Ephesians 2:1-10

Thanks be to God, the Holy one. Once again, his words reached to me through the Bible early in the morning. I think I would better write down to share this wonderful reminder.

Scriptures Ephesians (2:1-10)

¹And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ²in 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 – ³among 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. ⁴But God, being in rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The verse 1 of this scripture gave us a brief introduction of what he is going to talk about next. “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” He is going to remind us about the worse condition we were in (we were dead), and how God revived us. (Made us alive)

From verses 2-3, Paul reminded us the way we lived. We walked following the course of this world and the spirit that works in the sons of disobediences. We by nature were the children of wrath. The judgment of death would reach us sooner or later, and that would be the only thing we deserve. However, it is very interesting to study the way Paul addressed this topic. He wrote to Ephesians saying that they were dead. The Ephesians were definitely alive when they received the letter, then we should ask what sort of logic that Paul used when he said that they were dead in sins and trespasses. In Genesis chapter 3, Adam sinned against God by disobeying His commandment. He was not dead immediately after he ate the forbidden fruit, but he was then spiritually dead from that onwards.

Let me clarify before we proceed. What does it mean by death? One should have the knowledge about true death, because that would show the difference between human and animals. When God created man, he formed the man of dust from the ground. And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Gen2:7) Human was created differently in the comparison with other creatures. So literally, we can see death from two perspectives, one is the physical death and the other is the spiritual death. In this letter, Paul talks about the spiritual death. When someone is physically dead, he first would lose his breath and his body would stop to function subsequently and after that his body will corrupt slowly. However, when someone is spiritually dead, he can never give proper response to the word of God. To the word of God, he is helpless to respond appropriately. This is the condition where we were in and the first thing that he reminded us through this chapter. If you were to study the way that Paul wrote his letters, he often told the readers about the bad news which bring the readers into despair and afterwards he would share with them the good news – the gospel of the Bible as the ultimate comfort of their despair. He knew it very well that people need to have bad news before the good news come. 
  

In the verses 4-5, Paul reminds us that God is rich in mercy. Because of the great love with which he loves us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. Over here, Paul addressed us the reason of God to save us. It is not that there are still something good or valuable in us that made him choose to save us. As what he mentioned before, we are supposed to be the children of wrath. Due to his righteousness, he had 10000 reasons to put His wrath on us. God saved us because he loves us. He loves us because God is great in love and rich in mercy. This is the only reason that Paul told us through this chapter. For that reason, God made us alive. The English Bible used past tense to address this sentence and we can see that this has been accomplished by God and those in Christ were made alive and forever alive. (Matthew 22:32) “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” (1Corinthians 15:55) “Death is swallowed up in victory, O death where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?” How great these scripture are! Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Besides that, God raised us up with him (Jesus Christ) and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is another interesting scripture. What does it mean when he wrote “He seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”? The readers might be sitting on the wooden chairs when they were reading the letter. Over here, Paul meant what he said, we were seated with Jesus Christ in the heaven. And this has been accomplished but may not be fully comprehended. I would believe that somehow spiritually we are sitting together with our Lord Jesus Christ in the heaven.

After all the bad and good news, Paul reminded us how we have been saved by writing that “we have been saved by grace through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Over here, I am going to talk about Solae Grace. Instead of highlighting the word “through faith”, I would prefer to highlight the word “by grace” over here. In this scripture what we can understand is that by grace we have been saved. I would say the faith on the gospel can never exist if the gospel itself doesn’t exist in the first place. As what I have mentioned before, since spiritually we were dead, we couldn’t respond to the gospel of God on our own. We lost the ability to respond and even receive this gospel through faith.

Let’s understand what grace is. Here is a wonderful scripture to help us understand the grace of God. (Psalm 103:8-10) The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  Over here, we can understand what grace is, grace is due to the mercy of God, he doesn’t deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. As short, on this perspective, we know that grace is that we are not given the bad we deserve the most. Besides that, in Ephesian 2:6, we see that God gave us the goods that we don’t deserve which are the salvation through Jesus Christ and the glory in the heaven. As a conclusion, grace is that we are not given the bad things that we deserve the most; instead we are given the goods that we don’t deserve. What an amazing grace it is!

We have been saved by grace through faith. This is very true. Through faith, we can receive this amazing grace for the sake of our salvation. However, as what I said, we are helpless to respond in order to receive this gracious gospel. Some may refuse to believe the bad news that Paul addressed which serves to show our helplessness. They believe that we still have some ability to do goods and even respond to the good news. By reading other scriptures, we know that Paul was telling the truth that we were totally helpless. At the end of time, those who are in the heaven would only give thanks to God for the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards the people in Christ Jesus and no one would discuss about whose faith is the greatest among all because they know that the salvation is not their own doing but the gift of God. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In Luke chapter 18:27 Jesus said: “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” God made us alive and then granted us the ability to respond to his grace. This happened in John 11:38-44 where Jesus raised Lazarus. This man who had died came out from the grave. This was a miracle that is impossible with men but possible with God. Likewise, God made us alive and then we can only come out from our trespasses, and receive the gospel. The word of Jesus with the life-changing power and the dwelling of spirit changed the dead nature of Lazarus into living and active nature, and Lazarus was enabled to respond to the word of Jesus and eventually came out form his grave. Seriously speaking, after all, we have to believe that we have been saved through faith but this faith is given by the grace of God due to his kindness and mercy. This salvation is truly the gift of God given to us while we have nothing worth to be saved.

However, in Ephesians 2:10 we know that, with this regenerated life, we have been given the ability to do good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Doing goods is never the way of obtaining the salvation, but something that our Savior prepared us to do after this redemption. With a grateful heart, we should practise good works for his sake alone because we are meant to do goods beforehand.