It's Alive! It's Alive!

Ephesians 2:1-10 September 25, 2022 Pastor Ricky Alcantar

Thesis The gap between our spiritual deadness apart from Christ and the resurrection life we have in Christ is filled entirely by God's grace—not by human merit—and that gap is as wide as death to life.

Series

Ephesians

Type

Expository

Tone

didacticpastoralevangelistic

Method

grammatical-historicalredemptive-historicalcanonical

What's in this sermon

The shape of the argument

23 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.

Pastoral correction · unit #19

"This extended application unit addresses both non-Christians and the church. To non-Christians, the pastor issues an evangelistic appeal: the fundamental human need is not self-improvement but resurrection from spiritual death, and that resurrection is offered through faith in Christ. To the church, he reframes the church's mission: Christians exist to offer resurrection, not merely practical help. The unit is marked by direct address, urgency, and a clear call to respond to the gospel."

Doctrinal loci· 12 surfaced

Soteriology · 15 Hamartiology · 6 Anthropology · 4 Theology Proper · 4 Ecclesiology · 3 Eschatology · 2 Pneumatology · 2 Christology · 1 Ethics / Moral Theology · 1 Providence / Sovereignty · 1 Sanctification · 1 Spiritual Warfare · 1

Bible citations· 12

Illustrations· 5

personal story · unit #4 — A personal testimony about a man the pastor knew who literally died by electrocution and was brought back to life. The story establishes the reality of death-to-life transformation and sets up the sermon's central metaphor—that spiritual resurrection is an even greater miracle than physical resurrection.
cultural reference · unit #7 — A brief, pointed illustration that exposes the moral bankruptcy of 'following your heart' by citing Woody Allen's use of that very phrase to justify immoral behavior.
cultural reference · unit #11 — This extended illustration uses social media culture to demonstrate the two dominant human strategies for achieving self-worth and life satisfaction: achievement-based merit ('rise and grind') and identity-based merit ('self-care'). Both, the pastor argues, are rooted in the same flawed assumption—that we can merit what we need through human effort or inherent worth.
cultural reference · unit #14 — An extended analogy using the classic film Frankenstein to illustrate the failure of human merit to produce true life. Dr. Frankenstein animates a corpse, but the result is a tragic parody of life—a 'living death' that ends in destruction. Similarly, all human attempts to merit salvation produce only another form of death, not true resurrection life.
personal story · unit #18 — The pastor returns to the opening illustration, now revealing its punchline: the man's physical resurrection was not as great a miracle as his spiritual resurrection. The story reinforces the sermon's central claim—that the gap from spiritual death to spiritual life is the widest gap of all, and only God can bridge it.

Theological claims· 4

Grace is measured by the gap between what we deserve apart from Christ and what we receive in Christ, and the central question of the sermon is how wide that gap is. unit #3
Every worldview apart from Christianity attempts to bridge the gap from deadness to life through human merit and effort. unit #10
Every religious system apart from true Christianity—including false versions of Christianity—is built on the assumption that human merit can earn God's favor. unit #12
Human merit fails on two counts: it cannot cover our sin before God, and it cannot bring us from death to life. unit #13

Quotations· 4

"So both words, age and world, express a social value system which is alien to God. It permeates, indeed dominates, non-Christian society and holds people in captivity. Wherever human beings are being dehumanized by political oppression or bureaucratic tyranny, by an outlook that is secular, which is repudiating God, or an outlook that is amoral, repudiating right and wrong, or an outlook that is materialistic, which is glorifying the things we consume, by poverty and hunger or unemployment, racial discrimination, by any form of injustice, there, right there, we can detect the subhuman values of this age and this world." — John Stott (unit #5)

"Notice what Paul says, 'It is God's gift.' It includes faith. The grammar indicates that the whole of salvation is to be viewed as a gift. Grace is a gift. Faith is a gift. Salvation is a gift. We should never think of salvation as a transaction in which God provides grace and we provide faith. No, it is all grace." — Tony Meredith (unit #15)

"Paul uses a compound word to declare that we have been raised together, synerogen, which has the prefix syn. We know this from computers. We get the word sync from it, short for synchronize. We sync our phones with our computers in order to transfer the music on the computer to the phone. Well, we were synced with Christ. What God did for Christ, he did at the same time for believers. In some astonishing way, when Jesus Christ got out of the tomb 2,000 years ago, you, Christian, got up with him." — Tony Merida (unit #16)

"the deepest desire of the human heart can be summed up in this: that we desire to be fully known and fully loved" — Keller (unit #20)

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0 · The introduction frames the sermon as expositing the theological source from which all of Ephesians flows—the grace of God

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the text that we're gonna cover today is the stream in the mountain from which everything else in Ephesians flows. We're gonna zero in on this theme that we have seen and will continue to see throughout the book, the theme of grace. And it's no exaggeration to say that this stream, everything in Ephesians flows out from it. All of the advice and counsel about racial reconciliation, about parents and kids, about husbands and wives, about work, about speech, about spiritual warfare, about blessing, all of it flows from this source, the very grace of God. So we're gonna take one sermon today and walk through kind of the beginning of this text, and I just couldn't fit everything we needed in this text. And so next week we're gonna be hitting the last 2 verses, kind of the application section.

1 · This unit is the full reading of the primary text, Ephesians 2:1-10

So Ephesians 2:1, this is God's glorious word. And you were dead. In the trespasses and sins 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, 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. 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. 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. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

2 · A brief pastoral prayer asking God to open the congregation's ears and eyes to receive the truth of His grace

This is God's Word. Lord, I pray that you would open our ears and open our eyes. Lord, help us to take in just the glorious truth of your grace and the way that it changes everything. In Jesus' name, amen.

3 · This unit establishes the theological framework for understanding grace: grace is measured by the gap between what we deserve and what we receive in Christ

In Ephesians, as I mentioned, one of the most important terms in the book is grace. Now, the problem is that grace often fades into the wallpaper of Christian life or fades into the wallpaper of even American Christianity, kind of cultural Christianity. Everybody knows the song "Amazing Grace" and has probably heard it sung at a funeral. People have seen coffee mugs with grace on it. We've said previously as we opened the book that grace can be defined simply biblically as God's unmerited favor. But as we press into the reality and the truth of grace today, I want to kind of impress on you the relationship between the gap and grace. Not the store, not the 2000s clothing store that I think is still— is it still around? I never know. I don't know what survived the pandemic. The Gap is fine. It can stay in the past, but Not meaning that. Gap. The gap between what we deserve and would receive apart from God's grace and what we do receive and who we are with grace. That gap between who we were and who we are, that gap is the measure of God's grace. So the question today is just how wide is that gap?

4 · A personal testimony about a man the pastor knew who literally died by electrocution and was brought back to life

Now, I knew a Christian brother here in El Paso who died and then came back to life. And I don't mean this, like, metaphorically. He was not a Christian as a teenager, but he was invited to a youth camp somewhere in New Mexico. I won't say which one it is, just in case they might get sued. At the camp, there was a pond. It was a sketchy pond. Kind of one of those, like, eek kind of ponds, the kind of pond that other kids at the youth camp dare some of the kids to swim in, right? And the dare was, how far can you swim out into the pond? And there's kind of a pylon at the back of the pond. And so this Christian brother decides— now Christian, wasn't Christian then— he decides to swim out, and he goes further and further, and he just kills everybody. He's going so far out, he thinks, "I'm gonna go touch this pylon over here." What he did not know was that the pylon had a live electrical current running through it, and due to faulty wiring, there was a live electrical current near the pylon. So as soon as he swims out to the pylon, he is electrocuted, his heart stops, His lungs fill with water, and everyone on the shore assumes he's playing some sort of practical joke because he's not coming up out of the water. Finally, after a minute or two, somebody realizes, I think he's actually in trouble. They swim out, they bring him back to the shore, and they look for a pulse. No pulse. They listen for his breath. No breath. They try to do CPR. Unsuccessful. His lungs are filled with water. His heart is stopped. They call an ambulance, but of course, they're in an isolated area. Who knows how long it's gonna take to get the ambulance there? He was medically dead for several minutes. We're not talking about, like, a 30-second, like, he died and they shocked him and he came back. I mean, he is lifeless. So they, without anything else to do, they pray for him. For him, and in a miracle, he coughs and wakes up. He literally just kind of bolts upright and asks them, "What happened?" And they're like, everybody has already started to mourn him, right? Everybody's going through the stages of grief, and he just sits up. Whoa, he was alive. Once dead, now alive.

5 · This extensive expositional unit unpacks Ephesians 2:1-3, establishing Paul's diagnosis of the human condition: spiritual death

And Ephesians 2 is gonna lay out the fact that the gap that is between who we were and where we were going and who we are in Christ and where we are going in Christ, the gap is not a small gap. It's not a little gap. It is as wide as death to life. That's what we're going to see this morning. So 3 sections today. The first is this: what we were. Paul begins with perhaps the darkest opening line that you could start a section of the Bible with. This is the kind of section that if you're looking kind of for some quick encouragement from your Bible at some point, you're flipping through, "Where can God give me some encouragement?" It's probably not Ephesians 4:1. You're there with your coffee and your mug and you're like, "Oh Lord, please help me," and you read Ephesians 2:1, "And you were dead." Nobody has that on a mug at home. Look at Paul's diagnosis of the human condition apart from Christ is not that we're ill, not that we're in trouble, not that we need a hand up, not that we need a handout, it is that we are dead. Are dead. Now let me ask you this. Maybe you're resisting that a little bit, like, well, that seems pretty stark. Listen, is our world around us not profoundly broken? Is there not war and evil and injustice running rampant through many corners of the world? Is there not public scandal plastered all over the internet? Is there not domestic abuse that is quietly hidden? Is there not across Every continent and every nation in every city, is there not cruelty and anger and betrayal and loss all around us? Look, I think if you take off, listen, you gotta take off the veneer of American advertising where the world is filled with happy people using products that change their lives and look at the actual world. It is dead. I think we would be forced to agree with Paul. It is dead. In fact, no major kind of worldview or philosophy is built on the assumption that everything is great, right? I don't know any religion that's like, "Everything's fine." No, there is something wrong. Everybody knows it. The question is, what is wrong with us? Well, Paul diagnoses not just our condition but the source of our condition. Paul says we are in something that causes this deadness. "And you were dead in," what? "The trespasses and sins in which you once walked." So Paul is mixing metaphors here. He is saying, "Look, you're dead but somehow are still walking around." like a zombie shambling its way down the road after the apocalypse. That is the picture here. Some of you guys didn't know zombies were in the Bible. There they are. And surprise, the zombie you find is the one staring at you in the mirror. We are walking in a pattern of death, in transgression and sin. Now, these two words work together. Transgression is when you cross the boundary line and you do something that you should not do, and a sin is when you fall short. So what's in view here is kind of a full picture of sin, that sin is— you're dead in this sin in which you both fall short of things you know you should do, and do things you know you should not do. I mean, just review your week, review your year, review your decade. Have there been any things that you think later on, I really should have done that? I should have been there for that person. I should have gone to my child when he was crying instead of been just going on with my day. I should have called that friend. Everybody has these. And there are things you know you should not have done. Words that you wish you could take back. Things that you said at work or to a spouse or to a child, right, or to a friend My friend, we all are aware of these things, and Paul is saying, "Listen, those aren't just occasional problems. That is something in which we walk. We're not dipping our toe in sin. We are in it, swimming in it." And Paul explains further in kind of almost morose detail what this looks like. We are in a pattern. In which we follow the world, we follow the devil, and we follow our flesh. First, we follow the world. John Stott has this to say. He says, "So both words, age and world, express a social value system which is alien to God. It permeates, indeed dominates, non-Christian society and holds people in captivity. Wherever human beings are being dehumanized by political oppression or bureaucratic tyranny, by an outlook that is secular, which is repudiating God, or an outlook that is amoral, repudiating right and wrong, or an outlook that is materialistic, which is glorifying the things we consume, by poverty and hunger or unemployment, racial discrimination, by any form of injustice, there, right there, we can detect the subhuman values of this age and this world. World. And here is the reality. It's not as though here's the world and we're like, "Uh-uh, we're not going over there." Paul says, "No, you're in it. You swim in the stream with the world, these values, this deadness that permeates." Not only that, it gets worse. "Following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." It's interesting that that language I was reading in one particular commentary of the prince of the power of the air, one of the things that may be referring to is kind of a gloomy darkness where— it's almost like this— where Satan is, things get dark and gloomy and cloudy such that it's hard to see the sun. He obscures who God is and right and wrong. And that spirit, it says, is now at work in the people who are disobedient, meaning the devil's children are all those who, well, follow the course of the world, follow willingly him. In a sense, the devil is the siren song, as we saw in Revelation, calling people to their doom. And yet when people listen to it, they follow willingly and joyfully right up until the very end.

6 · This unit continues the exposition of Ephesians 2:3, focusing on the role of the flesh—our own corrupted desires—in our spiritual deadness

And then we think, "Okay, well, listen, the deadness isn't our fault, right? I mean, these people are doing this to me. I mean, the world is over there pulling me. The devil is over there pulling me." And then Paul dives down further in verse 3, "Among whom we all once lived in the passions of"— whose flesh? "Our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind," which literally is our body and our mind. Now this perhaps is the most offensive thing among the many offensive things that Paul is saying here. He's saying that the problem is not just out there somewhere, the problem is in here. The problem is staring at us in the mirror. The language is that our flesh, our humanity apart from Christ, has passions and desires, and those desires are us saying along with the world and with Satan, yes, yes, we should disobey. We should disregard right and wrong. We should blur the line between justice and injustice or call evil justice and call injustice a good thing. This is what we want to do. Now, this is incredibly offensive because our world tells us over and over and over again that the problem and the fix are this. The problem is that you don't listen to your heart enough, and the fix is listen to your heart and do whatever it tells you. That's kind of our world's kind of assumption. Okay, great. The bad things are happening out there. The solution is this: follow your heart. We say with one famous filmmaker, ah, the heart wants what the heart wants. We must pursue it. We believe that our problems in life fall, well, from us either not listening to our biology or us not listening to what we desire in our minds. I mean, our biology, for example, our biology is wired toward sex. And then we say, well, great. If that's what we're wired to in our body, we must have it at all costs. If I find it outside of my marriage, fine. I must have it. Or the desires of our mind, that just, okay, I desire to do this, I want to do this, I must do this. But the Bible says there is actually deadness down the path of self-glorification, self sort of steering in life. Our deadness in sin means that many of the good things and the good desires that God has given us get twisted and turned and bent such that when we listen to our body and mind, often, sometimes, and often, it is destructive to ourselves and others. Do you know who coined the famous phrase, "The heart wants what the heart wants"? It was Woody Allen trying to explain why he left his wife for his stepdaughter. He was just listening to his heart.

7 · A brief, pointed illustration that exposes the moral bankruptcy of 'following your heart' by citing Woody Allen's use of that very phrase to justify immoral behavior

Do you know who coined the famous phrase, "The heart wants what the heart wants"? It was Woody Allen trying to explain why he left his wife for his stepdaughter. He was just listening to his heart.

8 · This unit completes the exposition of 'what we were' by establishing our trajectory apart from Christ: we were children of wrath, heading toward God's just judgment

Now, look, this is the state then we are in. There's deadness inside of us. We follow this world that is dead. We follow Satan who encourages us and calls us toward this path of deadness. And look then at our trajectory. Look at where we are heading as a result. It says this: "And we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." So if you could draw a trajectory line from where we are to where we are going, the trajectory is not positive. The trajectory is not just death, but justice, true justice, merciful justice from God who must judge evil and sin and wickedness, all of this. Leads us to an inevitable appointment before the throne of God where we would see God's justice roll down. That's who we were. That's what Paul says about it. That's what the Bible says over and over and over again. And if you're struggling with this at all and you're like, "Well, I don't know if the human condition is really that bad," I'd encourage you to walk through Romans 1 to 3. And you think, "Well, maybe there's other sections of the Bible that are more positive about our our condition. No, Paul in Romans 3 takes a string of pearls, as it were, from all the different parts of the Old Testament to build a portrait. No, no one is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks after God. And here's the reality, I think one of the reasons we resist this as human beings is if we could look all the way down into our heart of hearts, we know that it's true. We all do things we don't want to do, and we leave things undone that should be done. And we know that if we stood with our deeds and lives exposed, none of us could stand. That's where we were.

9 · A brief structural transition that shifts focus from the diagnosis (what we were) to the bridge humanity attempts to build across the gap (merit)

Now, look then at the gap. So here's where we were. Now here's the gap in the middle.

10 · This unit establishes that every worldview except Christianity attempts to bridge the gap between human deadness and desired life through merit—human effort and achievement

Every single worldview takes where we are, looks at where we are, and says, okay, that's a problem. We need to fix that. We need to figure out how to get from where we are to where we kind of want to be or desire to be. We want to get ourselves out of this deadness. And Ephesians 2, as we will talk much more about next week, Ephesians 2 gives us the human kind of bridge that we try to use over this gap. And the human bridge to solve the problem of where we are and where we want to be is this: merit. It's work. It's merit.

11 · This extended illustration uses social media culture to demonstrate the two dominant human strategies for achieving self-worth and life satisfaction: achievement-based merit ('rise and grind') and identity-based merit ('self-care')

Now, stick with me for a second here. There's two types of social media posts that I think are incredibly common in our world today. And maybe you fall into one of these two camps. I feel like there's the two warring camps on social media all the time. The first group is the rise and grind group. You guys are the people posting at like 5:00 AM or 4:30 AM at the gym, as early as you can, 3:55 AM at the gym. You know, getting in a quick 2 hours before the workday, you know. Or people posting about like these superfood healthy meals that you've constructed and somehow, like not cooked, you want them raw for some reason. God has given us fire and you're just like, no, we're just gonna do this, we're just gonna eat raw. Rejecting the good gift of God. And I'm just kidding. And so you're just like, okay, we're gonna do this. Or even perhaps it is career-oriented. Right? Boom, made this sale, did this deal, top seller, top this person, top that person, right? And you're just, you're like, boom, we're gonna, we're gonna like, and so here's, here's the reality. Our culture knows that there's a problem and knows, okay, we're here, we should be there, so the solution is rise and grind, let's do it, hard work, let's make it happen. I will manage more stores, I will make more money, I will have bigger biceps, whatever it is. And then the other group is like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to love yourself. You need to love your flaws. You need to love, you know, this part of your body. You need to love the fact that you haven't figured it out and you're 38 years old and you've had 10 careers. It's fine. Love yourself, right? Accept yourself. Self-care. You guys are doing the self-care posts. Self-care, it's always at Target. Self-care, a coffee, vitamins, you know, whatever, I don't know. And so you have the rise and grind people that are like, we will achieve where we want to be through straight up hard work and merit, and then the other group that's like, no, no, no, you already merit, you're already worth it, you're already wonderful, you're already perfect. And here's where they meet. I've noticed that everybody meets in the middle at the "you deserve it" post. You deserve this time off, you deserve this vacation, you deserve that relationship. And here's what's happening. Either you think, "I deserve it because of what I've done," or, "I deserve it because of who I am innately and I don't have to do anything." But either way, you're trying to get from who you are and where you are to where you want to be through merit. I deserve it.

12 · This unit expands the critique of merit-based salvation from secular culture to world religions and false forms of Christianity

And this is humanity as a whole. This is every philosophical system. This is every human culture. Every religion apart from Christ is built on merit, right? Maybe in the East you have an honor-shame society where you sacrifice for the community but merit inclusion because of your sacrifices. You do what needs to be done, but you merit being included and celebrated in the community. Or maybe there's a religious system where you pray enough or chant enough or ascend mentally enough or attend services enough so that you in the end will avoid hurt and merit blessing. I'm good enough because of these things I've done, therefore don't hurt me, and therefore I should get what I want. And this is everything from super legalistic churches on this end to super health and wealth churches on this end. Super legalistic churches, do this, wear this, you know, don't wear this, you have to wear this, you can only do this, and if you do, you'll merit getting what you want out of God. Or you need to believe, you need to give, you need to do all this stuff, and then you will merit what you want out of God.

13 · This unit identifies two fatal flaws in the merit-based approach: (1) human merit cannot cover the reality of who we are before a holy God, and (2) even if it could, it cannot bring spiritual life

Two problems with this. First, it doesn't solve the real issue. Listen, none of that merit can cover who we actually are. Look, on that last day when we are exposed before God, our merit will not pay the bill. Look, Scripture actually says that our righteousness, our merit, is as filthy rags when we hold it up in the light of the justice and purity of God. That's the problem. Even if you could merit something, well, you can't merit anything. And when you stand before God, you see how very little there is that you've merited at all. In fact, all you've merited is often more justice for your self-righteousness, rise-and-grind people, and self-righteousness in the "I'm worth it" camp. All of it is just more. Second, here's the second problem. It does not bring you to life. It cannot bring you to life.

14 · An extended analogy using the classic film Frankenstein to illustrate the failure of human merit to produce true life

Look, one of my favorite old movies, because I'm a weirdo and a nerd, is the classic black and white Universal movie Frankenstein. And even if you've never seen the movie, you've seen clips online or whatever with the crazy doctor going around yelling, "It's alive! It's alive!" You know, and he's saying, "I am God now. I've made it. Ha ha ha!" You know? And he, you know, raises the thing all the way up to the top and there's lightning. And then he brings it down and the hand twitches and the guy stands up and you're like— and he's really excited. But what is everybody else there thinking? That's not good. This is not going to end well. And then they ask the monster basically like, are you happy you're alive? And he's like, no, I'm a weird walking corpse. Now I got to— burn down a windmill, which is what happens in the movie. So here's the reality. All of our attempts, humanly speaking, to bridge the gap between who we are and where we are and who we want to be and where we want to be with merit are no better than us Frankenstein— Dr. Frankenstein— something to life that only leads to a kind of living death. Here's a reality. There is no life when it comes to merit. You might think, well, I feel more alive. No, no, no. It's just another kind of death. We just keep dying and bringing ourselves alive with all of these human systems. And maybe for a second you're like, well, my hand's twitching. No, that's not good. That's a zombie hand. Here is a reality. There is no life. Bridge from where we are to where we should be with human merit.

15 · This dense expositional unit unpacks Ephesians 2:4-8, establishing the divine solution to human deadness: God's intervention through mercy, grace, and love

"Not by works," Paul says. So what then is the solution? What then gets us from verse 3 to anywhere in the Bible? Those two glorious words in verse 4. But God. We're over here, this is where we should be and need to be, and we're just jumping off the cliff. And some people jump further than others, but there is no bridge, there is no hope, there is only a trajectory toward destruction. So what changes? Those two words change everything. But God. He intervenes, he steps into the gap. Look at verse 4, "But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us." And look at verse 5, "By grace you have been saved." Look at verse 8, "For by grace you have been saved." Why did God intervene? Why would God jump into the gap? Look at those 3 phrases in verse 4. He was rich in mercy. Mercy is is not getting what you deserve. We had a whole pile of things that we deserved. We think, "Oh, I deserve, I deserve this coffee." No, you deserve a lot more and you don't want to receive it. But God gives us in mercy— he does not give us, rather, in mercy what we deserve. And then he goes further. By grace, he gives us what we do not deserve. Do you see how glorious this is? Not only do we not receive what we deserve, we then receive what we do not deserve. That's insane. Either one of those would be insane, but both of them together is absolutely insane. Why would God do this? Look at the explanation in verse 8. 4, "But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us." Look, here's a reality. What did we have that merited the love of God? Nothing. Why then would God love us? This is perhaps the greatest mystery of all Scripture, greater than the Trinity, greater than the Incarnation, greater than even human sovereignty and divine— human responsibility and divine sovereignty, as we talked about a couple weeks ago. The greatest mystery, I think, in all of Scripture is this: why would God love love us? Why would he step in? And the explanation we get essentially in verse 4 is this: God loves us because he loves us. Why? Because he loves us. Why? Because he loves us. Look, friend, if you're here today, I want you to feel that. I want you to receive that. Why would God love you? You're aware of your faults, you're aware of your failures, you're aware of your brokenness and the things in your past you wish would never come out. Why would God step in for— in the middle of this gap for you? Why would he do that? Because he loves you. The most insane mystery in all of Scripture. What moved God toward our living dead corpse headed for judgment? Nothing in us. His mercy, his grace, his love. We just sang that song. One of the— that's one of the best lines, I think, in kind of modern worship lyrics, the line, "You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same." I mean, that is— that's what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4:6. For. Now, perhaps though you're saying, well, listen, he loves us, but don't we do a little bit of something? Don't we have to reach out? Don't we have to believe? Don't we have to kind of choose to follow God? I mean, so God does maybe 90% of the work or 99% of the work, but we also are in there, man. We're also kind of— we're grabbing the hand that's going to save us. No, no, no. Notice then the phrasing: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. Job. Tony Meredith says this: Notice what Paul says, 'It is God's gift.' It includes faith. The grammar indicates that the whole of salvation is to be viewed as a gift. Grace is a gift. Faith is a gift. Salvation is a gift. We should never think of salvation as a transaction in which God provides grace and we provide faith. No, it is all grace. As we talked about a few weeks ago, what brings a lifeless body on the bottom of the ocean to life? It is not that lifeless body grabbing a life preserver. It is the God of the universe diving into the depths after it, bringing us to the surface and bringing us to life.

16 · This unit exposits the three-stage transformation described in Ephesians 2:5-6: made alive with Christ, raised up with Christ, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places

Now, look, briefly, I want to lay out then how wide the gap is between who we are who we were and who we are in Christ. So listen to this, who we are. Verse 4, "But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses," Paul wants us to get that, "even when that, made us alive together with Christ." And then he interrupts himself, "By grace you have been saved." Look, these phrases, "made us alive together with Christ," and then verse 6, "raised us up with him," and then the next phrase, "seated us with him," these three These 3 phrases, oh, are some of the most glorious phrases in all of Scripture. Think of it. He— listen to what it's saying. We're dead at the bottom of the ocean, and so God does 3 things. First, he dives in after us and he makes us alive. He sparks our heart. In the Old Testament language, he takes our heart of stone out, gives us a heart of flesh. He transplants our heart at the bottom of the ocean floor, brings it to life. Doesn't stop there, raises us up with Christ when he rose from the dead. And then he doesn't just stop there. He then raises us further and seats us with him in the heavenly places. Look, salvation is not just us going from the bottom of the ocean floor to the boat on the surface of the ocean. Salvation is us going from the bottom of the ocean floor to an alive heart, to the boat, into the heavens forever. I mean, that gap could not be wider. How then is this possible? How then is this possible? Because of a prefix. All the grammar nerds are like, "Oh yeah." The prefix "syn," right? S-Y-N. Tony Merida talks about how Paul actually coins those, he modifies the three normal words to to be with Christ. So, made alive with Christ, raised with Christ, seated with Christ. He says this about it. Paul uses a compound word to declare that we have been raised together, synerogen, which has the prefix syn. We know this from computers. We get the word sync from it, short for synchronize. We sync our phones with our computers in order to transfer the music on the computer to the phone. Well, we were synced with Christ. What God did for Christ, he did at the same time for believers. In some astonishing way, when Jesus Christ got out of the tomb 2,000 years ago, you, Christian, got up with him. Now, how is it possible? Because of grace, we were united with Christ such that all that Christ accomplished We were, in a sense, synced with, that we might go from death to life, from the tomb to an empty tomb, from an empty tomb to the heavens themselves.

17 · This unit exposits Ephesians 2:7, explaining how the trajectory of believers has shifted from judgment to eternal blessing

And look then at our trajectory. Look at how our trajectory utterly changes. Once it was headed toward destruction, verse 7, he did all of this so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. It means, church, that in the ages to come, God's purpose, God's intent is to use those ages to show for us, to show to us the rich storehouse of favor and kindness that is pointed toward us in Christ. If you could say it this way, going from death to life, from the bottom of the ocean to the boat, from the bottom— from the boat to the heavens, and God says, "We're not even done yet. In the ages to come, I have storehouses of grace to pour out. Just wait." Do you see how wide the gap is, church? The gap between who we were and who we now are in Christ, between where we were going and where we are going now in Christ.

18 · The pastor returns to the opening illustration, now revealing its punchline: the man's physical resurrection was not as great a miracle as his spiritual resurrection

Look, the Christian brother I told you about at the beginning who drowned and then came back to life would often tell people, he'd often kind of share this story with a smile and say, "Hey, let me tell you about the greatest miracle in my life." And so he would describe this story about dying dramatically at a camp. With unsafe electrical wiring and coming back to life. And then he would smile and say, "But that's not the day I became a Christian." In fact, after— this is what's crazy about that story— after that, like, he literally dies, comes back to life, everybody who prayed for him is like, "God is alive!" Right? You get one of those moments like, "Yes, Lord!" And do you think at that moment he became a Christian? No. And I was just like, bro, what is wrong with you? He's like, I know, I know. He dies, comes back to life, and his response is, that's crazy. Dang. Anyway, you know, just, he just keeps going in life. And then he would recount how one day as he read the Bible, God made him alive. And he says it was like a switch coming on in his mind where he understood who he once was and where he was going— who he was, rather, and where he was going, and what God in Christ offers to do for him. And in that moment, he doesn't even remember having faith. All he remembers is he was dead and all of a sudden is alive with Christ. And he would say, that is the greatest miracle of my life.

19 · This extended application unit addresses both non-Christians and the church

Look, this, this is my burden, guys. Our world is filled with with Dr. Frankensteins, including us, who are in vain trying to bring— to take our deadness and make something alive out of it. Because deep down we know something is very wrong with us. So we try this and we try that, this best-selling book and this religion and this rise-and-grind thing and this love-yourself trajectory, and all of it is just restarting a heart back into a state of deadness in which we follow our hearts to the grave, which we follow the world to the grave, follow Satan to the grave, all of it over and over and over. But God offers something better. I think it's so telling in Frankenstein that the doctor, when he brings the Frankenstein monster to life, he doesn't shout, "He's alive." He shouts, "It's alive," which I feel like is such a tell— it's like, yeah, that sums up the human experience. It— I don't know what it is, and it's kind of gross, but it's kind of alive. But God offers something better in Christ. The pronouncement over Jesus is, "He is alive." He is alive, and the pronouncement over every person, man or woman, who places their faith in Christ is he is now alive too, she is now alive too. Look, I want you to get this. Fundamentally, what Christianity offers is not help for parenting. It's not saving somebody's marriage. It's not helping somebody succeed more at work. It's not helping somebody, you know, feel more peace, and all of those things and none of those things are bad, but fundamentally the poster hanging out in front of every church should not be "Help for Parenting" or "You'll Have More Peace at Home" and "Relieve Your Anxiety." The poster hanging out in front of every Christian and every church should be this: "Resurrections Offered Here." Because what we have to offer the world is not just a little bit of help here, a little bit of help there. It is death to life. And look, if you're not a Christian today, I don't think it's an accident that God brought you to our church. And I just want to encourage you, if you feel something sparking in your heart that you have not before, that is the Lord at work in you. And I just want to encourage you, what you need fundamentally is not a better method of doing life. It is A new life, and it's offered in Christ, and he offers to save you. Romans 3 says this: Through faith, this salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, including you, including every one of us, and all are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Oh, friend, if you would repent of your sins, if you would cling to Christ in faith, he'll bring you from death to life today. He'll change your trajectory today.

20 · A pastoral charge to the congregation to center their identity and mission on the grace of God

And listen, as we close, I just want to say this as a church. If you have noticed, our church name is Cross of Grace. And sometimes when I tell people that, they're just like, "Oh, that sounds nice," you know? I don't know, I haven't found anybody that's, like, offended by that. "How dare you? How dare you?" You know, usually when I tell people, they're like, "Oh, nice," you know? Grace is a nice word in our culture. Here is my burden. That in a city filled with religion and even filled with crosses that people wear around their neck or put in their home and have no idea what it really means, in a city filled with religion, that we hold out and hold up the cross of the grace of God. That is what every neighbor you have truly longs for. I think it's Keller who says that the deepest desire of the human heart can be summed up in this: that we desire to be fully known and fully loved. That is impossible in the world because as soon as we're fully known, we will never be fully loved. Only God offers both, that he sees into the depths of our hearts and still loves us. That you can't get anywhere else. So, church, may we be faithful that in all we do and all we hold out to the world around us, we hold out by all means encouragement and help and practical neighborliness and working hard and parenting well, that we do all those things, as we'll talk about, to the glory of God. But the predominant thing, the source of the stream of our Christian life, as it were, would be the grace of God. And next week we'll talk a bit about about what that looks like.

21 · A brief transitional statement signaling the end of the sermon and the beginning of the closing prayer and worship

Would you stand and let's end here and pray.

22 · The closing prayer asks God to seal the truth of grace in the congregation's hearts and to keep them perpetually amazed at the gap between who they were and who they are in Christ

Lord, I pray that as we sing about your grace, you would seal the reality of the grace of God in our hearts. Lord, may we walk around just aware, just amazed of who we once were and who we are, where we were going and where we are going. Lord, may that gap filled with the grace of God Amaze us for our entire Christian lives. We pray for your help. We pray that you would keep us amazed. In Jesus' name, amen.

Where this fits

Recent preaching context

The three sermons immediately preceding this one in the preaching schedule.

Aug 28, 2022

Grace in the Mundane

Every mundane moment of the Christian life—from our conversion story to our daily identity to our ongoing sanctification—is saturated with God's radical, unmerited grace, which both saves us decisively and sustains us continuously.

Ephesians 1:1-2

Sep 4, 2022

Consider Me Underwhelmed

Overwhelmed with blessing in Christ, we should overflow in blessing to God.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Sep 11, 2022

Sovereign Grace At the Bottom of It All

Saving grace is sovereign grace—God not only offers salvation to spiritually dead sinners but sovereignly chooses and effectually calls them to himself, making this doctrine a foundation for profound humility, gratitude, and worship.

Ephesians 1:3-5

September 25 · This sermon

It's Alive! It's Alive!

The gap between our spiritual deadness apart from Christ and the resurrection life we have in Christ is filled entirely by God's grace—not by human merit—and that gap is as wide as death to life.

Ephesians 2:1-10

Earlier in the corpus · January 29, 2023

A prior sermon on Ephesians 2:8-10

You preached this same passage — 6 Ephesians 2 citations in that earlier sermon. Worth re-reading before the next time this text comes around.

Take it further

Discuss · apply · pray

Small groups

6 discussion questions

When Paul describes us as 'dead in trespasses and sins' in Ephesians 2:1-3, what does he mean by dead? What are the signs of this spiritual…

Daily readings

5-day reading plan

This week we walk through the gap between spiritual death and resurrection life in Christ—a gap so wide that only God's grace can bridge it, and that truth reshapes everything we believe about salvation.

Prayer

Prayer: From Death to Life in Christ

Father, we come before you in awe of your character—merciful, gracious, and abounding in love. You see us in our spiritual deadness, trapped…

Family table

From Dead to Alive

This sermon is about the massive gap between spiritual death (who we were apart from Christ) and new life in Christ—and that God alone close…

Couples

From Dead to Alive Together

What part of the sermon most clearly showed you the gap between spiritual death and the life Christ gives—and how did that land in your hear…

Memorize

Ephesians 2:4-5

This verse is the hinge of the entire sermon: it names the gap between spiritual death and resurrection life, and it attributes that gap entirely to God's mercy and grace, not to human merit. It is the verse that answers the sermon's central question—how wide is the gap, and who closes it?

Daily readings · Monday–Friday

5-day reading plan

Monday Romans 3:22-24

Paul dismantles every system built on human achievement: there is no difference, no boasting, no works that justify us before God. The righteousness of God comes to us as a gift—*apart from the law*—because merit cannot do what only grace can do. This is the foundation: human effort fails at the deepest level, and we must stop expecting it to save us.

Tuesday Romans 1-3

Paul's indictment in Romans 1-3 is total: all have sinned, none are righteous, the whole world is guilty before God. No amount of moral effort can undo sin already committed or generate the life only resurrection can bring. We are not just badly wounded; we are dead—and the dead cannot heal themselves.

Wednesday Revelation (Satan as siren song)

Satan does not shout at us from across a chasm; he calls from within our own desires, making sin feel like freedom and wisdom. We follow him, the world, and the flesh not because we are forced but because our deadness makes us vulnerable to his seduction. This is not mere weakness—it is slavery to powers we cannot escape on our own.

Thursday Ephesians 2:4-8

Here is where the sermon pivots: God's mercy and love do not meet us halfway. While we were still dead—still enslaved, still guilty—God made us alive with Christ, raised us with Him, and seated us in the heavenly places. The gift is not improvement; it is resurrection. The width of the gap is the measure of the grace.

Friday Romans 3

The world offers us self-improvement, better habits, moral progress. But Paul declares that what we actually need is justification—a declaration of righteousness we cannot earn—and the life of Christ flowing through us. When the church tempts people with anything less than resurrection and grace, we have abandoned our message and sold a lesser gospel.

Draft · pending review

Pray together this week

Prayer: From Death to Life in Christ

Father, we come before you in awe of your character—merciful, gracious, and abounding in love. You see us in our spiritual deadness, trapped in trespasses and sins, following the patterns of this world and the desires of our flesh. Yet you do not leave us there. You do not demand that we earn our way back to you through merit or effort. Instead, you come after us with compassion that we have done nothing to deserve.

We confess that apart from Christ, we are dead. We cannot resurrect ourselves. We cannot bridge the gap between our deadness and the life we desperately need through any work of our own hands or any striving of our hearts. Every attempt to earn your favor through our own righteousness falls short. We acknowledge the width of that gap—as wide as death to life—and we acknowledge that we cannot cross it alone.

But Father, here is our joy: you have made us alive together with Christ. You have raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:4-6). The gap between who we were and who we are in Christ is filled entirely by your grace, by your mercy, by your love poured out through Jesus. We receive this gift with open hands, not because we earned it, but because you freely give it.

Give us grace this week to live in the reality of our resurrection. Awaken us to the fact that we are no longer spiritually dead but alive in Christ. Help us to offer this good news to a world still walking in trespasses and sins—not a self-help message, but the message of new life, of resurrection, of grace alone. And bind our hearts together as a church family, unified in the truth that our salvation is entirely your work, not ours. To you be the glory, forever and ever.

Draft · pending review

Sunday-evening family table

From Dead to Alive

For the parent

This sermon is about the massive gap between spiritual death (who we were apart from Christ) and new life in Christ—and that God alone closes that gap through grace. Use this prompt to help your family see that the gap is real, and that only Jesus bridges it.

In the sermon, Ricky talked about being spiritually dead—like a phone with a dead battery that can't do anything on its own. What does it look like when someone is spiritually dead? (Think about what they're following, where they're heading, what they're believing about themselves.) And then—what changed when Jesus made you alive?

Works for ages 7+. Younger kids can answer with one sentence; older kids and teens will go deeper into the before-and-after.

Draft · pending review

Couples · three questions over coffee

From Dead to Alive Together

What part of the sermon most clearly showed you the gap between spiritual death and the life Christ gives—and how did that land in your heart?
Where do you see each other still trying to earn God's favor or prove your worth, rather than resting in the grace that's already yours in Christ? How can you help each other believe that gift more fully?
What is one way the resurrection life Paul describes in this passage could transform how we love each other this week—and will you pray for that together?

Draft · pending review

Memory verse this week

Ephesians 2:4-5

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.

Why this verse: This verse is the hinge of the entire sermon: it names the gap between spiritual death and resurrection life, and it attributes that gap entirely to God's mercy and grace, not to human merit. It is the verse that answers the sermon's central question—how wide is the gap, and who closes it?

Draft · pending review

Small-group discussion

6 questions for your group this week

When Paul describes us as 'dead in trespasses and sins' in Ephesians 2:1-3, what does he mean by dead? What are the signs of this spiritual deadness that he lists—the ways we were 'following the prince of the power of the air' and 'gratifying the desires of the flesh'?

Ephesians 2:1-3

→ Can you think of a time when you realized you were powerless to change something in your life on your own? What did that powerlessness feel like?
The sermon says that 'every worldview apart from Christianity attempts to bridge the gap from deadness to life through human merit and effort.' What does that look like practically? What is the world telling you that you need to do, become, or achieve in order to have a better life?
Read Ephesians 2:4-8 together. Notice the shift in the text—from what we were to what God has done. What does Paul say God does for us? What is the role of mercy, grace, and love in closing the gap between spiritual death and new life?

Ephesians 2:4-8

→ Why do you think Paul emphasizes so heavily in verses 8-9 that this is 'by grace...not by works'? What happens if we start to believe we contributed something to our salvation?
The sermon claims that 'human merit fails on two counts: it cannot cover our sin before God, and it cannot bring us from death to life.' If that's true, why do we keep trying to earn God's favor? What does that attempt look like in your own spiritual life?

Romans 3:22-24
Paul tells us that God has not only made us alive with Christ and raised us with Him—He has seated us with Him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:5-6). What does it mean practically to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places right now, today, in your ordinary Tuesday?

Ephesians 2:5-6

→ How would your week change if you actually believed that claim—not just intellectually, but in your bones?
The sermon ends by saying 'the fundamental need of every human being is not a better life but a new life—resurrection from spiritual death.' When you think about the people in your life who don't know Christ, are you offering them solutions for a better life, or are you pointing them to the resurrection life that only comes through Christ? What's the difference?

Draft · pending review

Where this was preached

About the church

Cross of Grace Church

About us · What we believe

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# Cross of Grace Church

A church preaching expository sermons through the books of the Bible.

## Sermons
- [Grace in the Mundane (Ephesians 1:1-2, 2022-08-28)](/CoGElPaso/sermons/2022/08/grace-in-the-mundane)
- [Consider Me Underwhelmed (Ephesians 1:3-14, 2022-09-04)](/CoGElPaso/sermons/2022/09/consider-me-underwhelmed)
- [Sovereign Grace At the Bottom of It All (Ephesians 1:3-5, 2022-09-11)](/CoGElPaso/sermons/2022/09/sovereign-grace-at-the-bottom-of-it-all)
- [It's Alive! It's Alive! (Ephesians 2:1-10, 2022-09-25)](/CoGElPaso/sermons/2022/09/it-s-alive-it-s-alive)

## About
- [About the church](/about)
- [Plan a visit](/visit)

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