By Grace You Have Been Saved | Ephesians 2:1-10

Intro

I don’t know what I did to my algorithms, but one day I found myself watching a mesmerizing video from a YouTube channel called “Mountain Rug Cleaning.” It’s run by a guy called James … but you only ever see his rubber boots. In the middle of the screen is the filthiest rug you can imagine. Like layers of dirt and grime and mold thicker than the rug itself. It’s disgusting! You wouldn’t want to be near it without a HAZMAT suit.

And then James begins to wash the rug. As he soaks it with a hose, the water starts to run black, but the rug looks unchanged. Then he drenches it with soap and he scrubs it with a machine. He goes over every square inch with a squeegee and sprays it with a pressure washer. Little by little, patterns and colors in the rug begin to emerge from the filth. James meticulously cleans and re-cleans the rug, and the video ends with a before-and-after that would have been impossible to believe when you first saw the rug.

Evidently “rug cleaning videos” are a thing. Mountain Rug Cleaning has 1.9M subscribers, but there are many more channels. Why is that? 

I think it’s because restoration and renewal is universally appealing. It is extremely satisfying to watch dirt and grime get washed away—to watch order emerge from chaos. Just think of the proliferation of home renovation shows in recent decades. 

The renewal of rugs and houses is one thing, but can people change? If you could change one thing about yourself, what would that be? What is it in your life that most desperately needs to be transformed? Is there an unbelieving attitude, a misdirected affection, an habitual action?

According to our text this morning, God himself wills and works to transform hopeless lives.

Ephesians 2:1–10

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Is change possible?

Ephesians 2:1–10 describes God’s saving work as a dramatic before-and-after transformation. From dead in sin (vv. 1, 5) to made alive with Christ (v. 4); from following the devil’s schemes (v. 2) to being seated with Christ in the high-heavenlies (v. 6); from deserving God’s wrath (v. 3) to receiving God’s kindness (v. 7); from rebellion and unbelief (v. 3) to faith in Christ (v. 8); from waking in sin (v. 1) to walking in good works (v. 10).

Your salvation—if you are in Christ—is the most riveting transformation on earth.

Have you experienced that? Are you experiencing that? What aspect of your life most desperately needs to be changed by God’s power today?

One way to identify that is to ask yourself, “What is something in my life that feels hopeless?” What feels overwhelming, burdensome, or impossible? Are you enslaved to some life-dominating sin? Perhaps you’re in a desert marriage—communication is impossible; conflict is constant; affection is absent.

Maybe your mind goes to circumstances beyond your control—your job situation, or infertility, or chronic pain, or a wayward child. I can’t guarantee a specific change in your circumstances. But I can tell you that something even better is possible. It is possible for you to change in the midst of your circumstances. So consider, what attitudes of unbelief does that situation provoke? Anxiety? Despair? Bitterness? Laziness? Impatience? Envy or covetousness? God wants to change you where you are.

That’s the hope held out to you in Ephesians 2. Hopeless sinners can be changed by God’s grace alone. No matter how hopeless you are, you can be changed by God’s grace and for God’s glory. But that hope begins with bad news—getting honest about how hopeless it really is.

I. You are more sinful than you may think (vv. 1–3).

Before Paul gets to the good news—and in order to magnify the glory of the gospel—Paul goes to great lengths to describe the miserable plight of every human being apart from Christ. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (v. 1–2). Your condition apart from Christ was worse than you may think. You were not broken in need of fixing. Or worn out in need of restoration. It’s not that you made some mistakes from time to time that had painful consequences.

You were spiritually dead. You were physically alive—Paul says we walked in the ways of the world (v. 2) and lived in the passions of our flesh (v. 3)—but spiritually dead. What does that mean? Romans 6:11–12 is helpful: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” 

Paul says it’s possible to be dead in regards to one thing and alive in regards to another. To be spiritually dead means you are dead or unresponsive to God, but you are alive to sin—you obey the passions of sin. A dead body doesn’t move, it doesn’t feel or think or speak or act. To be dead in sin means that you physically exist, but you do not see or hear God, you don’t desire God, you don’t think or act in ways pleasing to God. You exist in a state of unresponsiveness to God and rebellion against God.

Paul uses two words here to describe the entire domain of spiritual death apart from Christ: trespasses and sins. Trespasses refers to the violation of God’s moral law. And sin is similar. Sin is an act of rebellion against God that offends God. The point is that we have not merely made some “mistakes” in life. Far worse! We once lived in a state of constantly offensive rebellion against God.

Paul describes our sinful condition in terms of allegiance or conformity to three things: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Paul says that you used to follow “the course of this world” (v. 1), or literally “the age of this world.” The phrase is actually redundant, since this age and this world are synonymous (cf. 1 Cor 3:18–19). In fact, the word for this age is elsewhere translated as this world (Rom 12:2, 2 Cor 4:4). And the world refers to the visible domain of human existence that is opposed in every way to God and his ways. You can see with your eyes the ways of the world—it’s visible on billboards and on TV. It’s the environment in which we live, a pattern of life that is opposed to God. And it exerts a tremendous influence on you, compelling you to walk in sin.

But it’s not just the world; there’s also the influence of the devil. Paul refers to him here as the “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (v. 2). That could be translated “the ruler of the domain (or realm) of the air.” Air refers to the realm above the earth, the domain of spiritual beings or powers—what Paul refers to in 1:21 as “rule and authority and power and dominion.” These are transcendent spiritual powers opposed to God. In Ephesians 6, Paul says that Christians wrestle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Paul says that this ruler is “the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” So human sin is influenced in a real way by evil supernatural forces. The devil is at work—tempting, deceiving, and misleading everyone.

However, lest you think this legitimizes Satan’s “rule” or implies that Satan is “in charge” now, keep in mind the immediate context. “He [God the Father] raised him [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:20–21). So the point is not about Satan’s power and authority. The point is that, apart from Christ, you were following a conquered and defeated ruler.

Now, if the only influence to sin came from outside of you, it would be tempting to avoid personal responsibility by blaming all of your sin on someone or something else. “The devil made me do it.” But Paul speaks of one more source of sin: your own flesh: “... among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the [flesh, lit.] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3).

To paul, the flesh refers not just to the physical body, but to our corrupt human nature. The mind or understanding of sinful man is hostile to God and darkened by sin: “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18).

This is a damning indictment. You can’t claim that you were an unwilling victim of the world and the devil. Paul says we walked in the ways of the world and we followed the ruler of darkness because we wanted to. Whatever our own flesh wanted, that is what we did. Whatever our own darkened mind thought, that’s what we followed.

And here’s the nail in the coffin: we did all of this because it was our nature. We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (v. 3). That means our problem is not that we are basically good people who occasionally mess up because of bad influences from outside of us. We are basically evil and that is why we do evil. One commentator says, “The ‘conduct of life’ in ‘the lusts of our flesh’ shows that this lostness is not a passing error, lack of education, or a low social position—it is a life-dominating force from which no one can escape on his own.”

Now, in writing to Christians, Paul is clear that this was your former life: “... in which you once walked” (v. 2); “... among whom we all once lived” (v. 3).

But this either was or is true of every single human being. Did you catch how Paul began with the second person plural, “And you were dead” (v. 1), before switching to the first person plural, “Among whom we all once lived” (v. 3)? And he concludes, “And [we] were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (v. 3). This is not the predicament of the dregs of society, of humanity’s most vile criminals and lowlifes, like gang members from MS13 or Tren de Aragua.

This is the condition of every human being on earth—man, woman, and child. This was once your condition, before you were in Christ.

This is also the plight of the people around you. Your neighbors, friends, co-workers—if they are not in Christ, they are dead! Doesn’t that break your heart and burden you for their eternal destiny? And if you are not united to Christ by faith, this is your condition right now.

II. God is more gracious than you could hope (vv. 4–7).

Paul pulls no punches when he describes our sinful condition apart from Christ. But human sin is not his main point. He is merely setting the stage.

And in v. 4, he utters arguably the two most powerful words in Scripture: “But God.”

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” 

—Ephesians 2:4–7

What was the point of painstakingly describing our hopeless, sinful condition? To magnify the glory of God’s grace! Unless you understand how hopelessly dead you are apart from Christ, you will never understand how glorious God’s grace is.

What is grace? Grace is often defined as “God’s undeserved favor.” Which is not wrong, but it’s not the whole picture. If someone gives you a gift—say $100—that’s not a wage you earned, it’s a gift. It’s undeserved. But what God did for us far exceeds that. It’s not just that we did not deserve his favor; it’s that we did deserve his wrath. We are not merely undeserving, we are ill-deserving. So the grace of God is God’s extravagant favor toward those who deserved his wrath.

But what does favor mean? We tend to think of “undeserved favor” merely as God going easy on us or cutting us some slack. In that view, grace means we don’t get the punishment we deserve. But that’s only a fraction of God’s grace.

In vv. 4–7, Paul stacks up three verbs that describe God’s favor as action toward dead sinners. He made us alive with Christ. He raised us up with Christ. And he seated us with Christ in the heavenly places.

And this comes on the heels of Paul’s prayer for spiritual enlightenment at the end of Ephesians 1, where he prayed that believers would know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19–20). 

Raised from the dead! Seated at his right hand! 

Those are the very same actions he mentions here in 2:6! And Paul calls that “the working of God’s great might” and “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” That is the grace of God—God’s dynamic power towared ill-deserving sinners, raising them from the dead.

This is difficult to capture in English, but each of those verbs is a word Paul made up (or modified) to emphasize a mind-blowing theological reality. To each verb he added a prefix that means with (like synergy or synchronized). It’s more like saying, “God co-resurrected us with Christ and co-raised us and co-seated us in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.”

What Paul is stating here is that when God acted toward Christ, he also acted toward all who are united to Christ by faith. I admit this is hard to wrap our minds around, but we have to try so that our hearts can be affected by this glorious truth. It’s not that God raised Jesus from the dead and seated him in heaven, and so someday in the future something similar will happen to you. One commentator puts it like this: “What God did for Christ he did at the same time for believers.” 

Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection. Christ’s exaltation is your exaltation. Christ is alive and exalted now, and if you are united to him by faith, so are you. God’s grace is his immeasurable, life-giving, resurrection power working in you.

But why does God want to exert his power to raise ill-deserving sinners from the dead? Paul mentions three reasons. Two are found in v. 4: “because God is rich in mercy” and “because of the great love with which he loved us.” God’s love and mercy is what motivated God to save sinners. There is no mention of any worth or attractiveness or redeeming quality in you. And that should not offend you; it should comfort you and give you hope. You never need to fear that you’re not good enough or that you don’t deserve it. You’re not! And you don’t! But God is rich in mercy and abounding in love.

Then in v. 7, we see God’s aim: “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” God saves sinners by his grace in order to put on display the riches of grace toward us. God gets glory by saving sinners and doing good to you forever.

When Paul speaks of “the coming ages,” don’t make the mistake of thinking that is limited to a future and far off time. The coming ages refers to this very moment and every moment to come into eternity. Henceforth and forevermore! World without end!

Some people think you believe in Jesus so you can go to heaven when you die. The real reason is because apart from Jesus you’re already dead. But when you are united to Jesus, you come alive now. And you begin to live right now with the blessing of God working for your good with all of his infinite resurrection power. God is not waiting to show you kindness until you get to heaven. He is working for your good right now. Are you convinced that is true? Or do you suspect that God is out to get you, making your life miserable?

God is so much more gracious than you could ever hope! Out of infinite mercy and love and grace and kindness, he has co-raised you from the dead with Christ.

III. Change is more possible than you could imagine (vv. 8–10).

In vv. 4–7, the spotlight is entirely on God’s action toward us in Christ. There is no mention of our work or our response. So how do you experience this miracle of salvation? Is that it? Sinners are dead, and God makes them alive? Is everyone alive now? Is everyone saved?

No! Only those who are united to Christ by faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. That’s how you experience the redemptive work of God in your life.

But Paul is adamant: “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” If you rely on yourself—your morality, your ethnic superiority, your social status, your success in life, or anything else you can take credit for—you remain dead in your sin. It is impossible for anyone to be saved by effort, by merit, or by morality. The only way to be saved is by God’s grace. It is God’s gift.

When Paul says, “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” what does this refer to? Greek is a gendered language, and this (in v. 8) is neuter, which means it refers to the entire event of salvation. Salvation by grace through faith is “not your own doing,” or literally “not from you.” The salvation, the grace, yes, even the faith—all of it is the gift of God; none of it is from you.

And that’s why change—radical transformation of your attitudes, emotions, and actions—is more possible than you could imagine. Change is possible because transformation is the effect of God’s grace—God’s dynamic power at work in you for your good. The passage began in v. 1 with the spiritually dead walking in sin, but listen to how it ends: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10).

One of the most common ways to avoid personal responsibility and lack of change is to blame our actions on our nature. “I was born this way.” That excuse could be used to justify your sexual orientation, your temper, your enslavement to alcohol or pornography, your anxiety and depression, or any other sinful inclination you have.

But here’s the thing … It doesn’t hold up. We were all born in sin. We were all by nature children of wrath. 

But God! God made us alive with Christ!  By grace you have been saved!

To be saved by grace is to be transformed—raised from the dead to walk in new life. God’s workmanship could be translated, God’s creation. Paul is saying, “We are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” All human beings are God’s creatures, but only Christians are God’s new creation.

This is why change is possible despite your sinful nature. You were a child of wrath by nature, but now you are God’s workmanship, a new creation in Christ Jesus. That means no matter what sinful habits you have developed based on your inner nature and your external environment, you can change by God’s grace through faith in Christ. You were dead in sin, but God made you alive with Christ. 

And not only has God made you new (if you are in Christ), but God has done something else. Paul says that God has prepared beforehand good works for you to walk in. I picture a preschool classroom, where the teacher has thoughtful and intentionally prepared crafts for 3 and 4 year olds to complete. The teacher gathers the supplies, pre-punches the holes or pre-cuts the stips of paper. When the kids arrive, everything is ready for them.

You are God’s workmanship, and God has prepared good works for you to walk in. Do not think of those good works as some mysterious future ministry or calling that you are waiting to discover. Those works are found in ordinary, everyday life. 

Here’s what you should do: pay attention to attitudes of unbelief. Ask yourself, Where do I feel anxiety, fear, laziness, or bitterness? What context is that? Is it a relationship? Is it a work responsibility? Now, as you think about that situation, consider this: God has prepared good works for you to walk in … in that situation, in that relationship. Does that change things for you? Today, when you leave here, God has prepared good works for you in your relationships, in your work, in the mundane and ordinary. 

You are not saved by works, but you are saved for good works. Some people are afraid of works because they want to avoid “works righteousness.” They act allergic to application and obedience because they want to avoid legalism. So how can you tell the difference between the kind of works that are self-righteous and the kind of works for which God saved you?

The key is there at the end of v. 9: “so that no one may boast.” The opposite of faith is not works; the opposite of faith is boasting. “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about” (Romans 4:2). Boasting is the problem, not obedience. If salvation comes from you, you have something to boast about. But if God saves you by his grace as a gift that you receive by relying on Jesus, you have nothing to boast about. In fact, walking in good works by grace through faith magnifies the greatness of God’s grace that saved you.

Conclusion

You are more sinful than you may think. God is more gracious than you could hope. Change is more possible than you could imagine.

How? By grace alone.