Ephesians - Lesson 13

Verse four, Paul is now going to interject God in his argument to these Gentile Christians. And so remember in 2, 1 to 3, it is dead in trespasses and sins. Jews and Gentiles together were children of wrath.

And then something happens in verse four. And what happens is God. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us.

Verse five. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved.

So I'll walk through verse four, piece by piece here. And just want to emphasize for a moment, Paul's remarks about about God. So the reason why the.

Ephesians and the reason why Paul reason why Jews and Gentiles have hope is because God intervenes in Christ. So that God notice, he says that God, who is rich in mercy, is the one who intervened. So think about God's mercy here.

God to be a merciful God means that he shows compassion. I think a great example of many examples in the Bible where God shows compassion or mercy is in the story of Israel. God delivers Israel out of Egyptian slavery because he is a merciful and kind, compassionate and loving God.

And as Israel comes out of slavery and God gives them a lot Sinai, he has certain expectations of them. And those expectations were that they would honor him, love him, serve him, identify with him by keeping his commandments. And one of those commandments was that they would worship him and worship him alone.

As you read throughout the rest of the Exodus narrative and you get to Exodus chapter 32, Moses is up on the mountain. And when he's there, Israel commits idolatry. They worship a golden calf and they identify that golden calf as their deliverer, as the one who delivered them out of Egyptian slavery by virtue of asking Aaron to form that calf and to provide for them a means by which they worship their God.

And so God is upset and he wants to bring judgment upon the Israelites. In fact, he wants to wipe them out. And when Moses goes down, he goes back up on the mountain and he basically says, perhaps I can make some kind of atonement for them.

And the Lord threatens Israel with his wrath. And Moses prays and asks God to be merciful, not to pour out his wrath upon them, even though they deserved it because of their idolatry and they broke the covenant, which is symbolized by Moses shattering the tablets of stone. But Moses says, please do not judge them and wipe them off the existence of the world because you made a promise to Abraham.

You made a promise to Isaac and their offspring. So in the course of the intervention or the dialogue between God and Moses, God hears Moses's prayer and he answers it. And before he answers it, however, he says, I will show mercy to whomever I want to show mercy and I will show compassion to whomever I want to show compassion.

But the Lord hears the prayer and he shows mercy and compassion to Israel by choosing not to wipe all of them out. Now, of course, a bit later in their story, God does judge them for their disobedience. But the point is, he doesn't wipe them out holistically and start all over with Moses.

But instead, he shows he's a God who's rich in mercy, compassion, he forgives. We see God's mercy also in Paul's theology in Romans chapters 9 through 11, especially in chapter 9 when Paul talks about the mercy he has shown to those who are saved within Israel and those who are saved amongst those who are Gentiles. He makes this point in Romans chapter 9 regarding God will show mercy to whomever he wants to show mercy and compassion to whomever he wants to show compassion, citing this passage from Exodus in the context of emphasizing that God raised up Pharaoh, Romans chapter 9, God raised up Pharaoh to bring about his judgment.

And God chooses to judge whom he wants to judge and he chooses to show mercy to whomever he wants to show mercy. And he shows that mercy to some Jews, he argues, Romans 9 through 11, and to some Gentiles in Romans 9 through 11. Well, here he says God is rich in mercy and because he is rich in mercy, he made us alive together with Christ.

Verse 4, however, before he talks about making us alive together with Christ, he says God being rich in mercy. Notice that adjective rich or that noun because of that noun rich in mercy, not adjective, but rich in mercy. That is, the noun rich emphasizes here that he is filled with mercy.

He's not lacking any mercy. He's not deplete of mercy. Paul has used this language of God's wealth multiple times before this verse, and he uses it again after this verse to emphasize that God is fully satisfied.

He's fully, comprehensively sovereign over everything, lacks nothing, which is demonstrated by the power he reveals and choosing and predestining us, but also raising Christ from the dead. And it's also true by the fact that he has mercy. He is not poor in mercy.

He is rich in mercy and because of God being rich in mercy. And then notice he says this rich in mercy because of the great love. What do you mean by great love with which he loved us? Isn't God's love great by virtue of God loving us? Well, yes and no.

There is a love that God has for everybody that is the same. That is, that God will give the Christian farmer rain when he needs it and the non-Christian farmer rain when he needs it. He'll give the Christian farmer's son when he needs it and the non-Christian farmer's son when he needs it.

There's a kind of love that God displays that is an equal kind of love for Christians and non-Christians alike, but not this kind of love here. This is a great love. This is a redemptive love, a saving love.

The love which he's talking about here is the love that we have only because we are in the beloved one, Jesus Christ. If you remember back in chapter one, once again, when Paul emphasizes in Christ, we have these spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. If you notice in chapter one, verse seven, he says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the wealth or the riches of God's grace.

So he demonstrates to us here a special kind of love, a particular kind of love, a love that is linked to having our sins forgiven, our righteousness is now linked with Christ's righteousness, our identity is linked with Christ's identity, and he has chosen us in this love to the point that we have redemption. But look at verse six. He says we were chosen or predestined rather in verse five, verse six, for the praise of his glorious grace, which he bestowed upon us, verse six, in the beloved one.

And in verse seven, in that beloved one, we have redemption through his blood. So the great love with which he loved us that he speaks about in chapter two is a love that is linked with our identity with the beloved son. So we have this beloved love, this love that's connected to our redemption in Christ.

But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, chose us in love, but he chose us in Christ in love. Verse five, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, notice he includes himself again, that pronoun we, we were dead in trespasses and sins, God made us alive together with Christ. A couple of things here before I read that next part.

God's love in verse five, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Here he is articulating love in terms of an action. God showed love by acting for us in a positive way, which he shows us in verse five when he says God made us alive together with Christ.

So how do we know? It's a great question that we should ask ourselves. How do we know God loves us? Many ways. One way is because God gave us eternal life in Christ, chose us in Christ, but he made us alive together with Christ.

Life can be very hard, discouraging, disappointing, lots of sorrow. And sometimes Christians can question God's love for them because life circumstances are difficult. But one thing Paul, I think, reminds us here is that God's love might not change our circumstances in life, but what it does do is it breaks into those realities and it manifests itself by giving us life with God in Christ.

That's what he says, because of his love, his mercy, he made us alive together with Christ. Saints, remember this, that you are beloved by God in Christ, regardless of how hard life may be. Life is hard.

And I pray that life would not be hard for anyone. But when life gets hard, we have to remind ourselves that God's love has not decreased because it's linked not to our circumstances, it's linked to God's work in us in Christ. So even when we're dead, he made us alive, notice this part, together with Christ.

That's a powerful statement here, making us alive together with Christ. This is a statement that comes right out of the Hebrew Scriptures, I think. If you think with me from, or in rather, the Old Testament, for example, you have to go to Ezekiel 36, for example, Ezekiel chapters 36 and 37.

You have this scene in the context of Ezekiel, where Israel, remember the context, has suffered exile because of her sin. And through the prophet Ezekiel, Yahweh is promising that there's coming a moment when he is going to rescue Israel from her sin. Of course, there's going to be a deliverance from exile and a return to the land.

But if you read Ezekiel chapter 36 and begin in verse 22, you'll see that what Ezekiel is pointing to and promising is not simply a restoration of the land, but it's something that takes place within the human heart. So Ezekiel 36, I'll read the passage here and I'll summarize chapter 37. But in chapter 36, verse 22, Ezekiel says, or the Lord says to Ezekiel, Therefore say to the house of Israel, and remember, northern tribe, southern tribe, northern tribe, Israel, southern tribe, Judah, say to the house of Israel, both of these tribes gone into exile.

Thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, or not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act for the sake of my holy name. So the Lord says, I'm going to do something here. He sees Israel's situation.

Their situation of exile is because they did not follow his law. They did not honor what he wanted them to honor. They have been disobedient.

And the Lord raised up Gentile nations to judge them. And the Lord is telling them as he anticipated in Moses that he must do something within them. Moses says this very thing in Deuteronomy 30, for example, the Lord must circumcise the heart.

And Ezekiel says here, this is what the Lord is going to do. I'm going to act for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them.

And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord. The Lord God went through you. I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

I will take you, verse 24, from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. So there's the promise of restoration. But listen to this next part.

Verse 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all of your uncleanness and from all of your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you. Here it is, verse 26, a new heart.

Ah, that's something different beyond simply restoration of the land. Restoration of the land is something that takes place outside the heart. Walls will be rebuilt, for example.

The temple will be rebuilt. But he's talking about an inward transformation here where he's going to work, give you a new heart. And hear this, and a new spirit I will put within you.

That's that's the Holy Spirit. Why? It comes from God. So he's giving them a promise that is linked, I think, to the messianic age.

I think Isaiah supports this because Isaiah talks about when the Messiah comes, Isaiah 11, that the Spirit is going to come with him. And the Spirit, in fact, is upon him. So the Lord is promising here in Ezekiel that moment in history when he will take the initiative and create life within, raise the dead.

And a new spirit I will put within you. And hear this, I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh. And give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you.

And I love this language. ESV translates it this way. And I will cause you to walk in my statutes.

And to be careful to obey my rules. In other words, the Lord must supernaturally intervene in Israel's heart and give it life in order for Israel to do what the Lord demands. Now, I won't read the rest of the passage.

But to illustrate, this is exactly what Ezekiel was saying. You get that famous chapter in Ezekiel 37. This vision he sees, the valley of dry bones.

And the Lord says to Ezekiel in this visionary experience, he wants him to go to this valley and there's some dry bones. And he wants him to prophesy, preach the word of God over these dry bones. And there's going to be life given to those bones.

Flesh will come to those bones. And that those dry bones, that those dead bones will come to life. In other words, he illustrates by means of this vision through symbolic action, the point he's making in Ezekiel 36, that he's going to resurrect Israel from the dead.

And in fact, that's what he says in chapter 37. What you saw happen to these dry bones, I will do for my people, Israel. So a similar point made, I think, in Jeremiah 31 and the following, when the prophet Jeremiah, again, in an exilic context, makes the promise that the Lord is going to put his law within the hearts of his people, make a new covenant with them.

You also see this kind of language in extra biblical literature. So there are many Jewish texts that are outside the Bible that help us understand how Jews were thinking about some of these things in the period known as the Second Temple period. And there's a collection of Jewish texts called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And the Dead Sea Scrolls are scrolls that are attributed to a group of sectarian Jews off in the desert who broke away from Judaism back in Jerusalem and saw themselves as the true Israel breaking away from those Jews who were dishonoring God and going on to the desert. And there's one particular Dead Sea Scroll. It's called 1QH.

That's the name that scholars give to this scroll to identify this particular scroll. And this scroll was written around probably around the second century B.C. And it has within it hymns and thanksgiving, so on and so forth. But in the scroll, you also have language that sounds similar to Ezekiel and Jeremiah, where the hymnist in the scroll is praising God for his mercy and asking God to work in the hearts of his people, to strengthen them, to strengthen their hearts, to keep his servant from sinning against him and from stumbling over all the words of God's will.

So my point in mentioning these different texts is there is this expectation, this prophetic expectation in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that the Lord is going to do something within the hearts of his people, Israel, to resurrect them from the dead. And then there's this expectation amongst these Jews in the Second Temple period that they need the Lord to do this work. In their perspective, in the second century B.C., he had not yet done that work.

And he promised to do that work, and they're praying for God to do that work. Well, Paul tells us here in Ephesians 2, verse 5, that God did that work and does that work by making us alive, by resurrecting us together with Jesus Christ. It's a powerful statement here because it reminds us that God has fulfilled his redemptive promises to Ezekiel, for Israel, and Judah, and to Jeremiah, and he's fulfilled those promises that these Jews are awaiting in the Two Temple period in Jesus Christ.

This verb that he uses, he made us alive, is a verb that occurs in other places in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in order to emphasize giving someone life. And notice it here, it's linked to spiritual resurrection, or it refers to spiritual resurrection because it's linked with Jesus Christ who was physically resurrected from the dead. So notice he says he made us alive together with Christ.

This takes us back to chapter 1, verses 15 through 23, where Paul says he's displayed his power in us who believe, and it's the same power he displayed when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead. So even though we are living on the earth right now as followers of Christ, because we are united to Christ by faith, we share in the same state as Christ. That is, he is resurrected from the dead, and we too have been resurrected from the dead spiritually, and we are awaiting our physical resurrection.

But here's the point that relates to the previous lecture, that the fact that Christ has triumphed over all the anti-God powers, and God has triumphed over all the anti-God powers, guarantees that we too have triumphed over all the anti-God powers because God broke in by means of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, and he raised us from enslavement, from death in our trespasses and sins. He gave us spiritual life. We are now raised with Christ.

We are alive. We are experiencing right now on earth resurrection power. Oh, yes, we still have a resurrection that's yet to come.

Even as I speak right now, I feel like I'm still in a fallen world. My knees hurt. My back aches.

We have to eat. We have to sleep. We get older.

In my case, I lose my hair. All of these things reflect the fact that we don't have a resurrected body, but the resurrection is broken in when God made us alive. He resurrected us.

These prophetic promises in the Jewish scriptures have been realized in Jesus Christ. The messianic age has dawned. We have been set free from sin's power.

We have been emancipated from enslavement to sin because we're resurrected right now with Christ by God who did it. God caused us to be born again, to quote Peter here, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, notice verse four or five, rather, Paul doesn't link this resurrection to the law of Moses.

Remember, disobeying the law of Moses took Israel and Judah into exile. Obeying the law of Moses would not deliver them out of exile because they did not have a transformed heart so that they would obey to the degree that God demanded so that they would come out of exile. They come out of exile in the Old Testament era because God was faithful to his promises and he gave a promise to Abraham and to David.

He's going to fulfill those promises. And so God worked. He heard the prayers of his people as they cried out in Exodus.

And he heard the prayers of his people as they cried out and he worked and he used people to be means by which to bring them out of exile into their land once again. But he didn't do it by means of their Torah observance. Of course, Ezra tells the people you must obey the law when they come out of exile.

But he doesn't promise them that they will obey it to the degree that the Lord demands. He just says you must obey in order to avoid this situation again. But Yahweh promises in Ezekiel that God himself must work in them in order to grant the life that they need and the ability that they need in order to obey his commands.

And Paul is saying here that the indwelling presence of the spirit that Ezekiel promised is realized not by Torah, but by the means of God making us alive. Notice he includes himself. Notice the pronoun again.

Us together with Christ. That we're for Christ there. It's Messiah.

Now, this last clause in verse five is parenthetical. It's a parenthetical statement. He returns to it in a moment.

But notice he says, by grace, you have been saved. Now, I'll return back to explain what that means in a moment. But just notice he says in verse six, after he says he made us alive together with Christ, he says, and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

OK, so in my view, I do not think how I read the text. I do not think Paul is saying, OK, God did these three things. Number one, he made us alive.

Number two, he raised us up. Number three, he seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. These three statements refer to the same event.

These three statements refer to the fact that God gave us resurrection life. In the Bible, when you have things repeated. They are repeated for emphasis, like when the angels say, for example, in Isaiah six, holy, holy, holy, that's emphatic.

When Jesus says things like I am the bread of life, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the light of the world, these I am statements that is emphatic. When Paul says because of the great love with which he loved us, that is emphatic. He's emphasizing God's love here.

He's emphasizing that we've been raised to life. He really says it four times. God made us alive together with Christ or three times.

God made us alive together with Christ. He raised us up with Christ. He seated us with him in the heavenly places.

We share in the same resurrection experience as Jesus. Already, not yet, however. Jesus has already been physically resurrected.

It's very important that we understand this. There is an old scholarly tradition that argued that Jesus was resurrected in the hearts and memories of the early Christian community, but that he is still dead. That's a dead thesis that should not be believed.

Jesus physically got up on Sunday morning, woke up on Sunday morning. God physically raised a dead man from the dead. We, on the other hand, have been resurrected spiritually from it.

It is that our hearts have been transformed. Our hearts have been given the spirit that there's life in us that we love God. We are we're saved.

We've believed the gospel and we've been sealed by the spirit and we are awaiting. We are awaiting the hope of our future bodily resurrection when Jesus returns. But here is an important point that Paul makes about our current state.

It is as good as done. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We are right now.

Here's the good news. We are right now as we live within this present evil age, as we live within this age ruled by the devil and the anti-God powers, we are reigning over the devil, over the anti-God powers as we are as we are citizens within the kingdom of God and the heavenly places where God reigns, triumphing over the anti-God powers, ruling over them in Christ, even as the present evil age is striving toward its eschatological destruction and yet fighting till its death to continue to triumph. We have hyper abundantly triumphed over the present evil age as we reign over it in Christ in the heavenly places.

Why? Because God raised us from the dead. This is why then Paul would say, seated us with him in the heavenly places. Again, those heavenly places is the realm where God and Christ are reigning over everything.

Over all powers and rulers and authorities, over all anti-God powers, and we're reigning with them in Christ Jesus. And then verse 7, God did this. He made us alive together with Christ.

He did this. Here's the purpose. And he raised us, seated us, so that, verse 17.

I think the so that connects with these three statements about God raising us from the dead. So that, verse 7, in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So again, there's another statement about God's wealth.

I hope we know practically that we serve a God who is rich with grace. That he never runs out of grace. He never runs out of mercy.

Notice specifically here, though, verse 7, that he says that God did this so that in the coming ages, he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace. What are the coming ages? Well, I think it at the very least, they refer to ages which are not yet here. So one thing, one reason I keep mentioning the already not yet is because we the the resurrection that we have in Jesus is already here, but not yet fully realized that we have been raised from death to life because the Spirit lives in us and we believe the gospel.

But we have not yet fully been resurrected because we still are awaiting our resurrection body. So it's an already not yet reality. And the already not yet reality is part of the inauguration of this new age in Christ.

The new age is the Messianic age. When Jesus was conceived and entered into this present evil age, the Messianic age began and it began to triumph over, especially through the cross and the resurrection, over the present evil age. So the coming ages are the ages, I think, that are yet to come when Jesus returns and sets up the kingdom of God on earth that has already begun to be inaugurated right now in part via his installation and resurrection as the king sitting at God's right hand.

And the coming ages are at odds with the present evil age. The Messianic age is already here, but it coexists with and triumphs over the present evil age. The coming ages, when they come, they once and for all destroy the present evil age and bring in forever the kingdom of God.

And so guess what happens throughout all eternity? God will display the immeasurable riches of his grace throughout eternity by having a kingdom that consists of Jews and Gentiles who have been rescued from their sin, giving eternal life by Christ Jesus, the Lord. In other words, throughout eternity, God will be displaying his rich grace upon and through those who are in Christ forever, going back to chapter one, for the praise of his glory.