Latest / Reformed Thinking / But God: From the Graveyard to Glory (Ephesians 2:1-9)

Transcript

But God: From the Graveyard to Glory (Ephesians 2:1-9) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to reformed thinking. It's good to be here.
• 0:02
  We have a heavy 1 today. I mean, we usually try to keep
• 0:06
  things accessible, and we will, but the stack of sources on the
• 0:10
  desk today is asking us to do some serious theological work.
• 0:15
  It is. We're looking at Ephesians
• 0:17
  chapter 2, specifically verses one through 9.
• 0:20
  Yeah, you could call it the Mount Everest of the New
• 0:22
  Testament. I really don't think that's an
• 0:24
  exaggeration. If you understand these 9
• 0:27
  verses, you understand the core of the Christian message.
• 0:30
  And if you get them wrong. If you get these wrong, well,
• 0:33
  you get the whole thing wrong. It's really that critical.
• 0:35
  No pressure then. No pressure at all, but it
• 0:38
  really is a dividing line. It separates a, you know, man
• 0:40
  centered view of religion from a God centered view of salvation.
• 0:44
  And for this deep dive, we're leaning on 2 commentaries today
• 0:48
  that happened to share a similar title theme, which is
• 0:51
  interesting. We've got excerpts from But God,
• 0:54
  from Death to Life by Grace Alone, and also from But God
• 0:58
  from the Graveyard Glory. Just looking at those titles,
• 1:01
  you get a sense of the the drama we're about to step into.
• 1:05
  It is a drama. It's a tragedy that turns into
• 1:08
  what you might call a comedy. You know, in the classical
• 1:11
  sense, where it has a happy ending.
• 1:13
  But you just can't have that happy ending without first
• 1:17
  wading through the tragedy. You have to start there.
• 1:20
  And that's exactly where I want to start because the sources use
• 1:22
  this analogy right out of the gate that I found really
• 1:25
  arresting. They contrast the way modern
• 1:29
  people, you know, you, me, the person at the coffee shop, view
• 1:33
  our spiritual problem versus how the Bible views it, right?
• 1:36
  They call it the autopsy versus the checkup.
• 1:39
  It's a great image because it just.
• 1:40
  It immediately exposes our hidden assumptions about
• 1:43
  ourselves. Yeah, because if I ask my
• 1:45
  neighbor, hey, what's wrong with the world, what's wrong with
• 1:47
  you, they are not going to say I'm a spiritual corpse.
• 1:49
  No, absolutely not. They'll say I'm stressed out, or
• 1:53
  I have some bad habits I need to kick.
• 1:55
  Or maybe, you know, I had a rough childhood.
• 1:57
  The prevailing worldview today is that humanity is basically
• 2:02
  good, but we're sick. We're wounded.
• 2:05
  Wounded. Dysfunctional.
• 2:07
  In need of therapy? So if I'm sick, what do I need?
• 2:10
  I need a doctor. I need a prescription, maybe a
• 2:13
  life coach or personal trainer. Exactly.
• 2:16
  If the problem is just sickness or weakness, then the solution
• 2:20
  is assistance. You need someone to help you
• 2:23
  help yourself. Right, You need some medicine or
• 2:25
  some education. And this is what the source is
• 2:26
  called, a checkup mentality. We go to church or read self
• 2:30
  help books like we go to a clinic just to get tweaked a
• 2:33
  little. Yeah.
• 2:34
  Get a bit healthier. But the sources argue that when
• 2:37
  the apostle Paul opens Ephesians 2, he is not walking into a
• 2:41
  clinic, No. He is walking into a morgue.
• 2:44
  He isn't holding a stethoscope. He's holding a scalpel for an
• 2:47
  autopsy. An autopsy, Yeah.
• 2:49
  And the diagnosis in verse 1 isn't that we are sick.
• 2:52
  It isn't that we're weak, it's that we are dead.
• 2:55
  And you were dead in the trespasses and sins.
• 2:57
  That's the text. But let me push back on this for
• 3:00
  a second because I think this is where a lot of people just check
• 3:02
  out immediately. The word dead just feels like
• 3:04
  poetry. It feels like an exaggeration.
• 3:07
  I mean, look at me, I'm breathing.
• 3:08
  I drove here. I love my wife.
• 3:09
  I pay my taxes. I am very clearly alive, so when
• 3:13
  Paul says dead, is he just being dramatic for effect?
• 3:16
  That's the instinctive reaction, isn't it?
• 3:18
  We want to soften it. We want to read it as a metaphor
• 3:20
  for, you know, feeling empty inside or lacking purpose.
• 3:24
  But the Greek word Paul uses is necris.
• 3:27
  It is not a poetic word. It's a biological, clinical
• 3:30
  word. It means a corpse.
• 3:33
  It means the absence of all life.
• 3:35
  OK, so how do we reconcile that? How can I be a biological
• 3:38
  Organism, you know, functioning at a high level, and
• 3:41
  simultaneously be a necklace, a corpse?
• 3:43
  You have to make the distinction between biological life and
• 3:46
  spiritual life. Think about it this way.
• 3:48
  Imagine a physical corpse lying in a casket.
• 3:51
  That body still has eyes, It has ears and nose, hands.
• 3:54
  All the equipment is there. But if you walk into the room
• 3:57
  and shout, does he hear you? No.
• 3:59
  If you shine a bright light in its eyes, does it squint?
• 4:02
  If you we have a steak dinner under its nose, does it
• 4:04
  salivate? No, it has 0 sensory perception.
• 4:08
  Precisely. It is totally unresponsive to
• 4:11
  the physical world. Now just take that exact same
• 4:14
  principle and apply it to the spiritual realm.
• 4:16
  Paul is saying that the natural person, the person born of Adam
• 4:21
  without the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, has 0 sensory
• 4:24
  perception of God. So they can't see the glory of
• 4:27
  Christ. Cannot.
• 4:28
  They can't hear the voice of the shepherd.
• 4:30
  They have no taste for holiness, no desire for God.
• 4:32
  They are spiritually unresponsive.
• 4:34
  So it's not that they won't respond, it's that they can't.
• 4:38
  That is the absolute critical distinction.
• 4:41
  A sick man might be able to, with great effort, reach for the
• 4:45
  medicine on the bedside table. A dead man cannot, and this is
• 4:49
  the theological concept we call total depravity.
• 4:52
  Now, total depravity is, I mean, let's be honest, it's a
• 4:55
  marketing problem. It sounds like we're saying
• 4:56
  everyone is as evil as they could possibly be.
• 4:59
  Like every single person is Hitler, right?
• 5:01
  And that's clearly not true. We all know atheists who are
• 5:04
  kind neighbors, who give to charity, who are wonderful
• 5:06
  parents. The doctrine doesn't mean we are
• 5:09
  as bad as we could possibly be. So what does it mean?
• 5:12
  It means the infection of sin is total.
• 5:14
  In its extent, it has touched every single part of our
• 5:17
  operating system, our minds, our wills, our emotions, our
• 5:21
  physical bodies. There is no island of
• 5:24
  righteousness inside of us that was left untouched by the fall.
• 5:28
  This has huge implications for the will, because this is the
• 5:32
  big debate, isn't it? If I'm dead, what does that mean
• 5:35
  for my free will? The sources specifically
• 5:38
  mentioned Pelagianism and Arminianism here.
• 5:42
  Can we break those down without getting too bogged down in the
• 5:44
  academic weeds? Yeah, let's try think of it like
• 5:47
  a drowning swimmer. OK, a drowning swimmer.
• 5:49
  Pelagianism, which was an ancient heresy, but it's very
• 5:52
  much alive today, says the swimmers.
• 5:53
  Actually doing fine. He can swim to shore whenever he
• 5:56
  decides to. He's not really drowning, he's
• 5:58
  just swimming in a dangerous area.
• 6:00
  He is spiritually neutral. That appeals to our pride.
• 6:02
  I can fix this. I've got this.
• 6:04
  Completely. Then you have the more common
• 6:06
  view, which is Arminianism, or what's often called synergism.
• 6:09
  Synergism meaning working together.
• 6:11
  Right, this view says the swimmer is definitely drowning.
• 6:15
  He's going under. He absolutely cannot save
• 6:18
  himself, but God in his grace throws him a life preserver.
• 6:23
  God does 99% of the work. But.
• 6:26
  But the swimmer has to do his 1%.
• 6:28
  He has to reach out and grab the ring.
• 6:30
  So it's a partnership, A cooperation.
• 6:32
  God provides the means, but I have to provide the final
• 6:36
  ascent. I have to make the decision.
• 6:38
  Correct. In that view, the swimmer is
• 6:40
  sick, maybe even dying. But he's not dead yet.
• 6:43
  He still has enough strength, or what they might call prevenient
• 6:46
  grace, to cooperate with the rescue.
• 6:48
  But the reformed view, the view the sources argue is actually in
• 6:51
  the text, says something very different about the swimmer.
• 6:54
  The reformed view says just look at the text.
• 6:57
  You were dead. Dead men don't drown.
• 7:00
  Dead men sink to the bottom. They're on the ocean floor.
• 7:02
  Exactly. You don't throw a life reserver
• 7:04
  to a Corse, it's useless. You'd have to dive down, grab
• 7:07
  them and pull them U yourself. You have to perform a
• 7:09
  resurrection. It is a 100% rescue mission, not
• 7:14
  a partnership. There was no cooperation with a
• 7:16
  corpse. That is offensive.
• 7:18
  I mean, let's just be honest about it.
• 7:20
  It tells me that I contribute absolutely nothing to my own
• 7:22
  salvation. It is the ultimate insult to
• 7:25
  human pride. We definitely want to have a
• 7:27
  little skin in the game. We want to be able to say at the
• 7:30
  end of the day, God did his part and I did my part.
• 7:33
  But Paul just slams the door on that possibility in verse one.
• 7:37
  He also clarifies the the environment of this death.
• 7:40
  He says we were dead in the trespasses and sins.
• 7:43
  Is there a meaningful difference between those two words, or is
• 7:46
  Paul just piling on synonyms for effect?
• 7:49
  It's probably a bit of both. He's being comprehensive.
• 7:51
  He wants to cover all the bases. But the sources do break down
• 7:55
  the Greek here, and it's helpful.
• 7:56
  OK, Trespasses. It is proptumus in.
• 7:59
  It has the idea of slipping or falling or deviating from a
• 8:02
  known path. Imagine a no trespassing sign on
• 8:06
  a property. You see the line, you know you
• 8:08
  shouldn't cross it, and you step over it anyway.
• 8:10
  So that's an active, willful act doing something forbidden.
• 8:14
  Act of rebellion, yes. Sins, on the other hand, is
• 8:17
  Martius. It's actually an old archery
• 8:19
  term. Oh right, missing the mark.
• 8:21
  It means missing the mark. You aim for the bullseye, which
• 8:25
  is God's standard of absolute perfection, and you fail.
• 8:30
  Even if you miss by just an inch, you still miss the mark.
• 8:33
  So 1 is crossing a line you shouldn't cross, and the other
• 8:36
  is failing to reach a standard you should reach.
• 8:39
  Sins Commission and sins of omission.
• 8:41
  Paul covers it all, but notice the little preposition he uses.
• 8:45
  He says we were dead in them. It's atmospheric.
• 8:48
  It is. It's the sphere we lived in, the
• 8:50
  very air we breathed. And the source makes a really
• 8:53
  key point here. We aren't sinners because we
• 8:56
  sin. We sin because we are sinners.
• 8:58
  Unpack that. For me, that sounds like a
• 9:00
  tautology. It sounds like it, but it's not.
• 9:03
  Think of an apple tree. An apple tree doesn't become an
• 9:05
  apple tree because it produces apples.
• 9:07
  No, it produces apples because it is an apple.
• 9:09
  Tree. Exactly.
• 9:10
  It produces fruit according to its nature in the same way we
• 9:13
  produce sinful thoughts, words and deeds.
• 9:16
  Because our nature is sinful from birth, we are born into
• 9:19
  this in state. It's our default setting.
• 9:21
  Which leads us directly into verse 2.
• 9:24
  And this is where the zombie movie analogy really comes back.
• 9:26
  Because Paul says we were dead in which you once walked, so now
• 9:30
  we have walking corpses. The Walking Dead.
• 9:32
  But practically, what does that look like?
• 9:34
  If I'm spiritually dead, how am I walking?
• 9:37
  How am I active? This is the great paradox.
• 9:40
  Spiritual death often looks like intense, frantic activity.
• 9:45
  You can be spiritually dead and be the busiest person in
• 9:47
  Manhattan. You can run a Fortune 500
• 9:49
  company, win a marathon, organize a charity gala, and be
• 9:53
  stone cold dead to God. So The Walking is the activity
• 9:57
  of rebellion. Yes, it is movement, but it's
• 10:00
  movement away from God. It's following a path that leads
• 10:03
  further into the graveyard, not out of it.
• 10:05
  And in verses 2 and 3, Paul identifies 3 powerful forces, 3
• 10:10
  tyrants that drive this deaf March.
• 10:13
  The sources call this the unholy Trinity of captivity.
• 10:16
  A good name for. It the world, the flesh and the
• 10:18
  devil. Let's take them one by one
• 10:20
  because I think people use these terms all the time without
• 10:22
  really knowing what they mean. Sounds good, let's do it.
• 10:24
  OK, the first tyrant, the world, Paul says.
• 10:27
  We were following the course of this world.
• 10:29
  The Greek word for world here isn't ye, which means the
• 10:33
  physical planet Earth, it's cosmos, or more specifically
• 10:37
  here a on the age. It refers to the system of
• 10:40
  values, the culture, the spirit of the times that is organized
• 10:44
  in opposition to God. The sources use a dead fish
• 10:47
  analogy here that I thought was brilliant.
• 10:49
  It is. It's very helpful.
• 10:50
  Picture a river flowing rapidly downstream.
• 10:53
  If you see a fish just floating along moving with the current,
• 10:56
  does that fish have to exert any energy at all?
• 10:59
  None. It just floats.
• 11:00
  It's passive. A dead fish floats downstream.
• 11:03
  It takes no effort. Only a live fish has the power
• 11:05
  to swim upstream against the current.
• 11:08
  The world is that powerful current.
• 11:10
  It is the constant, relentless pressure of culture telling you
• 11:13
  what to love, what to buy, what to fear, what is true and false.
• 11:16
  And that current changes, right? The current in 1950 is very
• 11:19
  different from the current in 2024.
• 11:21
  Completely different. What's considered normal,
• 11:24
  acceptable, even virtuous changes from decade to decade,
• 11:28
  but the pressure to conform is always the same.
• 11:32
  To go with the world requires 0 effort.
• 11:34
  You just have to wake up in the morning and let the news cycle,
• 11:37
  the algorithms and peer pressure carry you along.
• 11:39
  And because we are spiritually dead by nature, we just.
• 11:43
  Drift. You just drift.
• 11:44
  OK, so that's the external pressure.
• 11:46
  Then Paul moves to the supernatural pressure, the
• 11:48
  second tyrant, the devil, the Prince of the power of the air.
• 11:51
  Now, we have to be really careful here.
• 11:53
  Modern sophisticated people tend to caricature Satan.
• 11:56
  We think of a guy in red tights with a pitchfork.
• 11:59
  Or we think of, you know, The Exorcist, heads spinning around
• 12:02
  and green vomit. Right.
• 12:03
  It becomes a horror movie trope, which makes it very easy to
• 12:06
  dismiss as a medieval fantasy. Exactly.
• 12:09
  But Paul describes something much more subtle and much more
• 12:12
  pervasive. He calls him a spirit that is
• 12:15
  now at work in the sons of disobedience, and that word at
• 12:18
  work is the Greek word anorgintos.
• 12:21
  He energizes them. That is a creepy thought.
• 12:24
  It's a terrifying thought. It means that the secular world,
• 12:27
  which prides itself on free thinking and autonomy and
• 12:31
  casting off authority, is actually unknowingly under the
• 12:35
  influence of a dark, evil intelligence.
• 12:38
  People think they are breaking free from the shackles of God,
• 12:41
  but in reality they are peppets on strings.
• 12:43
  The source puts it this way. You are either a servant of
• 12:46
  Christ or a slave of Satan. There is no third option.
• 12:49
  There is no independent contractor in the spiritual
• 12:52
  realm. And that's the hard pill for
• 12:54
  modern people to swallow. We think of ourselves as
• 12:56
  neutral, as free agents. Paul says no, if you are not
• 13:00
  alive in Christ, you are by default drifting with the world
• 13:03
  and being energized and influenced by the enemy.
• 13:05
  OK, so we have the world pushing us from the outside, the devil
• 13:08
  pulling us from the supernatural realm, and then Paul brings it
• 13:10
  home with the third tyrant, the inside job, the flesh.
• 13:14
  The passions of our flesh. Now flesh is another one of
• 13:17
  those church words. Doesn't mean my skin is bad as
• 13:19
  having a physical body somehow sinful.
• 13:21
  No, absolutely not. That was an ancient heresy
• 13:23
  called Gnosticism, which taught that the material world is evil
• 13:28
  and only the spiritual is good. Christianity totally affirms the
• 13:32
  goodness of the body. God made bodies.
• 13:35
  Jesus has a resurrected body. So what is flesh?
• 13:38
  Flesh. In Paul's theology the Greek
• 13:40
  word is sarx refers to the fallen human nature.
• 13:44
  It's that anti God disposition we inherited from Adam.
• 13:47
  It's the internal traitor. And the text says we were
• 13:49
  carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.
• 13:52
  That distinction is huge. We usually associate flesh with
• 13:55
  body sins. You know, lust, gluttony,
• 13:57
  drunkenness, that sort of. Thing the obvious.
• 13:59
  The obvious messy stuff, but Paul is brilliant.
• 14:02
  He includes the desires of the mind.
• 14:04
  What's? The sin of the mind.
• 14:05
  Intellectual pride, self righteousness, cynicism,
• 14:09
  bitterness, or even just rationalizing your behavior.
• 14:12
  Inventing whole philosophies that explain away God and
• 14:15
  justify your own autonomy. So sin isn't just about base
• 14:18
  lusts. Not at all.
• 14:19
  The source points out that some of the most fleshly sins
• 14:22
  happened in a library or a university lecture hall, not
• 14:25
  just in a back alley or a bar. Is the mind setting itself up as
• 14:30
  the final authority in the universe?
• 14:32
  That's the essence of flesh. So the problem isn't just out
• 14:35
  there with the world and the devil, it's in here.
• 14:38
  I am my own biggest problem. You are occupied territory.
• 14:41
  And because of this threefold captivity, this total
• 14:44
  enslavement, Paul drops the hammer at the end of verse 3.
• 14:47
  He says we were by nature children of wrath.
• 14:49
  Whoa, let's just pause there for a minute, Children of Wrath.
• 14:52
  That sounds incredibly harsh. I mean, we're always talking
• 14:55
  about a God of love. Isn't that a contradiction?
• 14:57
  It sounds like God is just angry at humanity by default, which is
• 15:01
  hard for modern years to swallow.
• 15:03
  It is offensive to modern years. You're absolutely right.
• 15:05
  We much prefer a God who is a benevolent grandfather in the
• 15:08
  sky. He might be disappointed in us
• 15:11
  now and then, but he's certainly not angry.
• 15:13
  But the sources argue that you cannot understand the biblical
• 15:16
  God or the cross without understanding wrath.
• 15:20
  So we need to define it properly.
• 15:22
  Is God just losing his temper? Is he flying off the handle?
• 15:26
  No. Human wrath is usually a loss of
• 15:28
  control. It's capricious and often
• 15:30
  unjust. God's wrath is His settled, holy
• 15:35
  judicial opposition to all evil. A judicial opposition.
• 15:38
  Think of it this way. If a human judge presided over a
• 15:41
  case where a man had brutally murdered a child and at the end
• 15:44
  of the trial the judge smiled and said, well, I'm a loving
• 15:46
  person, so you're free to go, would we call that judge?
• 15:49
  Good. No, he'd be corrupt a monster.
• 15:53
  Exactly. His love would be a form of
• 15:55
  evil. For God to be truly good, he
• 15:57
  must hate evil. He must oppose that which
• 15:59
  destroys his creation and insults his glory.
• 16:02
  Wrath is the necessary righteous reaction of holiness to sin.
• 16:06
  If God didn't have wrath, he wouldn't be holy.
• 16:09
  And the text is clear that we are children of wrath by nature.
• 16:12
  By nature, that phrase brings us right back to the factory
• 16:15
  setting. We were born in the state.
• 16:16
  This is the doctrine of original sin.
• 16:17
  We are not born innocent and then accidentally stumble into a
• 16:20
  hole. We were born in the hole under
• 16:22
  this judicial sentence. This is an absolutely
• 16:24
  devastating diagnosis. I mean, if we stop reading at
• 16:27
  the end of verse 3, it's game over.
• 16:29
  It is. We are spiritually dead, we are
• 16:31
  enslaved to three tyrants, and we are under a divine death
• 16:34
  sentence. There is no hope.
• 16:36
  And that is precisely the point. Paul has taken us into the
• 16:39
  deepest, darkest cave imaginable.
• 16:42
  He has systematically stripped away every shred of human hope.
• 16:46
  He is silenced every possible boast.
• 16:48
  You can't save yourself. You can't even want to save
• 16:51
  yourself. And that darkness is necessary.
• 16:53
  It's essential because until you realize you are in a morgue, you
• 16:57
  won't care about a resurrection. Until you feel the crushing
• 17:00
  weight of the bad news, the good news will just sound like nice
• 17:03
  advice. So we're at the bottom of the
• 17:04
  ocean. The pressure is crushing us.
• 17:06
  We're corpses. And then verse 4 begins, and it
• 17:10
  begins with what the famous Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd
• 17:12
  Jones called the 2 greatest words in the entire Bible.
• 17:15
  But God. Hoda theos.
• 17:18
  The great adversative. Talk to me about the grammatical
• 17:20
  shift here. Why do the sources make such a
• 17:22
  massive deal about these two words?
• 17:24
  But God. Because up until this moment in
• 17:27
  the text, who has been the subject of all the verbs?
• 17:30
  You walked, you followed the Prince of the Air works.
• 17:34
  We carry out desires. It has been a story entirely
• 17:37
  about us and our captors. It's a tragedy.
• 17:40
  A Horror Story with no exit. But now the subject of the
• 17:43
  sentence changes. God enters the narrative.
• 17:46
  But God, it signals that the rescue is an intervention from
• 17:50
  completely outside of ourselves. The solution doesn't rise up
• 17:54
  from humanity, it comes down from heaven.
• 17:56
  It's the pivot point of all of history.
• 17:58
  It really is everything, absolutely everything changes on
• 18:01
  that one little conjunction. So why does he do it?
• 18:04
  If we are these rebellious walking corpses who are hostile
• 18:07
  to him, why interrupt the story? Why not just let us float
• 18:10
  downstream into the judgement we deserve?
• 18:12
  That is the ultimate question of the ages, isn't it?
• 18:14
  Why us? And Paul gives the answer
• 18:17
  immediately in the text. It's not because we showed
• 18:19
  potential. It's not because he looked down
• 18:21
  and saw a little spark of goodness in US worth fanning
• 18:24
  into flame. Being rich in mercy.
• 18:26
  That's the motive. And notice the adjective not
• 18:28
  just merciful, rich in mercy, abounding in it.
• 18:31
  What's the difference between just having mercy and being rich
• 18:34
  in it? Well, if you have a little bit
• 18:36
  of mercy, you might help a friend who made a small mistake.
• 18:40
  If you are rich in mercy, you have an endless overflowing
• 18:44
  supply to lavish on your worst enemies.
• 18:47
  Mercy, by definition, is pity shown to those in misery.
• 18:51
  It is God's response specifically to our wretched,
• 18:54
  helpless condition. And, Paul adds, because of the
• 18:57
  great love with which he loved us.
• 18:59
  It's an intense, powerful covenantal love and look at the
• 19:03
  timing of it. This is what blew my mind when I
• 19:05
  was really studying the source material on this.
• 19:07
  When did he love us? 1st 5 says even when we were
• 19:10
  dead in our trespasses. Even when think about human
• 19:13
  romance, we love people because they are in some way lovable,
• 19:18
  because they are beautiful or smart or kind or funny, or
• 19:21
  because they love us back. It's reciprocal.
• 19:23
  There's something attractive there, right?
• 19:25
  But God's love is different. He loved us when we were
• 19:28
  repulsive. He loved us when we were
• 19:30
  spiritual corpses rotting in the grave.
• 19:32
  He didn't stand at the edge of the tomb and say, OK, clean
• 19:34
  yourself up, get your act together and then I'll love you.
• 19:37
  No, he loved us in the grave. That just completely destroys
• 19:42
  the popular idea that God helps those who help themselves.
• 19:45
  That phrase is nowhere in the Bible.
• 19:47
  It's Benjamin Franklin. It's actually the complete
• 19:50
  opposite of the gospel. The gospel is God helps those
• 19:52
  who cannot help themselves. So we have the motive, His own
• 19:57
  mercy and love. Now let's talk about the method.
• 19:59
  How does He actually get us out of the grave?
• 20:02
  This brings us to the core theological mechanic of the
• 20:05
  entire passage, what the outline calls union with Christ.
• 20:09
  This is deep water here, but it's beautiful.
• 20:11
  I noticed in reading the text there's this recurring prefix,
• 20:14
  this little word that keeps showing up with.
• 20:17
  Yes, in the Greek Paul creates these amazing compound words
• 20:21
  using the prefix sin, which means with as soon as you poison
• 20:25
  Sinagaran sinagathisan. You're just showing off now A.
• 20:29
  Little bit, but it matters because it translates to made
• 20:33
  alive with Christ raised with him seated.
• 20:36
  With him this is the doctrine of union with Christ.
• 20:38
  It's the central idea that God doesn't just ZAP us with
• 20:41
  salvation from a distance like a magic wand.
• 20:43
  He unites us to Jesus by faith. So what happened to Jesus
• 20:47
  historically 2000 years ago becomes true of us spiritually.
• 20:51
  When Jesus died, our old self died with him.
• 20:54
  When he rose from the grave, we rose to new life.
• 20:57
  When he ascended to heaven, we ascended to.
• 20:59
  Let's look at the three specific actions Paul lists.
• 21:02
  The first one is He made us alive together with Christ
• 21:05
  regeneration. This is the direct answer to our
• 21:08
  problem in verse one. We were dead.
• 21:10
  God made us alive. And the source emphasizes this
• 21:13
  act is monarchistic. Can we define that term?
• 21:16
  Sure, mono means one. Ergon means work means God works
• 21:20
  alone in the act of regeneration of jump starting the dead
• 21:23
  spiritual heart. God is the only active party.
• 21:26
  The corpse doesn't help. It can't.
• 21:28
  So this answers the chicken and egg question.
• 21:30
  Does faith cause regeneration or does regeneration cause faith?
• 21:33
  In the Reformed understanding, which I believe is the biblical
• 21:35
  1, regeneration must come first. Logically, you have to be alive
• 21:39
  to believe a dead man can't have faith.
• 21:42
  Lazarus couldn't decide to walk out of the tomb until Jesus
• 21:45
  first gave him life. So God gives the life, and the
• 21:47
  very first breath of that new spiritual life is faith in
• 21:50
  Christ. Exactly.
• 21:51
  Faith is the evidence that regeneration has happened.
• 21:54
  Oh OK, that's step one. That's 2.
• 21:56
  Is he raised us up with him Resurrection.
• 21:59
  This corresponds to The Walking in sin from verse 2.
• 22:02
  We were walking in the graveyard following the course of this
• 22:04
  world. Now we are raised to a whole new
• 22:07
  sphere of existence. We've been liberated from the
• 22:10
  tyranny of the world and the devil and transferred into the
• 22:12
  Kingdom of the Sun. And then Step 3, which is for me
• 22:16
  the most mind bending one of all, He seated us with Him in
• 22:19
  the heavenly places. Ascension.
• 22:21
  But wait a minute. I'm sitting in a recording
• 22:23
  studio. My feet are on the floor.
• 22:24
  I'm very clearly on earth. How can Paul say that I am
• 22:27
  already seated past tense in heaven?
• 22:30
  It's the already but not yet tension of the Kingdom of God.
• 22:33
  Physically you are here, but spiritually your identity is so
• 22:37
  wrapped up and united with Jesus that where He is, you are.
• 22:41
  So it's a legal standing. My spiritual address has
• 22:44
  changed. It's a legal and a spiritual
• 22:46
  reality. The book of Colossians says your
• 22:48
  life is hidden with Christ in God.
• 22:50
  Your true identity is secure with him.
• 22:53
  The source points out a massive implication for our security
• 22:57
  here. If I'm someone who is constantly
• 22:59
  worried about losing my salvation, this verse is a
• 23:02
  fortress. It's an invincible fortress.
• 23:04
  Think about it, if you are already right now spiritually
• 23:07
  seated in heaven in Christ, what would have to happen for you to
• 23:11
  lose your salvation? Someone would have to storm the
• 23:13
  gates of heaven, fight their way to the throne, and pull Christ
• 23:16
  off of it. Exactly because you are in Him.
• 23:19
  As long as He is secure on His throne, you are secure.
• 23:22
  It takes the focus off my fluctuating performance.
• 23:25
  Did I pray enough today that I sin too much and puts it
• 23:28
  squarely on His unchangeable position?
• 23:31
  That's objective security. It isn't based on my feelings,
• 23:34
  which are all over the place. Feelings fluctuate like the
• 23:36
  stock market. This is a fixed asset.
• 23:39
  This is your reality. I also love that in verse 5,
• 23:42
  right in the middle of this incredibly high theology, Paul
• 23:45
  just interrupts himself. He throws in a parenthesis.
• 23:48
  By grace, you have been saved. He.
• 23:51
  Can't help himself, it's like he's dictating this letter to a
• 23:53
  scribe and he just gets so excited by the reality of what
• 23:57
  he's writing that he has to shout it out.
• 23:58
  Don't miss this. This is all by grace.
• 24:00
  And the grammar nerds point out the verb tense there.
• 24:03
  Yes, it's the perfect tense in Greek.
• 24:05
  You have been saved. It denotes an action completed
• 24:08
  in the past with ongoing permanent results in the
• 24:11
  present. You are a saved person.
• 24:13
  It's a settled status, a done deal.
• 24:16
  OK, so just to recap, we've been taken from the morgue, given
• 24:19
  supernatural life, raised up out of the graveyard, and seated in
• 24:22
  the VIP section of the cosmos. Not a bad promotion, is it?
• 24:25
  Not bad at all. But that brings us to the next
• 24:27
  big question. Why?
• 24:29
  This is segment 5. The purpose?
• 24:31
  Why did God go to all this trouble?
• 24:33
  Is it just because God was lonely and wanted some friends
• 24:36
  to hang out with in heaven? That's a very sentimental view.
• 24:38
  You hear sometimes God was so lonely He created us.
• 24:42
  But biblically, God is a Trinity.
• 24:45
  He's existed for all eternity and perfect loving fellowship
• 24:48
  within himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• 24:51
  He has never been lonely. So what's the ultimate purpose?
• 24:55
  Verse 7 seems to give a very different reason.
• 24:58
  So that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable
• 25:01
  riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
• 25:04
  The ultimate purpose of your salvation is the eternal display
• 25:07
  of God's glory. The sources use a specific
• 25:10
  metaphor for this. They talk about a cosmic trophy
• 25:13
  case. Or museum.
• 25:14
  A Museum of Divine Mercy. And who is the audience for this
• 25:17
  museum? The text says the coming ages
• 25:20
  and in chapter 3 Paul mentions the rulers and authorities in
• 25:23
  the heavenly places. He's talking about the angelic
• 25:25
  and. So the angels are the museum
• 25:28
  goers. Imagine the angels walking
• 25:30
  through the corridors of history for all eternity.
• 25:32
  They look at you, they look at me, and they know our back
• 25:35
  story. They saw the autopsy report.
• 25:37
  They saw it all. They saw us dead in sin, hating
• 25:41
  God, enslaved to the world, the flesh and the devil.
• 25:44
  And then they see us now, clothed in the righteousness of
• 25:48
  Christ, adopted as sons and daughters, seated with the King
• 25:52
  of the universe. And what does that tell them?
• 25:54
  It doesn't tell them, wow, look how great those humans are.
• 25:56
  No, it tells them wow, look how incredibly gracious God is.
• 26:00
  We are the evidence, we are the exhibits that prove his
• 26:04
  character. That really shifts your
• 26:05
  perspective on self worth. We're not the heroes of the
• 26:08
  story. Not even close.
• 26:10
  We are the moon reflecting the light of the sun.
• 26:13
  A trophy doesn't glorify itself. A trophy sits on the shelf and
• 26:16
  says look at the incredible skill of the athlete who won me.
• 26:20
  We are the evidence of the hero's character.
• 26:22
  That's it. It moves us from a focus on self
• 26:25
  worth to a focus on Christ worth and honestly, that is such a
• 26:29
  relief. I don't have to be the hero.
• 26:31
  It takes all the pressure off. But Paul isn't done.
• 26:34
  He wants to nail this down tight.
• 26:36
  He gives us this incredible summary statement in verses 8:00
• 26:39
  and 9:00. The Magna Carta.
• 26:40
  The Reformation. For by grace, you have been
• 26:43
  saved through faith. This is the slogan, right?
• 26:45
  This is on every church. Side sola gracias solafide.
• 26:48
  Grace alone, Faith alone. But we need to define these
• 26:50
  terms because they get thrown around like confetti at a
• 26:52
  wedding. Let's be precise.
• 26:54
  What is grace in this specific context?
• 26:57
  Grace is the source of our salvation.
• 27:00
  It's the basis. It is God's unmerited, unearned
• 27:04
  favor. But it's more than just a
• 27:06
  positive attitude. It's an active power that saves.
• 27:09
  It is God actively giving us the exact opposite of what we
• 27:12
  deserve. We deserve wrath.
• 27:15
  He gives us kindness. And what about faith?
• 27:17
  Faith is the instrument. It is the channel through which
• 27:20
  grace is received. The source calls it the empty
• 27:22
  hand of the beggar. That is the classic and best
• 27:25
  definition. Faith is not a work.
• 27:28
  It is not a currency we use to purchase salvation.
• 27:31
  It is simply the act of receiving a gift that is freely
• 27:33
  offered. I like the check analogy.
• 27:35
  If a billionaire walks up to you and hands you a check for $10
• 27:37
  million and you simply reach out your hand to take it.
• 27:40
  Your hand didn't earn the money. Your hand didn't create the
• 27:43
  value. All the value is in the check
• 27:46
  which comes from the billionaire's account.
• 27:48
  Your hand is just the way you get connected to that treasure.
• 27:51
  Faith connects us to the infinite treasure of Christ.
• 27:54
  But this is where the sources dive into a bit of a
• 27:56
  controversy, isn't it? We can call it the gift
• 27:59
  controversy. The grammar wars.
• 28:01
  Verse 8 continues and this is not of your own doing, it is the
• 28:04
  gift of God. The big question is what does
• 28:07
  the word this refer to? Right.
• 28:10
  Does this refer just to salvation in general, or does it
• 28:13
  also refer to the faith itself? Because the argument usually
• 28:17
  goes like this. OK, salvation is a gift, but my
• 28:20
  faith is my part. Faith is the one thing I
• 28:22
  contribute to the equation. That is the classic Armenian
• 28:25
  argument, and they often appeal to Greek grammar to make their
• 28:28
  case. They point out that the word for
• 28:31
  faith in Greek pasties is a feminine noun, but the word for
• 28:35
  this tuto is a neuter pronoun. So they don't match in gender.
• 28:40
  Right. So they argue that grammatically
• 28:42
  this cannot refer back to faith. But the reformed commentaries
• 28:46
  we're looking at push back hard on that.
• 28:48
  Very strongly, they argue that it's a common Greek construction
• 28:51
  for a neuter pronoun like this to refer back to the entire
• 28:55
  antecedent phrase, the whole concept, the whole enchilada.
• 28:59
  So salvation by grace, through faith, that whole package deal
• 29:02
  is the gift. Exactly.
• 29:04
  And logically this must be true. We have to keep going back to
• 29:07
  verse one. We were.
• 29:08
  Dead. Can a corpse generate faith?
• 29:11
  Can a corpse decide to believe? No, Impossible.
• 29:15
  If faith is the first spark of new spiritual life, then it must
• 29:18
  be given to us. It has to be a gift.
• 29:21
  The source material sites Philippians 1.29 here.
• 29:24
  Which says, for it has been granted to you, that for the
• 29:26
  sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him, but also
• 29:29
  suffer for his sake. Believing is something that is
• 29:32
  granted to us. It's not something we conjure up
• 29:35
  on our own to get God's attention.
• 29:37
  It's something God grants us so that we can receive His Son.
• 29:40
  So even my act of believing is itself a miracle from God.
• 29:43
  It is the first evidence of the miracle of new.
• 29:45
  Birth that leads directly into verse 9, the great exclusion,
• 29:49
  not a result of works. The negative boundary.
• 29:51
  He's putting up the guardrails. Why is Paul so insistent on
• 29:54
  this? Why can't it be just a little
• 29:56
  bit of works? You know, 99% grace and 1% me
• 30:00
  trying really hard and being a good person.
• 30:02
  Because works and grace are like oil and water, there are
• 30:06
  mutually exclusive principles for salvation.
• 30:09
  The moment you add 1% works, grace is no longer grace.
• 30:14
  It becomes a wage. It becomes a debt that God owes
• 30:18
  you for your performance. And God owes no man anything.
• 30:20
  Correct. But Paul gives a very specific
• 30:23
  reason for this design. He says the whole thing is
• 30:26
  designed this way so that no one may boast.
• 30:29
  God designed salvation specifically to silence human
• 30:33
  pride. Think about it.
• 30:34
  Imagine for a second that faith was your contribution.
• 30:37
  Imagine you were the one who, out of your own free will,
• 30:40
  generated it. And in heaven, you could look at
• 30:42
  your neighbor who didn't believe, and you could say, you
• 30:44
  know, we both heard the same sermon.
• 30:46
  We both had the same opportunity.
• 30:48
  But I was just a little more spiritual.
• 30:49
  I was a little wiser. I made the right choice where
• 30:51
  you made the wrong one. Heaven would become a place of
• 30:53
  endless comparison and self congratulation.
• 30:56
  It would become a cosmic locker room where we'd all be bragging
• 30:59
  about our spiritual stats. I chose Jesus.
• 31:03
  I was smart enough to believe. But God says no.
• 31:06
  God says I am going to save you in a way that utterly shatters
• 31:10
  your pride. When we get to heaven, no one
• 31:12
  will be strutting around. We will all be on our faces
• 31:15
  casting our crowns before the throne and saying I was dead,
• 31:19
  but God, that's the only story. It completely levels the ground
• 31:24
  at the foot of the cross. It destroys all spiritual
• 31:26
  elitism. No Christian can ever look down
• 31:29
  on an unbeliever and say I'm better than you.
• 31:31
  No, the only thing we can say is I was in the exact same morgue
• 31:35
  as you. I was on the slab right next to
• 31:37
  you, but for some reason I can't explain, the doctor came in and
• 31:40
  performed a miracle on me. That has massive social
• 31:42
  implications. It should create a deep humility
• 31:45
  that you just don't find in performance based religions.
• 31:48
  It should. If we as Christians are
• 31:49
  arrogant, it's a sure sign we have forgotten the autopsy.
• 31:53
  So we walked all the way through the text.
• 31:55
  We have seen the autopsy that we are dead, not sick.
• 31:58
  We've seen the tyrants, the world, the flesh and the devil.
• 32:02
  We've seen a great pivot. But God, the union with Christ
• 32:06
  made alive, raised and seated, the purpose as a trophy case and
• 32:11
  the mechanics of the gift. Now as we wrap up, let's try to
• 32:15
  synthesize this. Let's.
• 32:16
  Bring it all home. The source suggests a head,
• 32:19
  heart, hands application. Let's start with the head.
• 32:22
  Intellectually, what do we need to think differently because of
• 32:25
  these 9 verses? We need to submit to monarchism.
• 32:29
  There's that word again. We just have to get our theology
• 32:32
  straight. We need to kill the idol of our
• 32:34
  own free will and salvation. We need to understand that God
• 32:37
  is the Savior, not just the helper.
• 32:39
  We need to humbly accept the biblical diagnosis that we
• 32:42
  contribute nothing to our salvation except the sin that
• 32:45
  made it necessary in the first place.
• 32:47
  That's a huge blow to the ego, but it's the truth of the text.
• 32:50
  So what about the heart? Emotionally, how should this
• 32:53
  passage make us feel? It should produce two things in
• 32:55
  massive quantities. Deep, profound humility and
• 32:59
  explosive gratitude. Absolutely.
• 33:01
  If you truly grasp that you were a child of wrath by nature, dead
• 33:05
  and hostile to God, and that he intervened at the infinite cost
• 33:08
  of His own Son to see you in the heavenlies, your heart should be
• 33:11
  bursting. There's no room left for a
• 33:14
  self-righteous sneer at the world, only overwhelming
• 33:17
  gratitude for a mercy you did nothing to deserve.
• 33:20
  And finally, the hands. What do we do with this?
• 33:23
  How does it change our actions? Two big things, worship and
• 33:26
  evangelize. Worship loud.
• 33:28
  Worship loud. We are the rescued people.
• 33:30
  We should sing like people who've been pulled out of a
• 33:32
  burning building. Our chirp services shouldn't be
• 33:35
  boring or stuffy. They should be vibrant
• 33:37
  celebrations of resurrection life.
• 33:39
  And evangelize. How does this doctrine affect
• 33:41
  that? With incredible confidence.
• 33:43
  This is the irony. People think, Well, if salvation
• 33:45
  is all of God, why should I bother telling people, right?
• 33:48
  If they're dead, why talk to them?
• 33:50
  We talk to them because we believe God raises the dead and
• 33:53
  he uses the preaching of the Word to do it.
• 33:56
  We can speak to our dead neighbors, our lost kids, our
• 34:00
  most cynical friends with total confidence.
• 34:03
  Not confidence in our clever sales pitch, but confidence that
• 34:07
  the same power that raised Jesus from the dead can give them
• 34:10
  life. So I don't have to be a smooth
• 34:13
  talker, I just have to point to the empty tomb.
• 34:15
  Exactly. You are just one beggar telling
• 34:18
  another bigger where to find bread.
• 34:20
  This has been, I mean, it's been heavy, but it's been so good.
• 34:22
  I feel like I've been through the ringer and came out clean on
• 34:25
  the other side. That's.
• 34:25
  What the gospel does, it kills you in order to make you alive.
• 34:28
  I want to leave our listener with a final thought, something
• 34:31
  to chew on this week. You mentioned earlier about
• 34:33
  being seated in the heavenly places.
• 34:35
  Yes, And the source had this great line.
• 34:37
  It said you do not work to earn your seat, you work because you
• 34:40
  are already seated. That's a whole difference
• 34:42
  between religion and the gospel, right there in one sentence.
• 34:46
  Religion says work hard, climb the ladder, obey the rules, and
• 34:51
  maybe if you're good enough, you will earn a seat at the table.
• 34:55
  But the gospel. The Gospel says welcome, you are
• 34:58
  seated in Christ, the feast is yours, your inheritance is
• 35:01
  secure. Now go and work out of the joy
• 35:05
  and security of who you already are.
• 35:07
  Salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end.
• 35:10
  From the graveyard to glory. Thanks for walking through this
• 35:13
  with me. It was a lot, but it was worth
• 35:15
  it. My pleasure, it's the best news
• 35:17
  in the world. And to our listener, thanks for
• 35:19
  joining Reform Thinking. We'll see you on the next deep
• 35:22
  dive.