II POWER (verses 19 - 23)

 

So Paul prays that those to whom he writes will be empow­ered - "That power is the working of his mighty strength". Armitage Robinson, pointed out the three emphatics - the working, the might, the strength and adds "we have no words that fully repre­sent the original of this phrase"^[xxviii]. Only examples will do:

 

(1) resurrection power - the power which He prays these Christians will experience is that of the Easter Lord, which broke the bands of death and the power of evil. And that is ours as well.

 

(2) heavenly power - the power of the ascended Lord which placed Him "in heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, not only in this present age but also in the one to come" (verses 20c and 21)

 

(3) power experienced in the church - this power now fills - or should fill - the church^[xxix]. Doctors at this time thought that the head controlled the body so now the Head fills the body with powers of movement and perception, and thereby inspires the whole body with life and direction"^[xxx]

 

"La connaisance est force" - "Knowledge is power" - was the motto of my children's Toronto French School. Every day they were taught that knowledge was empowering, ignorance was limiting, inhibiting, weakening. We know that in Boston, the intellectual Hub of our country, a city that prides itself on endless years of graduate education, where we all must update our skills in school, always learning. But what of the Christian? Are we thinking, stretching our faith, challenging our presuppositions, always probing, exploring, stretching our faith. Do we listen? Do we read? Do we make use of the Library? Do we discipline our­selves in Bible study?

 

To quote George Gallup again:

 

"The years ahead could be an important time of renewal and deepened religious commitment among Americans if the faith communities of our nation help people bring the Bible into their daily lives; listen to the remark­able religious experiences of people, and help them build upon these experiences; encourage small group fellowship, which serves as a way to support current members; inspire people to reach out to others in evangelism, but in appropriate and loving ways; target key groups for spiri­tual nourishment and religious instruction - people in business and professions, students, the media, and other groups."^[xxxi]

 

Knowledge and power: the two missing ingredients of the modern church. If we knew, we would be empowered. What greater request can we make of the Lord for Newton Presbyterian Church?

 

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit ... so that you may know Him better ... that you may know ... his incomparably great power for us who believe.

 

 

                                                 AMAZING GRACE (Ephesians):

                                               (4) Resurrected With Christ (2:1-10)

 

In two of my ministries in Canada I worked with two remark­able sisters, one of them the wife of the Clerk of Session in Knox Church, Toronto, the other a board member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They bore a famous name: Ironside. Their uncle, Harry Ironside, was first an itinerant Brethren evangelist and then the minister of Moody Church, Chicago. On my visit to their home, these sisters would tell many stories about their uncle, for stories about Harry were legion.

 

The one I like the most is when Harry Ironside was traveling from his home in Oakland to a speaking engagement in Southern California and a gypsy lady came up to him. "How do you do, gentleman", she asked. "Would you like to have your fortune told? Cross my palm with a silver quarter, and I will give you your past, present, and future."

 

"Are you sure you can do that?" Ironside asked. "I am Scottish and I wouldn't want to part with money without getting full value." The woman became persistent: "Oh yes, gentleman, Please. I will tell you all."

 

At that point Harry Ironside brought out his New Testament from his pocket. "It's not really necessary for me to have you tell my fortune, because here I have a book that gives me my past, present and future." And he turned to the second chapter of Ephesians and read: "As for you, you were dead in your .. sins." "That's my past", Ironside said, concluding verses 1 through 3.

 

"That's enough", the woman said, trying to get away. "I don't care to hear more."

 

"But wait", Ironside continued. "There is more. Here is my present: "God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ." And he read on from verse 4. "No more!" she protested. "Here is my future, too," Ironside said refusing to let her go and reading on in verse 7: "that in the coming ages he might show ... the riches of his grace". And by that time the gypsy fled mutter­ing: "I took the wrong man!"^[xxxii]

 

Last week a request came to the Worship Committee as it met: "Give us the gospel in a few simple sentences. Give us a chance to respond!" If you want to know what Christianity is all about, if you ask me what it means to be a Christian, there is no passage in the whole of the Bible more basic than Ephesians 2:1 to 10. It distills the first five chapters of Romans into a single paragraph. With its opening two words - "As for you" - it takes us from salvation from God's point of view in chapter 1 to the perspective of the individual Christian. It tells us two things: what we are without God and what we can become with God. It is, as one great New Testament scholar called it, "one of the great passages of all Scripture".^[xxxiii]

 

I. THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT (verses 1 - 3)

 

And there are three words to describe that predicament:

 

(1) dead (verses 1 - 2) - Listen to the apostle: "You were dead in your transgressions and sins." Those are not my words and that diagnosis may seem a little drastic. Some tell us with Dr. Thomas Harris and his transactional analysis "I'm OK, You're OK." Things are getting better generally. Others say that the patient is sick, but needs minor surgery. The statement here is sweeping: without a relationship with God you are dead, dead in our tres­passes and sins. "Trespass" is a false step, crossing a boundary, getting off the path. "Sin" is a missing of the mark, falling short of a standard. Trespass is active, sin passive: before God we are rebels and failures^[xxxiv]. But there is more:

 

(2) enslaved (verse 2) - "you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient", captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The world: "drift(ing) along the stream of this  world's ideas of living". The devil: "following the ... ruler of the kingdom of the air (which is) the spirit of disobe­dience". The flesh: "our sinful nature" as the NIV translates it - our ingrained self-centeredness. All these have entrapped us.

 

(3) condemned (verse 3) "we were by nature objects of wrath". As John Stott states: "I doubt if there is an expression in Ephe­sians which has provoked more hostility than this."^[xxxv] But God's wrath is not His bad temper: It is, as John Stott defines it, "God's personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil, his settled refusal to compromise with it, and his resolve instead to condemn it."^[xxxvi]

 

Now these are terrible words. The diagnosis is total, complete and catastrophic. It does not mince words, play around with the enormity of our distance from our God: it confronts the human condition. With Pogo we can say: "We have seen the enemy and it is us."

 

II. THE DIVINE INITIATIVE (verses 4 - 10)

 

"But God": these words suddenly lighten up the darkness, irradiate the grace of which Paul will now speak. The more we are aware of the extent of our predicament the more these words come on us with relief as we wonder at the divine love and Gift. As Martyn Lloyd Jones stated: "These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole of the gospel."

 

"But God": we sing glibly about amazing grace. But you really cannot sing of