4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - 6 and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
During the last two weeks, our focus has been on the first 3 verses of Ephesians 2. “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
What these verses teach us about fallen humanity makes the contrast in the text we’re looking at today all the more remarkable, beginning with the two opening words of verse 4. “But God.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole of the Gospel.” Having described our desperate situation outside of salvation in Jesus Christ, Paul then goes on to tell us just what God has done for us.
In the first 3 verses he has made it clear that we need a Saviour, which is the question we have been asking. I know that the Ephesians 2:1-3 is an extremely challenging passage of Scripture for us all.
Part of the reason is that Paul pulls no punches as he describes how bad the bad news really is. Once we realise just how lost we are without Christ, it magnifies the wonder and the glory of the Gospel, as we understand that God, by His grace has saved us. Paul writes in Colossians 1:13-14, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Lloyd-Jones also said, “You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy.” The misery he was talking about here was the misery which comes through the conviction of sin, which is a work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit convicts us of the truth of how lost and depraved we are outside of Christ, and it is after we are drawn to Him in repentance and faith that we are able to experience the joy of our salvation, as David writes in Psalm 51.
We were lost, but God.
John Stott wrote of Ephesians 2:4, “These two monosyllables ‘but God’ set against the desperate condition of fallen mankind the gracious initiative and sovereign action of God. We were the objects of His wrath, but God out of the great love with which He loved us had mercy upon us. We were dead, and dead men do not rise, but God made us alive with Christ. We were slaves, in a situation of dishonour and powerlessness, but God has raised us with Christ and set us at His own right hand, in a position of honour and power. Thus God has taken action to reverse our condition in sin.”
Beginning in verse 4, Paul tells us that when we were lost in our sins God intervened to bring salvation. Those two words - but God - tell us who initiates salvation. God always makes the first move in salvation because the lost sinner, who is spiritually dead, is incapable of moving towards God. It is because of the grace of God that we are raised to life. He makes all the difference between life and death, between a life of turmoil and a life of peace, between a life of sin and sorrow and a life lived to the glory of God, between salvation and damnation, and between Heaven and Hell.
Paul continues, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us.” He writes that God is rich in mercy. Vernon McGee writes in his commentary, “He had mercy on me. He has had mercy on you. This is such a radical change from the first three verses, which are as black and hopeless as anything can be. Man is a complete failure. He is incapable of saving himself. God comes on this scene of death with His mercy. He has a surplus of mercy, for He is an infinite God who is rich in infinite mercy. He has what man needs. He has what you need. The only requirement is that you believe Him.”
The word rich means an overabundance, something without measure and unlimited.
And the word mercy speaks of God’s goodness or kindness toward those who don’t deserve anything from Him but condemnation. Jesus was often moved with compassion as He saw the consequences of sin in the people He came into contact with during His earthly life. When this happened, His mercy caused Him to reach out in love and do something about the suffering He saw.
Jesus’ compassion on those He met teaches how God reaches into the lives of the lost as He brings mercy and salvation. This is why it was necessary for us to spend some time looking at the bleak picture Paul describes in the first 3 verses of Ephesians 2, because as hard and as offensive as they are, they tell the truth of just who we are outside of Christ. We simply cannot afford to gloss over parts of the Bible because they make us feel uncomfortable. This is why the Gospel is such good news, because there is hope for us.
But God, in spite of our wicked, fallen condition, but God, in spite of our rebellion, but God, in spite of our sinfulness and total depravity, looked upon us with mercy in His heart. In His mercy, He was moved to do something to help us. He sent His Son to bear the punishment we deserve.
When we receive mercy, we receive something we do not deserve. God, in His mercy, turns His wrath away from the children of wrath, and directs it at Jesus on the cross instead, while at the same time He brings us forgiveness and salvation.
This is how much God loves us. Verses 4 and 5 again: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved.”
What makes the love of God so amazing is the object of that love. Ephesians 2:4 speaks of the great love with which He loved us. The “us” in that phrase refers to those who are redeemed from among the lost described in verses 1-3. It speaks of the “us” who did not love Him. It speaks of the “us” who lived in constant rebellion against God’s Word, His will and His ways. It speaks of the “us” who deserved His judgment and eternal damnation in Hell. It speaks of the “us” who hated Him, but loved our sins. It speaks of the “us” who turned away from Him in rebellion.
When we were caught up in the depravity of our sin, we deserved nothing but God’s wrath and damnation. He had no reason to reach out to us and redeem us. Paul wrote in Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good dwells in me.” This is why, in Ephesians 2:5 he writes, “By grace you have been saved.”
Paul also makes the point in verse 5 that God, “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
He didn’t wait for us to pull ourselves together. He loved us while we were still dead in our sins. He loved us in spite of our wickedness. He reached down to us when He knew that we could not, and would not, reach up to Him.
Romans 5:8-11 says, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Because of God’s rich mercy and His great love for us, He has offered forgiveness and reconciliation to us as He does to every repentant sinner. Not only does He love us enough to forgive but also enough to send Jesus to die for us.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
What this means is that God has brought us out of our spiritual death and depravity, and has raised us to spiritual life. He took us out of Adam and placed us in Jesus. When we are placed in Christ, we become the exact opposite of what we were before. Everything changes, and it changes forever.
Paul writes in verse 6 that God has “raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” So not only has God intervened in our lives by loving and redeeming us from spiritual death, but He now identifies with those who are redeemed with Jesus. In other words, when God looks at those whom He has redeemed, He never again sees us like we are. He sees us just as we are in Jesus. He does not see our sins, but He sees the righteousness of His Son, because our relationship with Jesus is now completely changed.
Galatians 3:26-27 says, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.” So because we are in Jesus Christ, we are identified with Him. What is true of Jesus Christ is true of all those who are in Jesus Christ. This passage speaks of at least two areas in which the redeemed are identified with Jesus.
Firstly, we are identified with Him in His resurrection. When God saves us, He brings us out of spiritual death and resurrects us to new life in Christ. We become the new creations which Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5:17. The once dead sinner is born again, as we are delivered from spiritual death to spiritual life.
When we are saved, we begin to live a new life. We are no longer dead to God, but alive to Him, because of Jesus Christ. Paul put it this way in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
At the end of the age we will be raised in glory for all eternity, but in a very real way, our spiritual resurrection is already a reality. As Jesus said in John 5:24, “Whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” He has eternal life. Present tense.
Just as Jesus set Lazarus free from the grave clothes of his death, so He sets us free from the grave clothes of our sin. When God sees His redeemed people, He sees a resurrected people. Romans 6:5 says, “If we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”
We are identified with Jesus in His resurrection.
Secondly, we are identified with Him in His ascension. Verse 6 again: We are “raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
This refers to Jesus’ ascension back into Heaven. Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus ascended to Heaven, where He sat down at the right hand of the Father. Jesus is in Heaven, and Paul teaches that when He ascended, those who are in Him ascended with Him. We are still here in our physical bodies, but in a spiritual sense we have been not only raised with Jesus, but seated with Him in the heavenly places as Paul says in verse 6.
Verses 6 and 7 in the NLT say, “He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of His grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all He has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.”
This is where our blessed assurance comes from. We are secure in our salvation and future in glory, because our salvation is a present reality. The Bible teacher Josh Buice says of our justification, sanctification and glorification that we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved, but it is all one great and glorious truth which cannot be separated.
We might be able to point back to a time and place in the past where we were saved by the grace of God, but our salvation is always ongoing. We are saved today, we will be saved tomorrow, and we will be saved in 10 million years from today.
Our union and identification with Jesus is so firm and so secure, that is as if it has happened to us already.
Bearing this in mind, look at what Paul writes in Romans 8:28-39, and how he writes in the present tense.
“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We are citizens of Heaven today, even though we still live in this fallen and sinful world. The heartaches and pain we experience are real. The tears we cry are real, but because of Christ, these things will pass.
Because we are made alive with Christ, raised with Christ and seated with Christ, these present realities are our guarantee that when we finally do enter into glory, we will be with Christ forever.
Our salvation comes exclusively by the grace of God. We were dead and could not get to Him, but He came to us. We did not love Him, nor did we want to, but He loved us. We did not want Him, but He wanted us. It is His amazing grace that reached down into the depths of our spiritual death. It was His grace that saved us, changed us and identified us with Jesus Christ.
Paul says something so important in verse 7. “In the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” For now we only have a limited view and understanding of just what God has done for us, but Paul is saying here that God will use the coming ages of eternity to reveal the extent of His grace in our lives. As it stands now, we understand so little of what the Lord has done for us. When we arrive in Heaven, we will. There we will be able to comprehend the extent of His grace. When we arrive home, we will be made able to understand the wonder of God’s love, the price of His grace and the power of His salvation.
William McDonald has an interesting take on this when he writes in his commentary, “God will be disclosing this throughout eternity, and we will be learning forever and ever. Heaven will be our school. God will be the teacher. His grace will be the subject. We will be the students. And the school term will be eternity. This should also deliver us from the idea that we will know everything when we get to Heaven. Only God knows everything, and we will never be equal with Him.”
One day, eternity will ring with the praises of a people who were redeemed from death, and we will fall before our Great Redeemer and praise Him for everything He has done for us. We don’t fully comprehend all we have and all we are in Jesus right now. We lack a complete understanding of all that He has done for us in saving us and in blessing us like He does. But one day, we will be home in Heaven where we will receive our glorious resurrection bodies that will praise Him in a manner that His glory deserves.
But until such time as God does call us home, we know that we are saved by God’s grace alone, and even in our imperfect lives in this world, God stirs our hearts to worship and love Him. And this is only possible because we have been spiritually raised to life.
In the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
John Calvin wrote in his commentary of Ephesians 2, “Now let us cast ourselves down before the majesty of our good God with acknowledgment of our faults, praying Him to make us so to feel them that it makes us not only confess three or four of them, but also go back even to our birth and acknowledge that there is nothing but sin in us, and that there is no way for us to be reconciled to our God, but by the blood, death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
By grace you are saved through faith. If you have yet to accept the free gift of salvation He offers you, what are you waiting for? Turn to Christ and be saved.
We are saved only by the grace of God. He takes the initiative in providing it. Salvation is given to those who are completely unworthy of it, on the basis of the person and work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary alone.
Grace is given to us as a present possession. Those who are saved can know it, and the way we receive the gift of eternal life is through faith. Faith means that we, as lost, guilty sinners, can receive Jesus as our only hope of salvation.
As Paul writes in verse 8, grace is a gift of God. Grace is the only basis on which God offers salvation. The gift of God is salvation by grace and through faith. It is offered to all people everywhere, and it is offered to you.
But God. We were lost in sin, but God. We were trapped in spiritual darkness, but God. We were separated from Him and headed to Hell, but God. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God. We were children of wrath, but God.
This is why we need a Saviour. And what a glorious Saviour we have!