From Death to Life, and All of Grace

Grace and peace to you.

When I wrote to the saints in Ephesus, I had just been telling them of the power of God — that same power which raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:20). And then I turned that power upon them, and upon you, and I began not with what you had made of yourselves, but with the truth of what you were before God laid his hand on you.

Hear how I began: "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked" (Ephesians 2:1). Dead. Not sick, not weak, not merely wandering — dead. I did not soften it, and I will not soften it now. A dead man cannot raise himself. He cannot decide to breathe. This is the first thing you must know, or the rest will mean nothing to you: whoever you were before Christ, you were not a good man in need of improvement. You were a corpse in need of resurrection.

And I said we all once lived so — "following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2), carried along by our own passions, "children of wrath, like the rest of mankind" (Ephesians 2:3). I put myself among them. I do not stand above you and point down. I was a Pharisee, blameless as men count blame, and I was dead all the while, and did not know it. That is the terror of this death — it feels like living.

Now come to the hinge of the whole passage. Two small words, and everything turns on them: "But God" (Ephesians 2:4). You were dead — but God. There was no help in you, no motion toward heaven in you, nothing to commend you — but God, who is "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" (Ephesians 2:4-5). Do you see when he loved you? Not when you were lovely. When you were dead. He did not wait at the edge of your grave for you to stir. He came down into it and gave you life.

And then I could not help myself, and I broke into the middle of my own sentence to say it plainly: "by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:5). I said it here, and I said it again a few lines on, because it is the thing I most want you never to forget.

See what he has done. He "made us alive together with Christ… and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:5-6). The very things I said God did to Christ — raised him, seated him — he has done to you who are in Christ. You are bound so tightly to your Savior that where he went, you have gone. He is raised; you are raised. He is seated; you are seated. And why? "So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:7). You are to be, forever, an exhibit of how kind God is. Not a monument to your striving. A monument to his mercy.

And now the words I would carve over the door of every heart that reads this: "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). Weigh every word. Grace — the free favor of God to those who deserve the opposite. Through faith — the empty hand that receives, not the full hand that pays. And even that faith is not something you manufactured to impress him; the whole of it is gift, so that no man in heaven will ever be able to lift his chin and say, "I did this." Boasting is cut off at the root. If you are saved, you will spend eternity praising God and not yourself.

I know how the flesh fights this. Something in us wants to keep back a corner of the work for our own hands, to earn some sliver of it, so we can feel we belong here by right. Let it go. You do not belong here by right. You belong here by mercy, and mercy is a far surer ground than right ever was. The man who is saved by grace cannot lose his footing, because he never stood on his own footing to begin with.

But do not mishear me, as some do — as though grace made no difference to how you live. Read the last word: "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). You are not saved by good works — but you are saved for them. You are his workmanship, his handiwork, a thing he is making with his own hands. And a life made new will walk in the works he laid out ahead of you like a path prepared. The order is everything: he does not say, walk in good works so that you may be created new. He says you are created new, and therefore you will walk. The works do not buy the life. The life produces the works.

So what will you do with this today? If you are still trying to earn what has already been given — stop. Rest. Receive. The debt is paid and the tomb is empty; add nothing to a finished work. If you have grown cold and forgotten what you were — remember the grave he lifted you out of, and let the memory make you tender toward those still in it, for you were no better than they. And when you rise to your labor today — the ordinary work, the kindness no one sees, the patience with a hard person, the small faithfulness — walk in it not to become his, but because you are his, His workmanship, made alive, raised up, seated with Christ, and destined to display the riches of his grace when this world's winter is long past.

I am kept in chains as I write, and I have learned that the gospel is not chained, and neither is a soul that grace has raised. You were dead. But God. Let that be enough to carry you through this day.

Grace be with you.