Main idea: Two elements of God’s amazing grace that move us to glorify and obey God as the treasure of our souls:
The Person of Grace
The Provision of Grace
Automated Transcription
0:21 Good morning, Faith Bible Church. So good to be with you this morning. My name's Joe Grewe, together with my wife Hannah, and our three children, Pearl, Lena, and Joey, we're serving the Lord in Madrid, Spain. Involved in planting a church there, and also doing seminary training in León, in the north of Spain, please stand for the reading of God's word. We'll be reading from Ephesians two and looking at Ephesians two verses four and five this morning. But I want you to read along with me as we read Ephesians two verses one through nine. Ephesians two one says, "And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all formerly lived in the lusts of in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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 ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you this morning for Faith Bible Church, I thank you for your clear work in this body. How your hand has providentially led and guided this church throughout decades. How you have used your word to bring maturity. How you have used your word over and over again to save lost sinners. Thank you for the elders. Thank you for all those who are serving so faithfully in this church. And I pray that you would bless the church, cause each and every member to grow in likeness to Christ and conformity to Christ. I pray that this church would be used mightily by you to continue proclaiming the gospel throughout the world, and especially even just right here where we're at in Spokane. Thank you for your work in Faith Bible Church. We ask this morning as we draw near to your word, as we look at the sacred text, that you would please open our hearts, open our minds to understand your word to receive your truth. Help us to comprehend your incredible, amazing grace towards sinners like us, and how it is that we have been saved. Pray that you would, by your grace, do the work in the hearts of many to draw them to you, to save them, and give them life that they don't have, even in this morning. Thank you, and pray for your Spirit to be at work amongst us in Jesus' name, Amen. You may be seated. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Those are the opening words of what many consider to be the most popular hymn in the English language in the English-speaking church during the last 300 years. It's been sung by millions in churches. It's been translated into many languages. We sang it recently in our church in Madrid. It's been used in movies and sung by presidents, and to this day can even be found referenced in pop culture. And this hymn was, of course, written by John Newton in 1772, and is, in some sense, it's an autobiography of this man. Newton was raised for six years by godly Christian, godly Christian mother before she died and went to be with the Lord and left him to be raised by his irreligious sea captain father, who before he was 11 years old had employed Newton on one of his merchant ships. Newton grew up in the hard life of a sailor with all the profanity and godlessness and immorality that that entailed, and soon he became a hardened atheist. and And really, by his own admission, he was an immoral and debauched man.
5:16 In his own words, in that song, he was a wretch, and he lived really a wretched life. Before his 21st birthday, he had been conscripted into the navy. He had later deserted his post and was flogged horribly and shamed publicly. And shortly after, he was given to a merchant on the coast of Africa and lived in chains, really, as a slave scavenging for roots to eat. By divine providence, he was freed from that slavery and even rescued from a violent storm as he was returning to England after he cried out to God for mercy. But but even within a short time, he he showed his depravity once again, himself becoming the first mate and later the captain of a slave ship, participating in all the horrors and abuse of that practice that was so were so common in those days. John Newton truly was a wretched man, and the question we have before us this morning is how is it possible that a depraved and hardened sinner who had turned his back on God and rebelled against God and lived as God's enemy? How could a man so wretched as John Newton be saved and transformed into a godly pastor and shepherd who would later write the most famous hymn we sing today, but even more to the point, how is it possible for anyone to be saved? Because last week Jared reminded you and I that we are no different than John Newton. We we are those wretched sinners described in Ephesians two verses one through three, we may not participate in the same sins, but we are equally spiritually dead in transgressions, following the prince of the air, following Satan, carrying out our own desires, fulfilling all of our lusts, and all of this is not a product of our upbringing, our environment, and what happens around us-we are by nature children of wrath, guilty by the sin of Adam, but also guilty from our own rebellion against a good and holy and perfect God who has given us His good and holy and perfect commandments. And the shocking reality that Jared proclaimed from verses one through three of Ephesians two is that in our spiritually dead state, we are unable to please God, because when Paul declares that we, that mankind as a whole, is spiritually dead in transgressions and sin, he is reminding us of our inability to please God, in Romans eight verses seven through eight, Paul declares that outside of Christ, man cannot subject himself to the law of God. And verse eight says, "Those who are in the flesh are not able to please God. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "Even your most righteous deeds are as filthy rags before God, and all of your good works and trying to live a moral life cannot atone for your sin and cannot change your nature. And that may be the greatest implication of this declaration that we are spiritually dead in transgressions and sins. It's that we ourselves cannot change our spiritual state, just as a corpse cannot bring itself back to life. Just as Lazarus couldn't call himself back to life from the dead, neither can we give ourselves new spiritual life. You see, the Scripture doesn't describe mankind out of Christ as a man drowning in the ocean, that just needs God to throw him a life preserver, so that he could reach out and grab it and take a hold of it and be saved. The scriptures describe man in his sin as a corpse dead and rotting on the bottom of the ocean, unable to do anything to give himself life and save himself. This is the truth of Scripture. This is God's description of all mankind outside of Christ. And when we truly understand and believe that truth, the question is not how could a man like Newton be saved. The question is how can a person like me be saved? And the answer is by amazing grace. Amazing grace, the amazing grace communicated in the first two words of our text in verse four this morning. It's the words, "But God, but God." Words speak of divine intervention. That what is needed to bring dead sinners to spiritual life is nothing less than the work of God giving us that new spiritual life. It requires that He do what you could never do.
10:15 That He gift to you what you could never earn, and that is what grace is, isn't it? It's unmerited favor. It's undeserved benefit. It's God gifting to helpless sinners what they couldn't earn. God giving spiritual life to men and women like you and I who are dead in our spiritually, and that's precisely the grace of God that's proclaimed in our passage this morning, and as John Newton wrote, the grace of God in saving sinners-it is truly amazing. But but at the same time, it's not designed to be viewed from afar like animals in a zoo. It is designed to be enjoyed and tasted and savored and treasured, and in particular, it is designed so that as sinners like us understand God's grace in saving us more and more, we would be moved to praise Him for that grace more and more. That the purpose of grace is praise, and as Paul says in Ephesians one, it is all to the praise of His glorious grace. And so, this morning, if you would grow in your ability and your capacity to glorify and praise our good God, then this morning it's vital that we we seek to scratch the surface of the riches and treasures of God's grace to sinners like us, and that is precisely what we'll do as we study Ephesians two verses four through five. Look again at Ephesians two verse four. It says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved. In this text, Paul is going to proclaim two elements of God's amazing grace that cause us to glorify and obey Him as the treasure of our soul, two elements of God's amazing grace that cause us to glorify and obey Him, and we see in the text the person of that grace in verse four, and second the provision of grace in verse five. First, the person of grace, the person of grace. If, like me, you have recently attended a birthday party for a child, then you know what a big deal the presents are. The games are great, the ice cream and cake are great, but there is great expectation and anticipation for that moment when it's announced that it's time to open presents, and it's probable that in that moment you've experienced firsthand our tendency as human beings to focus on the gift. We we tend to focus on what is given instead of who is giving it, and that's evident even after the party. When the common question is, "What did you get for your birthday? We tend not to ask who gave you that gift. What is the person like who gave you such a wonderful gift? The same is true of us in our salvation. It's easy for us to focus on what we receive. Every spiritual blessing in Christ, God has chosen us. He's adopted us as sons. He's forgiven our sins in Christ. He's given us future-a future hope that is guaranteed. We love to speak of these blessings of what we've received of the gifts, but so often we are not focused on the giver of those gifts. But in verse four, even before Paul proclaims the gift of grace that God gives in salvation, he directs our attention to the giver of that grace, he doesn't say here you were dead in your transgressions and sins, but you were saved and you got this. He says you were dead in your transgressions and sins, but God. Paul here reminds us that salvation starts with God. These glorious words, but God, present the contrast between man's total spiritual inability and God's divine intervention. These words remind us that when we were spiritual cadavers, unable to do anything on our own to make us right with God, God was the one who acted. And in verse five, Paul will explain that action. Of God, but but here even before that, Paul reminds us that this salvation doesn't start with God's action; it starts with His character. As Paul explains how sinners like you and I are saved by God's grace, He doesn't start with what God does; He starts with who God is. As we look at verse four, we see that God is rich in mercy.
15:29 But God, being rich in mercy, last Sunday we heard about a God who is just, a God who is holy, a God who will righteously punish sinners for their wicked rebellion against His good and perfect commandments, and He will do that in an eternity in the lake of fire. And hearing about this God who is a consuming fire, it should make us fear. It makes us tremble. And if it doesn't, it's that we're blinded by our own arrogance and pride. But if you believe in a God who is only judgment, you do not know the God of the Bible. You do not know the God who has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, because over and over in the Bible, God declares Himself to be a God and reveals Himself to be a God who is rich. This word means abounding above and beyond our comprehension, overflowing with mercy, and we could think of countless examples of God's mercy, starting with Him not immediately destroying Adam and Eve after their sin in the garden. But I want you to open with me to Exodus 34. Exodus 34. This is a familiar yet powerful passage where Moses asks God to show him His glory, and God tells Moses to go up on Sinai, and God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock because no one can see God's face and live. Says the text, but God does promise to allow Moses to see His sum of His glory. God is here going to reveal Himself to Moses. Who is this God who has done these great works and brought us out of Egypt? Moses wants to know who God is. And look at verse five of this text. It says that the Lord, using God's covenant name Yahweh, Yahweh, it says, "Descended in the cloud and stood there with Moses as he called upon the name of Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth. When God reveals Himself to Moses and declares His very self to Moses, what God declares, what God reveals about Himself, is that He is a compassionate and gracious God. Our Lord Jesus affirms this when He describes God the Father to us in Luke chapter six, verse 36. He says that God is kind to evil and ungrateful men, and then he says, "Be merciful. Why? Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Returning to Ephesians two, as Paul declares how spiritually dead sinners like you and I can be saved, he shows us that it is because of who God is. God is rich in mercy, and it may be that you are here this morning and you've heard of God's righteous judgment, and you recognize that you are one of these children of wrath described in verses one through three, and as you look at yourself and you see your own inability to please God, you are despairing in your sins, as I too once did. As you see that you are unable to please God and earn your salvation, and you know you deserve the fires of hell. You need to know this morning that the one true living God is merciful and delights to show mercy to sinners like you and me. Your sins are many, but His mercy is more. And if you come to Him today repentant for your sin, crying out for that mercy, He will be rich in mercy towards you through Jesus Christ. But for those of us whom the Lord has already saved, Paul here reminds us of a truth that should drive us to our knees in humble adoration because. We know that today we are not saved because of anything in us. We are saved because God is rich in mercy. This compels us to fall down and worship Him. But Paul not only moves us to worship by showing us the mercy of God; he compels us to worship by directing our eyes to another cause of God's grace of our salvation, and it's rooted again in the very character of God, and that cause is God's love. Look again at verse four. He says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us once again.
20:42 Before Paul shows us what God does to show grace to sinners, he shows us again who that God is who shows grace to sinners, and that is because of God's and that it is because of God's love that He saved sinners by His grace. Paul describes God's love as a great love, and as people were used to talking about great things-a great vacation, a great ice cream, a great man-but in all of those cases, and really with all finite things, that greatness has a limit, and that's true as well for us when it comes to our love and even our comprehension of what love is. Our love is limited and weak. It's bound by time and space. It's changing and fleeting, but it is not so with God's love toward His people. God's love is perfect and unchanging and immeasurable, and that's the truth. That in some weeks you will see in chapter three of this epistle as Paul prays that God would strengthen the hearts of these believers with God's power through His Spirit in their inner man. Why do they need that power, says, "in order that they may comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. In other words, in order to even begin to get a little bit of comprehensions of the vastness of God's love, you need the Spirit working mightily in you, and the immeasurable nature of God's love-it's really seen in the grammar Paul uses here, saying that it is His great love with which He loved us. This verb is translated in the past tense; the Greek points to a completed action, something that God has already done, something tangible that Paul can point back to in the past to help us begin to measure this immeasurable love of God. And on the one hand, it seems Paul is directing us to the greatest display of God's love towards sinner shown in the giving of His beloved Son. If you want to know how much God loves His people, John 316 helps us measure that love, saying, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, His beloved son. The glorious reality of the gospel is that the God who eternally delights in and enjoys perfect fellowship with His beloved Son sent that beloved Son to the earth to take on flesh and live a perfect life and become the perfect sacrifice for sins, dying in our place, so that we would have forgiveness and be reconciled to Himself. And as Paul uses this grammar, he's pointing us to this reality. It seems that that God gave what is most precious to Him, His beloved Son, in order that sinners may be saved and reconciled to Himself, He's pointing our eyes toward the definitive definition and demonstration of God's love. That in Romans five He describes, saying that God demonstrates His own love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. If you want evidence of God's great love for His people, you need look no further than the cross. But even as Paul declares this love that God has demonstrated in the past, we need to remember that God's love for his elect didn't start at the cross. It didn't even start in the incarnation of Christ when God sent His Son into the world to redeem His elect. On the contrary, Paul has already declared to us in chapter one, verses four and five, that even before the foundation of the world, God sovereignly. Chose his elect and placed his covenant love on us in love, predestining us for adoption of as sons even before time began. And verse five says he chose us and predestined us according to the good pleasure of his will. In other words, if you are saved today, it's not because of anything in you. It's not because God looked down through the corridors of time and saw that in the future you would believe in Him and receive Him. It's not because God knew all the good works that you would do. What He saw in you are the realities described in verses one through three of this text? You were dead. You were a spiritually rotting corpse with nothing beautiful or desirable about you. If you're saved today, it's not because of anything in you.
25:55 It is because in eternity past, it was the Father's good pleasure, His will, His delight to place His everlasting and unchangeable love upon you, and in love He chose you and predestined you for adoption, and in time He worked about your salvation, adopting you and bringing you to Himself by Jesus Christ, what Paul wants us to see in this passage is that spiritually dead sinners are saved not because of who you are, but because of who God is. If you are saved today, it's because God is rich in mercy and has poured out His eternal love upon you in Christ. That is good news for our hearts today. As Christians, how often we forget this truth. How often we think our salvation starts with us, and that even now our standing before God is based on our performance and how well we're doing at obeying Him, but but this result of this spiritual amnesia is devastating. When we forget the character of the God who gives grace, then instead of resting on His grace and enjoying and rejoicing in His grace and glorifying Him for His grace, we pick up the heavy weights of legalism and strive to earn the grace that God has already given us as a gift, and that is nothing less than rank spiritual pride, thinking that we can earn what only God can give, seeking to receive the glory that belongs only to Him. But Paul provides us with the remedy for this pride as he points us to the person of this grace, and he reminds us that today we are saved because of who God is. We were spiritually dead sinners, but God is rich in mercy. We were His enemies, but God placed His covenant love upon us before the foundation of the world, before we could do anything to please Him. And as we contemplate the person of grace that Paul places before our eyes here in verse four, our pride will be replaced with grateful praise and adoration, and it will move us to give Him the glory that He and only He deserves through the praise of His glorious grace. But there's a second reality of God's amazing grace that causes us to glorify and obey God as the treasure of our souls. Here in the text, in verse four, we saw the person of grace. But in verse five, Paul is going to show us the provision of grace. Look at verse five. It says, "Even when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved. Paul here points us to the provision of grace. This is the second element we see in the text: the provision of grace, because God is rich in mercy, and because of His great love, He graciously provides and gives what is absolutely necessary for our salvation, and this is this provision is really so glorious because we are sinners and we have great need. And even before telling us what God is going to provide by His great grace, Paul reminds us once again of our great needs, saying in verse five, even when we were dead in our transgressions. As we read that, you may be thinking, "Here goes Paul again. He's talking about our dead spiritual condition. We saw it last week. We started with it today. I think we get the point. But but we need to ask ourselves. Why does Paul interrupt his glorious explanation of God's grace in order to tell us once again our spiritually dead condition before God? The answer is because until you truly understand and believe the Scriptures' teaching about your true spiritual state before Christ. Until you believe and understand that, you will never understand or marvel at the grace of God and give Him the praise that He is due. When you do not believe the Bible's teaching regarding your total inability to please God, and you think that you are saved in any way by your own doing, by your works, by your response, even by your faith, as if that faith came from you. Then inevitably, at the same time, you seek to take some of the responsibility, some of the credit, some of the glory for your salvation when it all belongs to Him.
30:59 So Paul here is seeking to destroy all of your spiritual pride and self-sufficiency by reminding you of your spiritual condition when God saved you, so that you would recognize that it all comes from Him. Like a black and white contrast, he places side by side our helpless spiritual condition and God's gracious provision, He reminds you that you were not working and obeying and believing, and and so God decided to save you. You were dead, a spiritual cadaver, unable to please God, unable to seek God, unable to believe in God. But God says, Paul, even when you were in that spiritual state, dead. But God made us alive together with Christ. If you are saved today, it is because God has acted, because God has provided, because God has made you alive. And again, it's important for us to pay close attention to the words Paul uses as he explains what God does to save us, because Paul is not describing something here that is dependent on you. He doesn't say that God offered us life as if it was something that required our action, that we reach out and take hold of it in order to receive us. Receive it again. That is the common misconception, often communicated when someone describes salvation as a person drowning that only needs a little help, a life preserver from God, and all that person has to do is reach out and take a hold of it. But but that's not what Paul describes here. There's no human action in the verb that Paul uses in this text, we are spiritually dead, but Paul says God makes us alive; He works life in you. But some will say, "Don't don't I have to believe in order to be saved? Doesn't Paul say in verse eight that is by grace you have been saved through faith? And the answer is yes. You must believe. Yes, faith is the channel by which we receive salvation. But Paul seeks to show us here what he seeks to show us here is that that faith is only possible because God first made you alive so that you could believe, because just as the physically dead can't do even the most basic actions like breathe, so too spiritually dead sinners are unable to do even the most basic actions like believe in Christ. The spiritually dead don't reach out to God; they don't seek for God. Romans 311 says, "There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. And again, Romans eight seven, Paul reminds us that the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God. It cannot subject itself to God's law; those who are in the flesh, it says, cannot please God. Sinners dead in their sin cannot please God. They are not able to please God, even by a simple action like believing in Christ. And in John six, our Lord Jesus declares that same truth of our inability to believe apart from God's prior work, saying that no one comes to Him, and in the context that means no one believes in Him with true saving faith. He says no one comes to Him, no one believes in Him unless the Father draws Him, and in a succinct way, Paul teaches us that same truth in our text because he doesn't say in verse five that when you were dead you believed and were made alive. He says when you were dead God made you alive. When we first moved to Spain, we made the move with 12 suit. Cases and that meant we had to buy furniture once we arrived, and that meant a lot of trips to IKEA and a lot of putting together IKEA dressers and bed, and that taught me a very important lesson. I learned the importance of getting the steps in order, because if you think you see a shortcut and you can start with step five instead of step one, you'll end up building something, but that something won't be a Nike addresser. The same is true in the salvation that God reveals in Scripture. Due to our pride and limited perspective, we tend to think that step one of our salvation is us believing, but but when we get the steps out of order, we end up with a salvation that is dependent upon man, man's choice, man's doing.
35:55 But but it is some type of salvation that is not biblical salvation because when we carefully read the scriptures, we see that biblical salvation starts with God. It is Him. It is from His character. It is He who is rich in mercy and great in love. It starts in eternity past when He chose us and placed His love on us. And Paul shows us here that the next step in the process is not our reaching out to take hold of God by faith, but God making us alive in Christ. If you are a Christian today, you don't have spiritual life because you first believed. You believed because while you were dead, God made you alive so that you could believe. And by saying here, God made us alive, Paul is referring to nothing less than the doctrine of regeneration. That's the theological term that's used to speak of the new birth that is absolutely necessary for salvation, and without which no one will be saved. And as he brings up this concept of regeneration, he he does it in order to highlight again that that if sinners are saved, it is only because God acts by His grace to bring them to life. Our Lord Jesus proclaimed this regeneration to Nicodemus in John three, when he says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. And in verse five, he says that unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. This is a reference to Ezekiel 36 and the promise of the new covenant, where God promised to cleanse His people from their impurity, as with water, and that, and it's a reference to Him promising that in a spiritual heart transplant, He would take out of them their sinful flesh, their heart of stone, and He would put into them a new heart capable of obeying Him, and that He would put His Spirit within them. Speaks of new spiritual life, and in John three six, Jesus explains to Nicodemus why the new birth by the Spirit is so essential for salvation. When He says that that which is born of the flesh is flesh. In other words, just as what comes from pears are pear trees are pears, and what comes from dogs are puppies, what comes from your sinful flesh, what man's sinful nature can engender, what it can produce in all the senses of the world word is nothing more than more sinful flesh. Man, man in his natural state cannot produce spiritual life. You being dead in your sin cannot bring yourself to life spiritually. You cannot change your nature. You can only produce more spiritual deadness, and that is why God must act for us to have spiritual new life. That is why you must be born again by the Holy Spirit, because as Jesus continues saying, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Would you have new spiritual life without which you will not enter the kingdom of God today? Then it must be by the sovereign work of the Spirit in your life, giving you that new spiritual life. There may be some here among us this morning who are seeking salvation. You are seeking this spiritual life, but you're seeking to do it by your own means, by your obedience, by being a good person, by attending. Church and trying to make up in some way for all of your sin, all your good efforts, all your tears, all your penitence-all that it can produce in the sinful flesh is just more sinful fleshliness. It cannot bring about spiritual life that is absolutely necessary for your salvation, as a leopard can't change its spots, you cannot change your nature by yourself and make yourself alive. God must act. You must be born again by the Spirit. You see, being a Christian-I don't know where you're at today-but being a Christian is not simply about reforming your life or taking on some conservative viewpoints and values. It's not about social work in your community. It's about becoming a new creation, something that you weren't, and being transformed into something new. It's about God raising you from spiritual death and filling you with new spiritual life. And Paul is giving it to you straight here.
41:11 It is God and only God who can do this. He doesn't do it because of anything in you, anything you are, or anything that you can do, but because in His sovereign will He is rich in mercy, He delights to place His eternal love on spiritually dead people like you and me, and make us alive. Paul says in verse five, look again at the text. He made us alive together with Christ. In the text, the English words "made us alive together with" are all one word in the Greek, and it's a word that isn't found anywhere else in Greek literature. Which means that Paul probably invented it in order to communicate the inseparability of our being made alive and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, He wants us to know that our being made alive does not occur apart from Christ. There is no salvation, no new life apart from Christ. It is only through Christ. It is only through union with Christ that God saves sinners, and we could spend our whole morning this morning speaking of this glorious reality of the believer's union with Christ. But in the coming verses, Paul is going to explain what that means, and you will see it with more depth. But what Paul wants us to know here is the gospel message that it is through Jesus Christ, through through His incarnation, through His death on the cross, through His resurrection from the dead, that dead sinners like us are raised to new life, it is together with Christ in His resurrection that we are raised. But in emphasizing our union with Christ, the fact that we are made alive together with Christ, Paul seeks to once again remind us that this new life is the sovereign, powerful work of God, because only a few verses beforehand in chapter one, verses 19 and 20, Paul declared to us the great power of God that was at work in Christ when He raised Christ from the dead, and by declaring here that God made us alive together with Christ. He's showing us. He's reminding us that the same power that was at work in Christ to raise him from the dead and place him over all things-that same power is the power that is at work. That had to be at work in us in order to raise us together with Christ to new life. In other words, if you are spiritually alive today, it is not by your power, but by the power of God working in you. It is not by your works, but by the powerful sovereign work of God. He has done it, and this just shows us that as we approach this text from every angle, and we see the different facets of it, we see the inescapable truth that Paul wants us to see in the text, and it is that God is the one who works salvation. It is His provision. It is His power at work to give life to helpless sinners, and if you are saved today, it is not your own doing; it is because God has powerfully acted to make you alive. This overwhelming reality leads Paul to the. Inescapable conclusion he proclaims at the end of verse five. Look again at the text. He says, "By grace you have been saved. That's the only conclusion possible. Be because if you are saved not because of who you are, but because God is rich in mercy. If you're saved not because you chose God, but because before the foundation of the world, before you could do anything to please Him, God chose you and placed His eternal love on you. And if you are saved because while you were spiritually dead and helpless, God made you alive together with Christ. If all that is true, and it is, and this passage tells us it is, if that is all true, then salvation is all of grace, and it is all of God. And Paul declares the implication of that in verse nine, because if it is all of God and it is all of grace as a gift, then it is not of works, so that no man may boast. You see, God has designed His salvation to crush the pride of man. God's grace in giving salvation as a gift leaves no room for your self righteousness and self effort and self sufficiency.
46:32 You cannot earn what God gives freely as a gift. It's all from Him. And dear brothers and sisters, that is why He and only He is worthy of all the glory. God's grace not only crushes our pride; it produces praise. God has designed the gospel, His salvation, making Himself the sole source of life, the sole source of salvation, and therefore the sole object of our eternal adoration, as Paul says in chapter one, we've received all spiritual blessings in Christ from eternity past to eternity future, and it is all to the praise of His glorious grace as He gives to us what we can never get on our own, dear brothers and sisters. I want to ask you this morning if your life is marked by praise to the glorious grace Of God, are you daily recalling your desperate need? Do you remember today, even as you sinned this morning, getting ready? Do you remember your spiritual condition before Christ? Do you recall the merciful and loving character of God that is the cause of your salvation. Do you rejoice in that God? Are you daily reveling that while you were spiritually dead, together with Christ, God made you alive through the costly sacrifice of His Son and through His resurrection? I want to ask you: Are you today rejoicing in this glorious, amazing grace, we're so quick to forget these truths, and so we're so quick to live for ourselves and for our own glory. We're so quick to pick up the heavy load of legalism and trying to earn what God has freely given, but but that's why believer today you must commit to daily memorizing and meditating on these truths of the grace of God. The Scripture says that the grace of God strengthens our hearts; that the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness, to renounce worldly lusts and to live in this world upright and godly lives. God's grace has a transforming impact on us, and God's grace moves us to worship. And as we grow in our understanding of this grace by daily meditating on it, and as we glorify Him for this grace, we will also want others to know more of this amazing grace, so that they too will spend eternity singing of God's amazing grace. That was the case in the life of John Newton. He was powerfully saved and transformed by God's grace, and he spent the rest of his life proclaiming that grace to sinners like you and me. That God, through Jesus Christ, saves sinners that are wretched people like us and gifts them salvation. And and as you too. Meditate on that same amazing grace and are filled with the knowledge of God's amazing grace. You too will be moved to proclaim that amazing grace to others. And as God works through His Word, He will save more and more people, so that through the mouths of more and more saved sinners, it all would be to the praise of His glorious grace for all eternity, and He will get the glory that He is due. If you're here today and you have not received this grace, and you're striving to save yourself or to make yourself acceptable to God by your works, by your self-effort, then I want to implore you this morning to to repent of self righteousness and self effort and cry out to God. Cry out to God like the publican of Luke 18, who wouldn't even lift his eyes to heaven, recognizing his wretched state. He beat his chest and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Recognize, I implore you, your spiritual state before God. That what you need is not for you to be better, but for Him to save you. To confess your sin and plead with Him to give you new life in Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ says the scriptures, and you will be saved. And as you do so this morning, remember that the God of grace is a God who is rich in mercy, a God who delights to show love to sinners like us. Let's pray. God, we're amazed as we think of the work that you have done in our life to save us, bringing us from death to life when we were not seeking you. You sought us when we were rebel enemies.
51:57 You saved us, and you did it through the death of your Son Jesus Christ and His resurrection. We praise you for the Lord Jesus. We praise you for the grace that you have shown us in Him. And I beg you this morning that if someone is here who still has not received that grace, that you would do that work in their hearts, that you would bring them from death to life, and that it would all be to the praise of your glory. I ask too for all of us here who do know you that you would open our eyes more and more to these gospel realities, so that we would stop being focused on ourselves and living for ourselves, but we would live for you and for your glory. That is the purpose of you saving sinners. That you would be glorified, and we ask that you would be glorified in us today. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Joe and his wife Hannah are Global Outreach Partners in Spain, helping with a church plant in Madrid and pastoral training in Partnership with The Master's Seminary.
