Ephesians 2:4-10
[Lent 4—CWS B]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
March 11, 2018
4 But
because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
In the name of the Triune God, who called you by his grace, dear friends, The letter to the Ephesians, written by the Apostle Paul, is a treasure. He wrote it to encourage his Christian friends in the city of Ephesus. The first half of the letter emphasizes God’s grace—his undeserved love that leads to salvation. The second half describes the response of Christians to this grace of God. Our lesson for today falls in the beautiful section that describes God’s grace. And while it is beautiful, it is also loaded with doctrine—important teachings that are essential for faith and understanding God. These words are life-changing for every person who pays attention to them! The particular verses before us today are some of my favorites out of the whole Bible—and not just because the pastor who confirmed me, Pastor Mueller, picked a couple of them out just for me at my confirmation; it is much bigger than that. It is because these words leave no doubt about God’s love for us. As we look closely at them, we’ll see that the gift of faith in Jesus is like getting a gift made up of several parts. Paul talks about the gift of faith, but God’s love and Jesus himself and salvation are all parts of that gift of faith—they all go together as a big gift from God to us. By the time we look through all these words, I think we’ll all sit back in wonder and awe and be moved to thank God for… THE AMAZING GIFT OF GRACE Each of us handles gift-giving differently, have you noticed that? It was probably 20 years ago that I remember a couple in their early 50’s telling me that they didn’t buy Christmas gifts for each other anymore. At the time I thought, “That’s different. I kind of’ like all the gifts and having a pile of them under the tree!” Now that I’m in my 50’s, I get it. Getting gifts doesn’t have the same importance to me that it once did—although it still makes me happy if I can figure out a nice gift for someone else...and it is still nice to receive a gift. For many of people though, spending some time with people that are important to us seems better than anything that comes wrapped up in a box. That’s pretty different from the way kids usually look forward to a birthday or Christmas! I can still remember some of the great things I received over many birthdays and Christmases. When we’re kids we typically expect that we’re going to receive gifts. If we don’t get any…or if we don’t get enough of them…or if we don’t get exactly what we wanted, we might pout or complain or even cry about it! We feel like we deserve it, like people owe it to us! But that’s not what a gift is, is it? A gift is not owed to us at all! We never deserve gifts. Gifts are given because people want to give them—they are not earned or deserved.
Now paychecks and wages are earned. You agree to work and your employer agrees to pay you so much per hour or so much per year. In those cases, you wouldn’t consider your paycheck as a “gift”, would you? You might still say “Thank You”, but you would never consider your paycheck a gift from your employer. When it comes to our relationship with God, we do not deserve his gifts. We do earn something though. In Romans 6, Paul wrote “The wages of sin is death (v.23).” Right here in our lesson today, we’re told that before God got a hold of us, we were dead in transgressions! And in the verses just prior to these, he says that we followed the ways of the world and Satan’s ways and that we gratified the cravings of our sinful nature. That sinfulness we have simply because we are human made us objects of God’s holy anger, Paul says. Yes, as sinful human beings, the anger of God is focused on us and the payment we have coming is eternal death in hell. If you understand what God is telling you, then you know that you were not deserving of God’s love or his gifts. But God did something spectacular with you and me! Though we did not earn it, did not deserve it, and were so dead in sin that we absolutely could not bring ourselves out of it, God decided to give an AMAZING GIFT. We had nothing to do with it; God had everything to do with it! We’ll talk about that in a minute, but let’s first see what that gift was. As I mentioned to begin with this morning, there really is a lot to the gift of faith that the Lord bestows on us. The gift of faith centers on Jesus, who was a gift from the Father to a world drowning and dying in sin. Jesus’ gift to us was his willingness to enter this world and live like we live—as a person—subject to his own divine laws and expectations. Jesus’ gift to us includes his agreement to offer his perfect life to pay for our imperfect lives. Jesus paid the debt for our sin on the cross. Jesus’ gift to us also includes his promise of eternal life to those who trust in him because he conquered death. The Holy Spirit’s gift to us is that he took us from being dead in sin to being spiritually alive as we heard the good news about Jesus in the Bible and as we received it in Holy Baptism. We speak of the gift of God being the faith that he has given us, but do you see how all of this is included with that? We have all this by faith! Later today, we’ll find out what seed the Wildcats will get in the college basketball March Madness basketball tournament and where they will play. The first games begin on Tuesday and if you watch that tournament at all, you’re going to see huge upsets and some games that will be won on crazy, falling-down, guys-hanging-on-the-shooter, buzzer-beater shots. There are plays like that every year that cause a person watching the game to sit there with their mouth hanging open in disbelief. And then you sit there waiting to see the replay just to be sure that what you thought you saw actually did happen…and to see HOW it could have happened! When it comes to our faith, the thing that is so stunning…the thing that is so shocking that it might make your jaw drop…the thing that you want to see the replay on just to be sure it really happened…is that God picked you out and gave you the gift of faith! Before the clock that counts down the days of your life had a chance to expire, God stepped in and gave you the gift of faith!
And here’s what makes all this so amazing: we could not be saved without the Father’s love which sent his Son. We could not be saved without Jesus’ living and dying for us. And we could not be saved without the Holy Spirit actually GIVING us the faith to believe in Jesus! Sinners who are correctly called by God spiritually blind, spiritually dead, and spiritual enemies of his could do nothing to come to God and wouldn’t want to! If you and I don’t get how dire and desperate and hopeless our situation was, then we certainly will not understand how great the love of God is and we will never be able to offer him appropriate praise and thanks. And there’s enough misunderstanding and misinformation out there among our Christian friends and families about this that you might begin to buy into their false belief about this subject of faith. But that does not need to happen if we will listen to what God tells us here in Ephesians. I would like to walk through those words as they appear on the cover of your worship folder. Please take a look at that now and I’m going to ask you to read through the verses with me, but with these instructions: I’m going to read everything, but ask you to join me on the underlined words printed in color. So I’ll begin and you just jump in every time we hit those words.
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Do you see what I see in there? In seven verses God has told us 17 times, in different ways and with different words that you and I had nothing to do with our coming to faith in Jesus! Why did God do that? If you or I write like that, the teacher gets out the red pen and starts to circle and underline and jot things in the margin like “Redundant!” “You already said that!” “We got the point the first 16 times!” Ahh, but when God does this it is with divine wisdom and purpose! God knows that the sinful mind, when it feels guilt, will want to do something to make up for sin. With a hint of pride, the sinful mind wants to take some credit for believing in Jesus, for taking a step toward God. God knows that we live in a time when a common opinion in Christianity is that you “make a decision for Christ”. Our friends ask us “When did you accept Jesus into your heart?” and make statements like “I gave my life to Jesus.” But I’m here to tell you this morning that those are people who neither understand how depraved the sinful nature is nor do they fully understand the extent of God’s love! You and I and any other person who trusts in Jesus as their Savior had nothing to do with our coming to faith. Left on our own, that would never happen! The AMAZING GIFT of faith is so incredible because it was not earned or deserved and never would have happened had God not decided to show compassion to helpless sinners. Look at the underlined words again that you read (read through each of them). It was all God’s doing. That is amazing grace! Part of the application of Scripture to our personal lives today is that we see the depth of God’s love and that we thank him for his gift of faith. But the other part is that we don’t talk in a way that sounds like those who don’t appreciate or don’t understand this grace of God. God calls us to be clear as we explain that it really doesn’t work that way—we didn’t decide to follow Jesus; Jesus chose us and gave us saving faith! He deserves 100% of the credit and glory for his love—not us! The Holy Spirit deserves the full credit for creating faith in our hearts—not us! The last verse of our lesson shows us what our thanks to God looks like: For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. We are God’s handiwork; he has given us faith and made us his people. He did this because of his undeserved love and with this purpose: that we could show our thanks to him by doing good things, by living a life that is in line with his will. God had in mind all along that people would respond to his love with love of their own—acts of love that spring from a grateful and thankful heart. A more literal translation of what God had Paul write down for us would be more like this. “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we may walk in them.” “That we may walk in them.” The Christian who understands what God has done for them wants to walk through life thanking God with everything they do. Thanking God for THE AMAZING GIFT OF GRACE is an everyday walking with the Lord until the day comes when our gracious God calls us to walk with him, praising and thanking him for all eternity. Until that trumpet sounds and the angels appear with Jesus in glory to lead us there, keep reviewing these wonderful verses that tell us of God’s love and thank God for THE AMAZING GIFT OF GRACE! Amen.