Sunday, September 23, 2007
Ephesians 2:4-10
Senior Pastor
Did you know you were once dead through your trespasses? That is a strong statement when being applied to all of humanity. You were dead through your trespasses or your sins. Yet, that is the metaphor that this writer is using to draw a sharp contrast between life without Christ versus life with Christ. Obviously since he is writing to people who are physically alive, he is using death in a symbolic way. In verse 5 it not only says you were dead through your trespasses but that you were made alive in Christ.
Now this is the dynamic that Christians have seen from the beginning in terms of our relationship with God. That is, our trespasses or sins separate us from God. This separation in the words of our text today also steals life from us. What this means precisely has been defined in a variety of ways by different Christian thinkers and denominations across the ages.
Most Christian thinkers use the concept of Sin (with a capital “S”) to describe this condition. Often theologians use the notion of original sin to describe the human predicament - in that humans are born into a state of separation and only through Christ can that separation be spanned. It is not that babies are born bad, but that babies are born with the nature to be selfish and self-centered and therefore to resist serving God as they grow up.
There are a couple of basic distinctions that we should understand here. Some thinkers describe this state of separation as total depravity. That is we can do no good thing without God’s grace changing us because we are completely under the power of sin or evil. Other thinkers believe that is too strong and that we see more of a mixed record of good and bad in the behavior of humans before God’s grace changes us. A third group would even suggest that we have the choice to do good or bad before and after we encounter God’s grace. Yet, however these different lines of thought describe Sin they all agree that humans need the help of God to experience life abundant and life eternal.
And that is where we as Methodists believe the focus should be. We want to stress grace over sin. We want to make sure we have a proper balance. We want our emphasis to be Biblically based and to reflect God’s character as portrayed there. As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Romans 5). We can see this in our text today from Ephesians as this chapter begins with three verses on sin and then shifts in verse 4 to say, But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. Then the entire rest of chapter 2 speaks of the work of God’s great love which we call grace.
William Hinson, before his death was the pastor of the largest United Methodist Church of his day in Houston, Texas. After his retirement he moved back to Georgia where he had been raised. He began to write down stories from his life. Once such story tells of how, when his mother came to visit, they would visit the cemetery where many family members were buried. One grave was that of his sister who had died at the age of four from diphtheria. He writes that each time, as they began to leave the cemetery, his mother would begin to recall Janelle his sister and what she was like and what life with her had been. Hinson says he could tell that story frontwards and backwards because he has heard it so many times. It’s not that Mother is getting too old to remember that she has told me. No, it is because she is still doing her grief work and she understands that I am one who will listen and do that work with her.
There were six children, and I realized a long time ago that “if my mother had had fifty children instead of six, she would still grieve about Janelle. She will never be complete until she has that entire circle together. She will never be totally herself until she has them all together under her touch, under her wings, as it were.”
“You say, ‘Of course that’s true with mothers!’ Well, if that’s true with human love, how much more the divine love? If we cannot limit a mother’s love, if we understand that it doesn’t matter how many children she has, that she loves each one of them as though he/she is the only one she has to love, if we understand that about mothers, why can’t we understand that about the Heavenly Father?”
(Lord, He Went, p. 21 by Stan Copeland)
We want to stress God’s grace, that is God’s unmerited love or favor toward us. We think this makes for a better balance in life and theology. That is why Wesley during the days of leading the Methodist movement worked out this three-part movement of grace that he emphasized. In Wesley’s thought and still today in Methodism, it is important to grasp these three facets of God’s work in our lives and in our world.
I can identify this process in my life – can you? In my life I had parents and grandparents working to help me understand God’s love before I was old enough to understand it. That is prevenient grace. Yet, I had to grow to a certain age before I could understand and embrace God’s love for myself and respond to it of my own freewill. There are a number of important experiences in my life where I responded to the sense that God was at work in my life for good. That is justifying grace. Then as I grow older I have more and more opportunities to be faithful in my response and God helps me by strengthening and encouraging and prompting and leading me. It is sanctifying grace at work in an ongoing manner. I don’t get it right all the time, but God does not give up on me.
We can identify this three-part movement in our text today from Ephesians. In verse 5 it says, even when we were dead in our trespasses God was at work in our lives. That is prevenient grace – grace that comes before. We believe that God’s love surrounds us even before we are aware of it and even if we resist it.
Then in verse 8 we can see clearly justifying grace when it says: For by grace you have been saved by faith. You have been saved or made whole or placed in right relationship with God because of God’s gift of love (grace) being offered to us in Jesus Christ and by our responding in faith. This is the experience of justification or more commonly called salvation. It may be a sudden or a gradual experience.
Then in verse 10 it describes sanctifying grace when it says, For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. This is what God does in us once we open our lives to that mighty love that is being extended to us. This process of sanctification or growing in grace is the maturing process of choosing discipleship as a way of life.
But this is not only operative in my life. Methodists claim this same three-phase process is descriptive of God’s work in the life of every individual. No matter how outwardly good or bad, creative or destructive, giving or hoarding they are. We believe God is at work for good in their lives. Our job is to help them see it and receive it and respond to it so that we are in cooperation with God’s love at work.
In 1996 Claudia Lovelace was on her way to prison. She had not experienced much love in her life. Childhood was a living nightmare. Now she was an adult and had made a number of poor decisions. When the judge sentenced her to prison she asked for a Bible and the AA “Big Book.” During her time in prison she read those books and began watching Christian TV programs. She recalls how one day in a freezing cold cell she looked up and said, “Lord, you can have me. I give my life to you. With me running it, this where I’ve landed. I’m tired of dusting myself off.”
Along the way she ran into some of our Methodist criminal justice ministries. She became involved in our Penn Avenue Redemption Church. When she was released from prison in 1998 she continued her relationship with that church. She went back to school at OCU the next year and began to discern a call into ministry. In 2000 she was commissioned as a United Methodist missionary and assigned to that same Penn Avenue Church. In 2002 she graduated magna cum laude at OCU and enrolled at Perkins School of Theology at SMU.
She says one time as a young child in California a friend took her to Sunday school. Another time she got to go to camp as a teen. “That camp and that Sunday school were my way of knowing John Wesley’s prevenient grace.” (Contact The Magazine, 9/07)
Can’t you see the power and the importance of understanding this dynamic work of God’s grace in the world?
That is why we want to extend the hospitality of Christ to
any and all who may come here seeking God.
It doesn’t matter if they are a criminal or an addict, a tax evader or
an adulterer; maybe they only come to church on Easter or Christmas; maybe
they don’t even really believe that God could love them. It doesn’t matter because we know that
God does love them.
We know Christ set up the church to be that vehicle where people encounter that life-changing love. Methodists believe that God loves all of us and we want our church families to reflect that in our life together. I am proud to be a part of a church like that.
Ephesians
2:4-10 9/23/07
…a sharp contrast between life without Christ
versus life ________ Christ.
Most Christian thinkers use the concept of S____ to
describe
this condition.
…humans need the help of ______ to experience life…
We want to stress __________ over sin.
“Well, if that’s true with human love,
how much more the ____________ love?”
We want to stress God’s grace, that is, God’s unmerited
love
or favor toward ____.
…____ -part movement of grace that he emphasized.
v. 5… even when we were dead in our trespasses God
was
at work… …prevenient grace – grace that comes before.
…v. 8 we can see clearly justifying grace when it
says:
For by __________ you have been saved by __________.
…v. 10… describes sanctifying grace… For we are what
he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works…
…this same three-phase process is descriptive of God’s
work
in the life of __________ individual.
In 1996 Claudia Lovelace was on her way to ____________.
In 2002 she __________________… at ___ ___ ___…
…maybe they don’t even really believe that God could
love them. …we
know that God does ________ them.
Kid’s Question:
God’s unmerited love or favor
toward us is called __________.