Grace and Glory

So, this is another short talk I wrote for a Sunday service I was asked to do, this time at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen earlier in the year.  I meant to upload it ages ago and somehow never got around to it, but it's interesting to note that discussions of the topic of grace have characterized much of the rest of the year and the talk I gave at an English-teaching bible camp in Hungary had a very similar theme - one I felt much more confident to talk on having looked at this passage.

As Christians, no matter how sound we may think our doctrine is, we always need to be reminded of God's grace, so I hope this will be of benefit to you.  If you're not a Christian, then my hope for you is doubly strong.  This is the greatest gift on offer in the universe and I implore anyone to whom the message is given, please, accept it.

The reading for this talk is Ephesians 2:1-10.  If you can turn to it now, that would help, then click on the jump!

            Grace.  Irish rock band U2 wrote a song about it that called it ‘a thought that changed the world’.  There’s some truth in that.  Certainly the world is a better place when we demonstrate acts of grace in our lives - in our dealings with those around us.  Grace means giving freely of ourselves and freely forgiving other people.

            There’s a lot about grace in today’s reading.  It is mentioned explicitly in three out of ten verses and it’s implicitly contained in another three.  That’s an awful lot of grace for such a short passage.  We are being given a very clear message with a definite purpose.

            But let’s zoom out a bit first to get the context and take in the larger picture of the book of Ephesians.  Like much of the rest of the New Testament it is a letter and like most of the letters it was written by the Apostle Paul.  Paul was in prison at the time, suffering for preaching about Christ across the Roman Empire, but he kept in touch with the churches he had helped to build and the church in Ephesus, one of the furthest from his place of imprisonment, was one he was particularly attached to.  In Acts chapter 20 we see his emotional farewell to the elders of the Ephesian church and it is clear from that passage that he had built a very strong, godly relationship with that fellowship.

            It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise then to find that the letter to the Ephesians is, of all the letters Paul wrote, probably the least aimed at correcting error in the church and is instead a letter of encouragement, to strengthen and build up the fellowship so that the church there can be as a church of Christ should be: a light to the world, glorifying God.  It is very likely, however, that Paul did not send this letter to the Ephesians alone, but to all the churches he had contact with and they were probably encouraged to pass it on, for this is not a message of favouritism, but of unity in Christ, that the Church with a big C might more resemble him.

            To this end Paul writes of many different aspects of church life, from our unity in Christ, to the way that individuals within a fellowship should treat one another in love.  Today’s passage comes relatively near the beginning, whilst Paul is still speaking of all that God has done to allow there to even be a church, and it fits in as a clear and concise message of how God has saved us, taking us out of the world to be a separate people, set aside for him.  The focus at this stage, however, is on God, not on the church he saves and that is for one very good reason: grace.

            Chapter two begins with a reminder of where we were before God intervened: dead.  As part of the World - fallen humanity in rebellion against God - we had no spiritual life whatsoever and were in fact in league with the enemy, ‘the ruler of the Kingdom of the air’.  Because of this we gratified the desires of our flesh, which in this context means our sinful nature – the part of us which drives our rebellion – and so we were deserving of judgement and punishment from God.

            Let’s pause there for a moment.  In just three verses Paul has managed to sum up the true nature of the human condition after the fall and to say that it is a bleak summary is to vastly understate the severity of it.

Firstly, we were dead!  The World likes to tell us that there is nothing worse than death and yet here the Bible tells us that that is exactly what we are without God.

Secondly, we were Satanic: everything we did, whether we were doing it deliberately or not, was underneath the kingship of the devil and was part of a purposeful, directed attack against God’s right and true sovereignty.

Finally, we were awaiting sentence.  God’s judgement hung over us and there was only ever going to be one verdict: guilty!

In any talk about the grace of God, it’s easy to want to skip over the darker material to revel in the light that we have been given.  It’s easy, too, to pretend that the disobedient that Paul speaks of in verse one are other people, wicked people, the kind who make tabloid headlines or appear on Crimewatch, the kind who ruin your bus journey or  who you see in the street and, disapproving, turn away.  When we do that, it belittles the grace that follows, or, through subtle means and clever diversions, ignores it altogether.  “I don’t really need God’s grace” is the thought behind many of the World’s actions, whether they acknowledge the possibility of God or not.  So let’s let this sink in: we are all sinners, deserving of God’s wrath, and being dead, we can do nothing about it.

‘But’.

            One word in our English translations, and yet such a blessed relief.  Here, ‘but’ tells us that there is more to this story than merely the horror of human nature.  It tells us that there is hope after all, ‘but’ it does not come from any merely human effort.

            ‘But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ – even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace that you have been saved.’

            I could probably finish this talk right here, because in many ways verses four and five tell us all we need to know about how God saves.  We see that he does it because he loves us.  He does it because he is rich in mercy.  He does it because he is full of grace.

It is certainly not because of anything inherent in us that this comes to pass.  The first three verses made it more than clear that there is nothing innately lovely about us that God should be compelled to do this.  It is his choice.  He chooses to love us and he chooses to show us mercy, and thus he shows us grace, because in choosing to do that which he has no pressure upon him to undertake, God gives utterly freely, even so far as to send his son to die on our behalf, raising him to life that we might have that life too.

            And that would be enough, but God goes further.

As Paul explains in verse six, God raises us up from the dead with Christ, but then takes us with him further into glory – not merely cancelling out our sorry state but reversing it completely, so that we too may be seated in the heavenly realms.

Can you imagine it?  Once enemies of God, yet now in a place of honour in his courts!

            And all of this, Paul explains, is full of purpose.  The good works we do, and which the World tells us are the only path to salvation and a better humanity, in fact flow from the this same grace and have been prepared for us by God that we might reveal that grace to the World and glorify God.

            Because, in the end, that’s what all this – Life, the Universe and Everything - is about.  We are here to glorify God.  Anything else is the very rebellion and sin from which he saves us.

Paul’s language gives away the reason why that is completely right and proper.  We do not have a proud, selfish God, one who merely wants the universe to revolve around him, but a God who gives freely of himself with a grace so astounding that Paul seems almost uncertain as to whether he is able to really express it.  He repeats it again and again in different ways as he tries to get his head around it, to make sure that, somehow, the point comes across.  He seems staggered by the fullness of it all.

And when we see how far God takes us in salvation, from death to life, from enemy to beloved guest, how can we not be staggered by such amazing grace?  How can we ever even begin to comprehend?

Fortunately we do not have to, but we respond as we can, in praise and worship of him who loves us, who is rich in mercy and incomparably rich in grace.  There’s a phrase Paul uses several times throughout the letter to the Ephesians: ‘to the praise of his glory’.  That’s the purpose of God’s grace and the only right response to it, for he unites grace and glory in his very being and we can marvel at it.

Amen.