Text: Ephesians 2:1-10
THE PRESENTS OF CHRIST: FAITH
So what is faith? It is more obviously than an intellectual tip of the hat. It has to be more than mere intellectual agreement with certain ideas. It has to be affirmed by action. By believing not only with the mind but also with the will. It is that ability to trust in the Lord - to depend on Him fully and completely. It is that indispensable quality that says that whatever situation I'm facing, a broken heart or a broken elevator, my God is with me and is in control of this situation and nothing can pluck me out of His hand. That is, that quality that looks at the promises of God and says I shall have them in Christ. Faith - it is that quality, trust in God demonstrated in a life. As we read Scriptures we discover that it is an essential ingredient to life with God. We are commanded by God to have faith in Him. We read in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. The people of the Old Testament are encouraged to have faith in God and as they did so He would uphold them. (2 Ch. 20:22). In Habakkuk we read that the "righteous will live by faith" (2:4). And in Ephesians we are encouraged to take up the "shield of faith" that protects us from the flaming arrows of the evil one (6:16). Faith is to trust God with all one's heart and soul and strength - it is an essential quality. But have you thought that while it is an essential quality, it is also a gift. Indeed it is that way with each of the gifts that we have celebrated during these last weeks. Peace is commanded from God's people, we are to "live in peace with each other" (I Thessalonians 5:13). But it is also a promised gift to all those who believe in Christ (Colossians 1:20; Romans 5:1; Galatians 5:22) Hope - it is a quality that we are to have and yet it is a gift to us in Christ, we have a hope that acts as an anchor to the soul (Hebrews 6:9). Joy - it is a quality that is commanded, Paul writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice." (Philippians 4:4). But it is a gift that is given to us in Christ. (1 Peter 1:8). So with faith - it is a quality that we are to exercise but it is also a gift from our Lord. Now this may be different from what we often think. We often think that faith is something that is all of me. We don't often think of someone giving us faith. Yet this is true, and is what Scripture teaches. We often think of our salvation as a deal we make with God. We each come to the bargaining table, He brings salvation through Christ to the table and I bring my faith. We shake hands in agreement and in exchange for my faith I get salvation. So I do my part and God does His part. Right? Well not quite. While faith is ours to exercise, it is ultimately a gift from God and we can lay no claim to it. You see, Scripture teaches that when we come to the bargaining table of salvation we don't bring a thing. The whole salvation contract is a gift. There is no part for me to play - God does it all. Even the faith we exercise is a gift - it is all of grace. There is nothing we can do to earn grace, there is nothing we can boast about, not even our faith. Henry Ironside tells of a man who used to boast of his great achievements and his great faith in God and would say that if anybody got into heaven it would be him because of all the good that he had done, because of the way he had lived. But a preacher who heard this had to say to him, “Listen, if you ever got into heaven you make the heavenly choir sound awful. Because everyone in that choir would be singing ‘Glory to God, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.’ Everyone in the choir except you. You would be singing glory to me. Worthy is me for all that I have done. And when the heavenly choir heard you sing that they would throw you out over the wall.’ 1 A proper understanding of all this really begins with a Scriptural view of humanity. And in our text, Ephesians 2:1-10 the Holy Spirit gives us a series of snapshots of our position in Christ. In fact, we read of our past - that is our life without Christ - our present and our future. So we open our Bibles to Ephesians 2 and we discover that without Christ in our lives we are in a sorry state. The first three verses:
Do you see what a sorry state we were in before we were in Christ? Verse one says we were dead. It doesn't say that we were sick - we were dead. That is, spiritually lifeless. To be sure we could run, skip, jump, work and play, but at one time, without Christ we were spiritually dead. Jesus was always looking at people and proclaiming them dead, even thought they appeared to be very much alive. It was that they had no spiritual heart, no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no ability to grasp what was there before them. They had a heart of stone. They were spiritually dead. And the cause of our death is trespasses and sins. To trespass is to enter into forbidden lands, to cross a closed border. To sin means to fall short of a mark. We are guilty on both counts we have failed to meet the standard God has set and we have actually rebelled and crossed into forbidden territory. There is the wrong we have done and the right we have left undone. And we all have lived this way - not one of us is innocent. Not only were we dead but we were enslaved to three captors. Verse 2 says we followed the course of this world. We need to understand that at one time we thought like the world, and acted like the world. The world was our captor. Not only the world but also Satan. Verse 2 says we followed the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient." Not only the world and Satan but the desires of the flesh. We were captive to our appetites. Verse 3 - "All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses". That is, we were captive to our appetites. To be sure they were God-given and we need to thank God for them, but these appetites can and are so easily perverted in us. The desire for food can become gluttony; desire for sleep can be laziness; for sex, lust. Each God-given appetite became a sinful desire. As a result of this, he says in the last part of verse 3, we were children of wrath. The sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, of disobedience and selfishness has been imitated by each one of us and our holy God must judge sin. So we were the object of his wrath, of His judgment. So that was our state. We were dead, we were held captive and we were condemned. But then all of that changed - and in verse 4 onward Paul describes how that happened.
We were dead, captors, to the world, Satan and our appetites, we were children of wrath but then God. God stepped in and changed all that. Notice how the text shows how each of these sad conditions is met with God's response. We were once dead but God made us alive. Just as He raised Christ from the dead, so He raised us from the dead. He transformed our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh. He gave us ears to hear, eyes to see. Once were blind deaf and dumb. We were dead, inert, deceased, lifeless, spiritually we had kicked the bucket. Do you get the idea? But God made us alive. By His great power, love and mercy He made us alive. You see, we weren't just sick so that we needed resuscitation - we were dead and need resurrection. And that's what God did. Once we were captive to the world, Satan and our desires, but now God has raised us up. He has freed us from all that. Oh how we need to remember that we are free from all of that. We no longer have to think like the world thinks, or value what the world values. I always need that reminder. We were once dead, we were once held captive but not any longer. We were once objects of wrath but now God has seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Do you see that God has done it all? In the words of Erwin Lutzer, "When you come to Christ you do not come to give, you come to receive. You do not come to try your best, you come to trust. You do not come just to be helped but to be rescued.2 But someone may still insist "I bring my faith." I bring my faith the table. And Paul is careful to rule this out.
What is the gift here to which Paul refers? The grammar of the text points to it all. The grace is not our doing - it is a gift. The salvation is not our doing it is a gift. And the faith - that is not our doing either it is a gift. None of it is your achievement, it is not even your reward it is all a free gift. Remember you were dead. Can a dead carcass exercise faith? No! And then just in case we missed it, Paul tells us in verse 10 that we are God's creations. God made us. We are His workmanship. Who of us is self-created? No one. God made us. It is all of God, all of grace. His unmerited favour.
So Charles Wesley would write,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth, and followed thee." Now someone may ask - if faith is a gift from God, and God chooses not to give faith to me then am I responsible for my eternal destiny? Yes, because it is possible to turn the gift down. We are not puppets, so that some are made to believe while others are not. I think there were times when we heard the word of God, when we heard the good news of Jesus Christ and we were so satisfied with our dead state, when we were satisfied with being held captive that we turned the gift down. But there was a time for each of us, when after hearing about the new life that is in Christ a hunger arose in us, a thirst for life arose in us and we said “O God, how can we receive that life? Be merciful to me a sinner.” And even then God was in the process of raising our dead spirits and seating us in the heavenly places. So we read in Romans 10 "that faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17). So we can hear the message of good news of salvation and we can resist the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But it is possible on the other hand to hear the ministry of the Holy Spirit and be led on to a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Refuse the word and there will never be faith. Hear the word and submit to the word and faith is given. Last question. Why is it so important to understand that faith is a gift? First reason. We need to realize that faith is a gift because sometimes we make a Saviour out of our faith. It is not our faith that has saved us. It is Jesus Christ who has saved us. We are saved through faith but by grace. Some people say, "Well if only I could only have a steadfast faith, if only I could believe the right way, then I would be saved." My friends, it is not a question of how you believe, it is a question of in whom you believe. Faith is only the channel through which we receive the grace. It is not the source of your salvation it is only the pipe through which it is received. So don't elevate your faith to the level of Saviour. Faith is only the receiver. When we understand that faith is a gift, it keeps us from boasting in our faith, it is not our Saviour. Second, the whole concept of faith as a gift is a great help to those of you who may think that you cannot come to Christ, you cannot accept His grace because your sin is, in your mind too great. And you are right. You don't have the strength, none of us do, to accept salvation from God through Christ. Instead, realize that the work of God is perfect - it begins where we are, and asks nothing of us in order to be complete in us. When the good Samaritan saw the traveller lying wounded and half-dead on the side of the road, did the Samaritan say, "Get up and come over here and I will help you. Get up on my donkey and ride it to a nearby inn"? No, the text says that the Samaritan came to the wounded man where he was and he helped him - he lifted him onto his donkey and took him to the inn. So our God deals with us in our situation. He provides the salvation, He gives the gift of faith. An old man stood to his feet in a church service and said, "It has taken me fifty two years to learn three things.” The congregation hushed hoping to discover in three minutes what had taken this man so long to learn. "First," he began, "I learned that I cannot save myself. Second, I learned that God did not expect me to save myself." Then he lowered his voice and added, "And the third thing I've learned is that God, through Christ has done it all!" And so he has, for every one of us. Third, this idea is important because it raises the concept of being a Christian. Sometimes our view of being a Christian is so low. We sometimes think so lightly of what has happened to us. We allow the world to brow beat us into thinking that being a Christian is no big deal, in fact if it's anything, it's a bit wacky. But we need to realize that we are God's workmanship. It is God who has done something, it is God who has made you what you are. It is God who has raised you from the dead. It is God who has released you from the bondage to the world, the flesh and the devil. It is God who has taken my sorry life and your sorry life and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ. Not our works, but His work. Being a Christian is not this trivial matter - it is a great privilege. Something fantastic has happened to us. Something amazing has happened to us. We were once dead but now we are alive. We were once captive but now we are free. And God has done it all. This leads us to the last reason why I believe this truth is important - it is important for us to realize that even our faith is a gift because the whole concept moves us to a deeper love and adoration of God. How can you hear the words of Ephesians 2:1-10 without getting down on your knees and saying, thank you Lord for what you have done. Thank you for what you have done. Thank you for what you have done. My friends, let the great grace of our God expressed for us in our Lord Jesus Christ wash over you. Let it envelope you. Realize that you have done nothing for it. Not even your faith, but have been saved by grace. And let yourself be lost in wonder love and praise of our great God. Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - December 2002
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