Sermon Devotional: Present with Jesus

Scripture: Ephesians 2:4-6 (NIV)

             
Today’s passage ends with the wonderful proclamation that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). A glorious proclamation, indeed!

Yet, for those of us in the church who repeatedly hear the affirmation that Jesus is our Savior, it is possible that, because of this repeated assurance, we receive the statement that “God raised us up with Christ” a bit more casually than we should. There is a crucially important preamble to this wonderful assurance of being resurrected with Christ.

Paul tells the brethren at Ephesus, and us, that “. . . we were dead” (2:5). Dead. Grasping this is key to rightly understanding and fully appreciating the stunning reality of being raised up and seated with Christ.

All of us encounter trials and difficulties which challenge, discourage, and sometimes hurt us. For most of us, life is not easy. We all need and appreciate encouragement and affirmation. Paul begins virtually all his letters, including his letter to the Ephesians, with “grace and peace to you” (1:2). We all need grace and peace. We all need to be reminded time and again that our God is a God of grace and peace. This is why a weekly part of worship services in many churches is passing the peace . . . looking each other in the eye and saying, “The peace of Christ be with you,” to which one responds, “And also with you.”

A proper understanding and full appreciation of the gift of God’s grace and peace is grounded in an awareness that we were once dead, “dead in transgressions” (2:5; also 2:1). We were not dead because of what someone else did to us. We were dead in, dead because of, our own sins. And people who are dead cannot make themselves alive. People who are dead, whether physically or spiritually, are entirely incapable of doing anything to raise themselves.

But because of God’s “great love for us” (2:4) this is not the end of the story. Because God is “rich in mercy” (2:4), being dead in sin is not the last word. For God “made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (2:5). One could say “precisely when” we were dead due to sin. This is an unpacking of the “grace and peace” (1:2) with which Paul begins this letter. As he says here (2:5; also vv. 8-9), “it is by grace you have been saved.” This is the outworking of “his great love for us” (2:4). This is the gift—pure gift—of a God who is “rich in mercy” (2:4).

And this is all accomplished in and through Christ . . . not by us. (Remember, it is pure gift.) In God’s love and mercy and grace he has “raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (2:6). This is not a spatial or geographical raising—for now, we live with and for Christ here on earth. But it is a spiritual resurrection into a new life in Christ. And this is not a reality that is only out before us in the future . . . this is a reality—mysterious, but nonetheless real—now. God has done this. God has “raised” us with Christ. With Christ and the Spirit of Christ in us may we seek, by grace, to live in the light of this reality.

Consider –
╬   In the church calendar Easter—Resurrection Day!—is preceded by Good Friday. You can’t get to Easter without passing through Good Friday. What would it mean for us to acknowledge the reality of “Good Fridays” in our own lives? What would it mean for us to live in the light of our being seated today with Christ?

╬   Thank you, thank you Father, for sending Christ even when we were dead in our sins. Thank you Jesus for dying for us even when we were dead in our sins. Thank you God for raising Christ and for raising us with him. Amen.