Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Ephesians 2:4-7 | Date: June 29, 2014 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Kim is away this weekend to the Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference down in Orlando, and I am suffering at home without her once again. I mentioned that on Facebook yesterday, explicitly requesting sympathy, and got much more sarcasm than I got sympathy. For those of you who were sympathetic, thank you very much.

I want to clarify something Pastor Greg had to say. He said that we will not be having our normal evening service today because of the VBS. I just wanted to clarify that we won’t be having an abnormal evening service either. You’re welcome to come if you would like, but I think you’ll be the only ones.

I do feel a bit of a challenge this morning. I feel this every year at this time. Vacation Bible School is over, and one of the great things about Vacation Bible School I’ve always been impressed with here is that we have such a wide participation from the people of the church. You work so hard with it. It’s a wonderful ministry; it’s great. But at this point now, on the Sunday after VBS, everyone’s tired. And so I have to preach to people who are trying to stay awake. I appreciate your coming. Those of you who’ve worked all week, I appreciate your being here. If you can stay awake, I will be honored.

Now, adding to that, Jimmy was away to Los Angeles this weekend and took the red-eye flight home so he could be here today. He’s not in here for the moment, is he? Would he go out to sleep? I was going to say that those of you at least who have a good aim, if you see it’s necessary, toss a hymnal over at him; keep him awake. He’ll be all right.

Ephesians chapter 2. I do have one other thing to say, and that is just this observation that since there won’t be an evening service today, I should be able to preach twice as long this morning. So settle in and get comfortable. We have three or four verses to cover today, and they are just, I think, just rich. I trust the Lord will bless.

Verses 4 through 7 of Ephesians chapter 2, we’ve already read. Verses 1 through 10—let’s read again, verses 4 through 7:

“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—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Now that is rather full. Let’s read it one more time.

“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 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, what a rich and wonderful passage of Scripture this is, what a wonderful book. The Apostle just explores the depths and the heights of the glory of the grace of our God. We pray that you would meet with us this morning. May this not be just a normal Sunday morning service together. May it be a time when especially we know and realize your presence with us, ministering your word to our hearts. May we sense your pleasure in the proclamation of your grace today. In Christ’s name we ask, amen.

Every time I read this passage, I’m reminded of a legend about a man by the name of St. Dennis. You’ve probably not heard of St. Dennis, spelled with one N by the way. Dennis, pronounced differently, I’m sure, from where he’s from, but he is the patron saint of France from the late third century. He was evidently a vigorous missionary, doing mission work of various kinds. He got in trouble with the authorities. And having gotten in trouble with the authorities, he—all right, get all this—he was arrested, whipped, imprisoned, stretched on the rack, thrown to the wild beasts, burned at the stake, and just to make sure, beheaded. Talk about a bad day. Arrested, whipped, imprisoned, stretched on the rack, thrown to the wild animals, burned at the stake, and then beheaded.

Now, I don’t know if you can believe all of that, but that’s the legend. But that’s not the unbelievable part. The unbelievable part of the legend is that after all of that was over, St. Dennis reached down and picked up his head, tucked it under his arm, and walked six miles home. Who said Christians couldn’t tell a good story? Charles Spurgeon commented on that legend one time and he said, “I would have no trouble at all believing that. I would have no trouble at all believing that story about St. Dennis if you could just convince me that he took that first step.” Walking home six miles with your head tucked under your arm, that’s relatively easy. It’s that first step that presents the real difficulty.

And in a very real sense, this is precisely the problem facing every one of us. The Apostle Paul has explained that for us in verses 1 through 3: our dead condition. He is explaining the big picture. We have been seeing it since chapter 1, where he has explored the wide-angle lens picture of what God has done for us in Christ from eternity past to eternity future. He has chosen us. He’s predestined us in love to make us sons in Christ to the praise of the glory of his grace. He’s given us to Christ in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. He’s revealed this great eternal purpose for us so that we can revel in it and enjoy it. And having then brought us the gospel, he has sealed us with his Spirit, the guarantee of our internal inheritance until that day when our redemption is complete.

In chapter 2 now, as we saw last time, Paul turns to the individual picture. That’s the big picture. But now the little picture, that is our own experience. How did we come to experience this great work of grace that God has planned from eternity to eternity? How did it come to be in our own experience? Well, starting then with our own condition where God met us when he first came to us in grace. The Apostle tells us in verses 1 through 3, as we saw last time, we were dead in trespasses and sins. And this was the great problem that faced us. God demands, in order to be saved, that we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith. No man will be saved apart from believing in Jesus Christ, the Savior. That is the demand. But the problem is just that. How do dead people believe? How does someone who is dead in trespasses and sins—captive to his sins, captive to the world, captive to the devil, as we saw in verses 1 through 3 last time, with a heart bent against God and going against him with all of our will and all of our mind—how does someone in that condition take that first step and come to Christ in faith and then be saved?

And it’s with that in the background that we come to verse 4. And the first two words of verse 4 mark a startling contrast. Now I have to clarify something. Many of you are using the New International Version. The New International Version has translated it just fine. They know Greek better than I do and all of that. But what they didn’t do is preserve the stark contrast that starts out verse 4. The first two words of verse 4 are, like you have in your English Standard Version, like you have in the old King James Version, simply: “But God.”

Now, the New International Version smooths that out a bit—”But because of his great love, God who is rich in mercy”—and so on. But the original reads like we have here in the ESV, simply, “But God.” And what’s intended here is to mark the contrast with what has happened. And not only the contrast, but how the change came about. The title of the message this morning is “The Great Change.” And the first two words of verse 4 stress how that great change came about. You were dead, but God. You were, but God; and that’s the hinge of this whole passage. Right in the center, first three verses, we have our condition: dead in trespasses and sins. The next three or four verses, we have this great display of what God has done for us that we’ll see this morning. And right in the middle, the hinge: but God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, raised us up to be with Christ, gave us life in Him.

So the contrast there is meant to be striking. We were, but God. We were dead in trespasses and sins, but God—and that tells the whole rest of the story. Our testimony is not that we were sick and struggling and doing our best, and God came and helped us go the rest of the way. Our testimony is not that we were trying but knew we couldn’t and asked God for help and so then he came. Our testimony is not that God looked down and saw us poor creatures doing our best and couldn’t make it and so gave us a little nudge. Our testimony is what Paul gives here. We were lying helpless and hopeless in our sins, dead in trespasses, following along the course of the world according to the dictates of Satan, who runs the whole thing. But God—and there is the story. God has intervened, and this is what explains our faith in Jesus Christ. We did not somehow muster up the strength and work against our nature. We took that first very important step of faith in Christ only because God had already taken that necessary previous step, enabling us and bringing us out of that grave, as it were, to come to Christ.

And that is to say then what is the whole message of the Bible and what certainly is the stress of this whole passage. Paul stresses it a couple of times. He even throws it in when he quite hasn’t gotten there; he has to say it again in verse 5. Salvation is by grace. Huge word, huge concept all through the Scriptures. And it is the focus of Paul’s discussion here. The whole message of the gospel, the whole message of the Bible, is that you were helpless, but God. And what is impossible for us due to our condition in sin is not impossible for God. And in fact, the Bible wants to stress for us and proclaim very loudly: salvation is nothing less than a supernatural event, and every believer is nothing less than a walking miracle.

And this explains then Paul’s purpose in verses 1 through 3, where he digs up for us, as we saw last week, the ugly depths of our lostness and the hopelessness and the helplessness that is true of every one of us in our natural condition. He tells us that every one of us. His point is not that he’s some kind of a sadist who likes to lay this on you and make you feel your lostness and your misery, as if that somehow gives him pleasure. He doesn’t enjoy that any more than we do, but he finds it necessary to dwell on it in order that we may rejoice then and revel in the grace of God, understanding more fully the greatness of the grace of God given to us in Christ. And so he gives us the background, the backdrop to it all, verses 1 to 3. And then he begins to explain for us in the following verses what God has done to remedy our problem.

Harry Ironside used to tell the story of a prayer meeting that he attended. He was driving through the South one Wednesday evening, and he wanted to attend church. He was driving through the road, finally found one, pulled in the parking lot, saw they were having a meeting. Went in—turns out it was an African American church down in the deep south. He went in and he said they were having a testimony service as he walked in. And someone had asked, did anybody have a testimony to give? And he said one man in the back stood up and gave just a marvelous testimony of the grace of God, how he had saved him, that God came to him in his sin and redeemed him, and so on. He said it really was a marvelous testimony of God’s grace. Then he said the man who was leading the service at the time—he didn’t say if it was the pastor or who it was—but he said the man leading the service evidently didn’t have quite the grasp of God’s grace as that man did. And so he asked him and he said—and I forget the man’s name, but Joe or whatever it was—”You’ve told us now God’s part. Tell us about your part.” And he said the man stood back up and he said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. God done his part and I’d done mine.” He said, “For 40 years I’d done my part. I ran from God as fast as my feet would take me. I fought against him as hard as I could, and God run me down and brought me to Jesus. I’d done my part and God done his.”

That’s good theology. And that is exactly what Paul is telling us here in verses 4 through 7. Now let’s take time to look at the particulars and ask the question first, what is it that God did for us exactly?

What Did He Do For Us?

He tells us, first of all, verse 5, he raised us from the dead: “but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved.” He made us alive together with Christ. Now, one of the absolutely fundamental tenets of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We confess our faith, not in a Savior of the cross merely, but a Savior who died for our sins on the cross, paying the penalty, taking the curse in full, and having paid the curse in full, on the third day rose from the dead—a triumphant Savior, having done all of the work that saves. And our faith then is not just in a Christ who died, but a Christ who was raised from the dead, having died for our sins.

Another important central tenet of our faith is that of our union with Christ. You’ve heard me talk about it many times. And it is a huge theme in the Apostle Paul. You’ve heard me refer to it as Paul’s signature or as his trademark. We find it always in Paul. We found it already many times through chapter 1. Again now in chapter 2, that little phrase: in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, or with Christ, with Christ, through Christ. Whatever we have in our salvation, we have only because we are joined to Jesus Christ. Only because I’m in union with him, who is the Savior, do I have redemption. Only because I’m in union with him, the one who paid the penalty of sin, do I have forgiveness of sin. All that I have, all that I hope to have, I have only because by faith I’m united to Jesus Christ who has done all the work. And this is central to Paul’s theology, and it pervades his teaching everywhere. And you’ve noticed it, I’m sure, here, as we’ve read through that little phrase recurring: in Christ, in Christ, with Christ, and through Christ. We have it in this passage many times, Paul driving that home.

And so Paul can say things like, “I have been crucified with Christ,” which is a really odd way of talking. I have died. I have been crucified with Christ. And of course, the theology of it, the teaching, what he’s getting across in all of that is of central importance: that Christ in what he did was not done alone by himself considered—although he suffered and worked alone—he did it on behalf of and in union with all of his people, and taking us with him, he went to the cross. And it is as though we were crucified there on the cross with him. My penalty, the penalty and curse of my sin, paid in full in Jesus Christ because I was in union with him in his death. And so Paul can say, “I was crucified with Christ.” The gospel does not say God has bypassed our sin or just overlooked it. The gospel emphasizes that God is a holy God and must punish our sin. And he has in the person of our substitute, Jesus Christ. And it was in union with him that he went to the cross for us.

But if we’re united with Christ, if we are united with him in his death, we are also united with him in his resurrection. And the Apostle Paul makes much of this. You might remember in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, for example, the very fact that Jesus has risen from the dead is itself a guarantee that we will be raised. We are joined to him. He’s just the first fruits of those who are asleep. And because he was raised from the dead, we certainly will be raised with him. And that’s the hope of the Christian—that at the return of Christ, we will be raised with him. Of course, there’s a “now” and a “not yet.” We are not there yet, but joined with Christ, we will be raised with him.

The Apostle Paul would speak of this in graphic terms in the book of Acts. He would stand between the two parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, fighting whether or not there will be a resurrection of the dead. “No, there won’t.” “Yes, there will.” “No, there won’t.” “Yes, there will.” And the Apostle Paul says, “Look, guys, I got news for you. It’s already happened.” Jesus has been raised from the dead into that eschatological resurrection. He’s been raised into the life to come. And joined to him, we will be raised also.

But in verses 5 and 6, the Apostle Paul speaks of this resurrection in Jesus, notice, in the past tense. “Even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, he made us alive together in Christ.” This happened out of our spiritual death. This is not some eternal principle that was at work, but finding us in our spiritual death, God made us alive together with Christ—for by grace you’ve been saved—and has raised us up with him. This is something that has already taken place.

Now, if you thought it was strange to speak about having died with Christ, crucified with Christ, then what about this? We have been raised with Christ. Already our resurrection has happened. Well, of course, there’s the “now” and the “not yet.” The full resurrection of the body and all will come at the day of Christ’s return. But Paul is saying here that there is a sense in which we have been raised with Christ already. Just as he has been raised from the dead, so we now have been raised out of the death of our spiritual death—spiritual death in transgressions and sins. No, we don’t have the full realization of it all yet, but we have been made alive with Christ.

What Paul is referring to here then is the initial point. Here’s the initial point of our spiritual experience: new life, the doctrine of regeneration. The doctrine of regeneration is spoken of with several metaphors in the New Testament. The most familiar one, I suppose, is birth. The famous passage in John chapter 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” What you are in the flesh, that’s just flesh and it can never attain to what you need. There must be a radical remaking of who you are. It’s like being born all over again—a radical remaking of who we are in order to see the kingdom of God. Another metaphor that the New Testament uses is that of creation. “If any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation.” It’s as though God just started all over again and made us anew—a radical remaking of who we are, changing us from this natural rebel to one who worships. And the other metaphor that the New Testament uses is the one that’s used here, and that is that of resurrection. Lying in spiritual death, there we would have remained, but God brought us to life with Christ. He joined us to his Son, and in him we have been raised to new life.

This is what we call in theology “redemption applied.” Two big categories: redemption accomplished, redemption applied. Christ came—God has established his whole purpose of salvation, sent his Son, God the Son has come—and he has accomplished for us the redemption that we have, went to the cross, paid the penalty of sin, and secured eternal redemption for us. That’s the words of Hebrews: He secured redemption for us on the cross. But how does it come to us in experience? Well, now we’re not dealing with a redemption accomplished, but redemption applied. This redemption that Christ has accomplished for us, how is it brought into our experience? And Paul here tells us the initial point is right here: God comes to us in our spiritual death and raises us up to spiritual life in Christ through the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, restoring our spiritual senses and raising us out of death.

The gospel makes what I like to call the twin promises, the two promises of the gospel. Now, of course, this breaks down into a whole lot more, but two big categories of the gospel promise. One is judicial; the other one’s experiential. Judicially: justification, declared righteous before God. The gospel promises that there’ll be no more guilt, that in Christ the guilt is gone because the penalty’s paid. But it also promises transformation. It doesn’t promise simply to justify sinners. The gospel promises to justify sinners and to transform them. And this gets into the doctrine of what we call progressive sanctification; it ends up in the doctrine of glorification. We’re made to be like Christ and so on. But here is the initial point of that transforming work: God raises us out of our spiritual death into life in Christ.

Now, this, I think, speaks vividly to the experience of everyone who’s come to Christ. This is something that just resonates in the hearts of every believer. We know what it was to be spiritually dead, when the things of God were a matter of indifference to us. And we may not remember the moment when the change happened, but we know that things are not like that now, that the heart now is lively to the things of Christ. There’s been this great change.

I heard Sinclair Ferguson say one time—I thought this was very perceptive—he said, when he was first converted as a teenager, if someone had asked him, “What is the biggest difference that all of this has made, what would it be?” He said, “I’m sure I would have had to say: Sunday.” I thought that was just wonderfully perceptive. And he said, “I remembered what it was like before. What a dull day. Going to church and singing those dull songs and hearing those dull sermons, reading out of that dull book.” And suddenly those songs came alive. Suddenly those sermons came alive. Suddenly that book came alive. Suddenly there was just this thrill associated with these things that you thought were boring before. This is what Paul is telling us about here. God has met us in our spiritual death and didn’t leave that first demand to us, but brought us to spiritual life.

You remember when the things of Christ were dull? Remember when you were indifferent to it? Paul speaks of this in terms of his own experience in 2 Corinthians 5. The God who made the light shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to make us see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That’s something we didn’t see before. It was there; Christ is glorious. That’s objectively true, but we couldn’t see it. But this same God who at the beginning turned the lights on—out of nothing, just spoke and there was light—that same God has shined in our hearts and made us see what we couldn’t see before, repaired our minds as it were, remade us, enabling us to see what was true about Jesus, what was true about ourselves, and so enlivened our hearts to run to Christ.

Now, we’ve all got different details associated with our testimony, but that’s the bottom line that’s true for every one of us, isn’t it? And this is what explains the sudden and the surprising nature of all of our conversions. None of us ever planned it. We never said, “Well, in June of next year, after this, that, and the other is done, then I’ll come to Christ.” Never happens that way. But suddenly, suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a new set of affections. Suddenly, inexplicably, there’s a new concern for the things of Christ. Suddenly, inexplicably, there’s a concern over sin. And suddenly and inexplicably, there’s a desire to read that book and to hear more about Jesus. Well, this is what Jesus told Nicodemus in John chapter 3. The Spirit of God is mysterious like the wind. He blows in; you don’t know where he’s come from, you don’t know where he’s going to go next, but boy, you know when he’s been there—and he brings life.

So Paul tells us we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, because he’s rich in mercy and great with love, when we were dead, he made us alive. But that’s not all he did. Verse 6: “and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. Now, if you thought it was strange to speak of—to say that we have died, been crucified with Christ—and you think it may sound strange to say we have been raised from the dead, try this one: we have been seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Theologians like to speak of the two states of the incarnate Christ. The Son of God came from heaven, became a man, he was incarnate. And the two states are his humiliation and his exaltation. Coming to this earth as a man in humiliation, humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And then we see his exaltation. He’s raised from the dead in glory, entering into that age to come—raised in his ascension into heaven, where now he is seated at the right hand of the Father, where he now reigns as King over all his kingdom. From there, he dispensed the Spirit to carry out this program of redemption. Now, in a sense, that’s a little bit too cut and dry because the Bible also speaks of Christ’s exaltation on the cross. And there’s that hinge moment on the cross where the moment of his utter humiliation becomes the moment of his exaltation where he’s raised to glory then and seated in the heavenlies. But there are two states of Christ in his incarnate state: his humiliation and his exaltation.

And the Apostle Paul here is referring to Christ’s state of exaltation, his enthronement. He’s been raised from the dead. He is ascended to heaven. He is seated at the right hand of God—what we call his session. Here he rules in his kingly authority. And the Christian hope, of course, is that we will reign with Christ as well and share in that authority. And the New Testament has some graphic and vivid pictures of that, sharing with Christ in the glory that he inherits in his second coming.

But what the amazing thing here is that the Apostle is telling us that, again, in the past tense. He raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ. This is something, he says, that has already happened. Now again, of course, there’s the “now” and the “not yet.” There’s plenty to remind us that we’re not there yet. But isn’t there plenty also to remind us that we are there? And isn’t this exactly the tension of the Christian life? We feel that we’ve gone to heaven, as it were. We feel our hearts have gone to heaven. One of the Puritans describes conversion that way once. He said, “Christ has taken our hearts and run off to heaven with them.” And in fact, people of the world who don’t understand salvation, they look at us, and if they knew us beforehand, they even talk of it in almost these kinds of categories. They’ll talk about us; they’ll say, “It’s like he lives on another planet.” I think that the category’s wrong, but they’re onto something. And we are people that feel that we live in two different worlds, and we feel that upward tug, and we feel that downward pull, and we feel like people caught between two worlds.

Paul says here is part of the glory of our salvation. No, we haven’t reached the fullness of it yet, but we have begun to taste of the glory of the age to come. And in Christ, we’ve been seated with him in heavenly places. Now, step back for just a moment and look back again through these verses. Notice the contrast and the great change from what we were to what we are in Christ. Verse 1: we were dead in trespasses and sins. Verse 5: made alive, raised. Verses 2 and 3: enslaved to Satan and his whole world system. Verses 5 and 6: seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, sharing in his reign over all powers. Verse 3 again: objects of wrath. Verse 6: co-heirs with Christ. You see the great change? And you see the hinge right in the middle? Verse 4: “But God.” You were. But God—all of these blessings that we have, as Paul said in chapter 1, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, in Christ. All this we have, we have only because of divine intervention. And that’s Paul’s stress here. God gave us to his Son, and the Lord Jesus then carried us with him, as it were, all through his saving work: through the cross, through the tomb, and all the way to glory.

Well, then that brings the next question. Number one: what did he do for us? He raised us from the dead and he seated us in the heavenlies in Christ. Number two: why did he do this?

Why Did He Do This?

Now, Paul answers this question from a couple of different angles here. First, he speaks in terms of an inward motivation, a motivating factor, something like that. He emphasizes here that all we have came from God’s side, his initiative. Why did he do it that way? Well, verses 4 through 7, Paul clusters together a series of words to explain the ultimate source of our blessings. And I want you to notice them. Verse 4: mercy, love. Verse 5: grace. Verse 7: kindness. Mercy, love, grace, kindness.

God came to us in our helplessness because of his love. And that love is described as mercy, which in turn is described as grace, which in turn is described as kindness. And notice Paul can’t just speak of these terms alone: love, mercy, grace, kindness. He has to speak in the superlative. It’s like he’s grasping for adequate vocabulary. He speaks of his “great love,” “riches of mercy.” Verse 7: “riches of grace.” It’s like he’s grasping for enough vocabulary to describe the kind of love, the kind of grace, the kind of mercy that has been shown to us in Christ.

We were dead in our trespasses. We were rebels against God, running the other way. We had shaken our fist in God’s face and we were content in our sins and wanted nothing to do with him, wanted nothing to do with his law. We not only didn’t see our need of Christ, we didn’t want to see our need of Christ. And God, on the other hand, is of great love and rich in mercy, with great grace and very kind. When God came to us and brought us life, he did not consider whether we were seeking him or not. We weren’t. We were walking according to the course of this world, following along according to the dictates of the prince and the power of the air. When God came to us and brought us to life, he did not consider first whether we were doing something for him. We were not. When he came to us to give us life, he did not consider whether there was in us some kind disposition, some holy inclination toward him, some willingness to come. There wasn’t. We loved darkness rather than light, and we were very content under the leadership of the prince and the power of the air. That’s where he found us.

And what Paul is stressing here is that our salvation then says nothing about us. It says something about him. What moved God to save us was not our goodness. What moved God to save us simply was our badness and his love and his great grace. We now enjoy every blessing just because God is that kind of God. And Paul wants to stress that, and so he uses the vocabulary: love, mercy, grace, kindness; rich in mercy, great in grace, great in loving kindness, abundance of love—this kind of language he’s using. What kind of love is it that comes to people who are unloving and unlovely and loves them? What kind of mercy is it that comes to high-handed rebels and in their rebellion loves them and restores them to fellowship? And this is the way God’s saving love is always presented in the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. His love necessarily, necessarily has the character of grace. There’s never been—there has never been, outside of the triune Godhead—there has never been a worthy object of God’s love. We see in the Old Testament, Israel plays the harlot; they abandon God, they run after strange gods, caught in idolatry. And then out of nowhere, out of nowhere, God will send a prophet and say, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” Come to the New Testament, we find statements reminding us of the same: “We love him because he first loved us.” No preconditions—just mercy, grace, love, and kindness, and all in the superlative.

Well, I said there’s a couple of ways Paul answers this question as to why God would do it. On the one hand, he explains these motivating factors in himself: love, kindness, grace, mercy. But then he also tells us in verse 7 something that I’ve long thought is just fascinating. Why did God do this for us? Well, he answers in verse 7. Here’s God’s ultimate objective. Here’s his ultimate aim. Notice the purpose clause in verse 7: “so that”—why?—”so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ.” So that he will show off his kindness and his grace.

Does that sound a whole lot like something we read in chapter 1: “to the praise of his glorious grace”? Did you know that your salvation in its first instance has nothing to do with you? Oh, it’s meant for our joy and our pleasure and all of that, but in its first instance, our salvation is designed for the glory of God who gives. And he has set out to honor his own name in this great display of grace to rebel sinners. So we see it in chapter 1: to the praise of his glorious grace, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory. And here it’s explicit again. He does it so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

He picks this up again in chapter 3, if you want to notice it quickly, verses 9 and 10:

“To bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery of the ages to come, the ages in God who created all things, so that, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

Now, this verse not only says that God has done this to his own glory, but it specifies an audience. And this is Paul’s language of the demonic hosts, the principalities and the powers. This is a fascinating verse. I don’t have it figured out, but it’s a fascinating verse—what the connection is between God and the demonic hosts and why he needs to show them anything. But here the statement is in chapter 3, verse 10, that God has orchestrated this whole plan of redemption to show off his grace to all of the fallen angels and the demons.

Now, we’ll wrestle with that maybe a little bit in a couple of weeks when we get there. But in principle, it’s the same as what Paul is telling us here in chapter 2 and verse 7. Only in chapter 2 and verse 7, he gives us another little detail. Notice the timeframe that he has in view: “so that in the coming ages, he might show off his kindness to us in Christ.” Now, there’s no question that God already, already is showing his kindness in saving sinners, but here he has the long range in view. He’s looking at all of—this really doesn’t make sense to call it the “ages of eternity”; there are no ages, eternity is just eternity. Through all the ages, endlessly of eternity, God has us on display, as it were, of trophies of his grace, so that through all eternity, all praise will be given to him. “Look at what he has done. Look at what he has done. Look at what he has done with such people.” And there will be never, never the experience of anyone in heaven saying, “How’d you get here?” “Well, I’m glad I saw through to…” or whatever. For all eternity, I’m here because of him. I was lying helpless in my sin, and God came to me and gave me grace and brought me to life in Christ and made me see for the first time the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And I went running, and Christ did for me all that God required of me. And this whole thing is because of him. And for all eternity, that will be the note of praise: that God has done all of this to the praise of his glorious grace. God brings honor to himself, and he intends to bring honor to himself by the way in which he saves sinners. He will not save in any way that would bring honor to those who are saved. The honor belongs to him. The credit is his. Now that doesn’t say a whole lot about us, but you see, that’s the point.

Well, very quickly, four quick lessons that we can learn from all of this.

Four Quick Lessons

Number one, if it’s not clear yet, let me say it now. Number one: God will not have you on the basis of your works, your efforts, your merit of any kind. He won’t have anyone in that way. He saves only in such a way that he receives the glory for it. If you are without Christ and you’re trying and you think that somehow your efforts can make you more acceptable, give it up. God won’t have anyone on those grounds. He saves, and only in such a way that he receives the credit for it. That’s the point of the passage.

Number two, in a very practical level, all of this ought to show us how to live. If God has transformed us from dead sinners to living saints for his glory, then certainly we ought to live a life of transformed saints to his glory. And this is the New Testament call to sanctification everywhere. Brothers and sisters, we must be what we are. We have been deeply, radically changed by the grace of God, and that ought to be increasingly evident in the way that we live, the way that we relate to one another in every level of relationship.

Number three: what a wonderful ground of assurance this is. If salvation were designed to show what I could do, if salvation were designed to show how I could succeed, well then the glory would come to us and God won’t have that. But to think that God has saved us in such a way that he will be honored by it—do you think for a minute that God would ever save someone and then somehow turn them loose and let them see if they can make it, so that at the end they fail? That would be great dishonor to God. That would give Satan ground for ridicule. God won’t have that. He saves in such a way that he will be honored in this. And he saves us and he keeps us because his honor, his name, is at stake in it all.

And number four, and again, this takes us to the overall point of the whole passage and Paul’s point since the outset in chapter 1: this ought to make us better worshipers. We look through all of this about our spiritual death and our helplessness and our hopelessness, and there’s something about it that’s good for us. And in fact, there’s something about it that’s uplifting to our hearts because at the end of the discussion, we keep coming back: what a glorious God of grace He is. And we bow, and we love doing it. We bow humbled and helpless before a God of infinite kindness. And we revel in the grace that is given to us in His Son. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, these are glorious truths to be reminded. And our hearts resonate with it because we know in our own experience, this is what happened. We were lost. We were indifferent, and you came and gave us life and brought us in faith to Jesus. We thank you for your grace. Lord, we pray that you would encourage the hearts of your people in the gospel of grace today. Lift our attention and our hearts and our affections heavenward. Help us to glory in Christ, and may we know more in experience because of a reminder here today from this passage, more in experience what it is to joy and rejoice in Jesus Christ. We ask that that would in turn shape us into the kinds of people that give you honor in the way that we live. We pray in Jesus’ name.