Ephesians 2:8 - Hold out your hand...

"For by the grace you[all] are having been saved through faith.  And this not out of you, [it is] the gift of God, not out of works, in order that someone should not boast."

-I was dead.  I was a child of wrath, stuck in my sins, separated from the life of God and disobeying Him at every turn, unable to do what He wanted or please Him in any way whatsoever.  AND I was hurtling towards destruction as a result, lost for all eternity apart from my Creator, forever separated from all glory and goodness and beauty and light.  But God (that blessed but!) - He stepped in and saved me.  He rescued me... from me.  He made me alive with Christ and raised me up and seated me with Christ in glory, one day soon to be there forever.  No more dying or death, and no more living a life unable to bring God pleasure.  Just the opposite in fact!  And all this, every last bit, is by His grace.  Undeserved favor.  I have done not one thing, absolutely nothing to deserve to be saved, not in the least.  But I have done one thing, the one thing which is actually the key that unlocks the whole heavenly treasury and opens the floodgates of glory, the one thing which Scripture tells us is absolutely necessary in order to bring God pleasure - faith (Hebrews 11.6).  Belief.  Trust in the Lord, trusting that He is and that what He says is true, trusting that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, and specifically trusting and believing in the One He sent to pay the penalty for my many many sins, to be the Savior of the world.  By this faith in Jesus death on the cross I have been saved and rescued from eternal death!

-This salvation, this divine rescue from death and destruction - it’s a gift, a free gift straight from the hand of almighty God.  It’s the ultimate Christmas present from the original Author of Christmas Himself.  And as is true with all real gifts, it is totally free.  It is not out of us, and it is not out of works.  There is not a single thing we have to do or even can do to buy it or earn it (much less deserve it) in any way.  No need to pay it back ever, nor could we - spiritual beggers we, spiritually bankrupt in every way.  We bring absolutely nothing to the table.  Unlovable even, and yet He loved us and provided us with the one thing we needed more than anything else.  Ours is simply to receive it, to hold out our hands of faith, and let God pour out and drench us with life, His life, eternal life, all over us, over our past, our present, our future, completely and constantly covered over with boundless grace and mercy and love and acceptance and forgiveness and blessing and glory.  From the glorious One Who is breathtakingly good and Who makes all things VERY good - we get not a good gift, no, way better than good, the best gift.  Ever.  And it’s free.  Will you believe?  Will you hold out your hand and receive it?  Will you trust in Jesus?

Ephesians 2:7 - The deluge of grace...

"...in order that He should show in the coming ages the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness upon us in Christ Jesus."

-Grace.  Kindness.  God wants to prove and demonstrate how much He loves us, and He intends to do this by showering His grace and kindness on us, on His people.  In fact, this is the very reason why He made us alive and raised us up and seated us in the heavenlies with Christ in the first place.  We will be completely submerged and inundated with His unfathomable kindness for all eternity, unimaginable favor and blessing and goodness which we will have done absolutely nothing to deserve.  In fact, add up all the wealth and riches and all the buried treasure and all the untapped resources on planet earth, and God's grace which He is ready to pour out on His people is exceedingly richer still.  He’s been waiting to do this since before the beginning of time, and of course He has faithfully rained down droplets of grace on all creation from the very beginning (on both the faithful and the wicked), and then He ramped it up big time at the Cross, but really He’s just getting started... The deluge of grace awaits!

-Once again, this all takes place in Jesus Christ.  He is the way.  Yes, everyone gets bits and pieces, tiny sips of God’s bottomless grace in this life, but the flood is coming, and the only way to experience the mighty torrent of kindness to be poured out in the next life is to be found in Christ in this life.

Ephesians 2:6 - Livin' the dream...(?)

"...and He raised (us) up together and seated (us) together in the heavens in Christ Jesus..."

-God didn’t just rescue us from death and make us alive together with Christ.  No, He raised us up out of the grave and brought us to glory right alongside with His Son.  He did not leave us trapped in the tomb.  Think about that for a moment, and then keep thinking about it.  No. More. Tomb.  No more tattered rotten grave clothes.  No more imprisonment to the stuff of death and destruction, not even a whiff of death or decay, no taint or hint of brokenness on our persons.  Just Jesus and glory.  Right now, Jesus is seated at the right hand of God in heaven (Ephesians 1.20), and we get seated right there with Him when we believe in Him.  Obviously we do not yet see this fully realized, but one day... Glory is guaranteed.  This is where we are headed, our destiny.  And this is part of what it means to be ‘in Christ’.  When we find our place in Him, His place becomes our place.  We share in all that is His, and it is as good as ours.  Yes - His place is now as much ours as it is His (and the extent to which we struggle to embrace this truth is an indication of how far we still have to go in our understanding of what it means to be 'in Christ').  That's right - we belong there, with Him!  We've been fully adopted and brought into the Royal Family, and we have the run of the entire estate!  And this life (His life!), this total triumph over death and the grave, this glorious destiny is found only in Christ.  And the sequential flow of time is rather inconsequential.  According to Paul, it’s already ours.  We have actually already been glorified (cf Romans 8.30).  We’re livin' the dream, right now.  Or should be...

Ephesians 2:5 - The greatest rescue mission of all time

"...even we being dead in the trespasses, He made alive together with Christ (by grace you are having been saved)..."

-Yes, we were dead, and God made us alive (Colossians 2.13).  THE miracle of miracles, this, for what power on earth can actually do that, impart life to that out of which life has left?  Once life is extinguished, there is no bringing it back, there is no earthly power or knowledge for reversing this curse.  Death is the great final barrier, impenetrable, unavoidable, irreversible.  It looms on the horizon for every man, and in fact already has each person in its grip.  Man is born to die as sparks fly upward.  This is our destiny, situation hopeless.  Particularly because we are already dead, even while living.  Our spirits were born dead, separated from the life of God thanks to our first father.  Which highlights our dilemma still further.  There is no bringing the dead back to life, humanly speaking.  Unless...  What if there was some hope of a rescue, some possibility of defeating death, some power that could somehow bring life out of death?

-It is here that we arrive at the very heart of the Good News.  Yes, the very same mind-blowing power that God exerted when He raised Jesus from the dead, He also unleashed to bring us back to life.  But again, we are not talking merely about a resuscitation, a simple return to mortality.  No, almighty God imparted to these former children of wrath a new unending life, eternal and glorious, just as He did with Jesus.  We are made alive forever with Jesus in Jesus.  Curse reversed!  Situation hopeless is now full of sure and glorious hope!  We're talking about a complete juxtaposition - death defeated, turned completely on its head - and out of the grave bursts forth life like an unstoppable locomotive!  Not your average thrift store rescue, this - without a doubt the greatest rescue mission of all time...!

-Paul adds parenthetically that we are having been saved by grace - charis in the Greek, which gives us our word ‘charity’, undeserved favor, a gift you did not earn or deserve in the least.  And the gift is salvation, being saved or rescued from death, a rescue which took place at some point in the past and with results that are continuing in the present.  Grace and mercy go hand in hand here as in so many other instances, where God not only lets us off the hook but goes way beyond and gives us some blessing or provision which we have done absolutely nothing to deserve.  So many instances where the way He relates to us is clearly fueled by His great everlasting love, this one being the greatest.  All praise and thanks to God forever and ever...

Ephesians 2:4 - The biggest but of them all

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love [with] which He loved us..."

-But God...  That about sums it up.  The blessed but.  Life and circumstances are contrary.  Tragedy and death and evil are rearing their ugly head.  But God... Man plans a thing, life seems to be headed in a certain direction - over and over again we see that God is in control and He has a plan (which overrides all else) as well as the power which allows Him to exercise complete control.  Where we see it most is when God intervenes on behalf of His people.  They are in dire straits, something bad is about to happen to them, their outlook is bleak... But God [does something] (Genesis 8.1, 50.20; 1Samuel 23.14; Psalm 73.26; 2Corinthians 7.6).  God did something in this case as well - the biggest but of them all.  And there were two driving forces behind it - His mercy, and His love.

-Yes, God is rich in mercy, present tense, always and abundantly so.  Mercy is leniency, clemency, showing compassion or forgiveness towards someone when you have the power and authority to punish or do them harm.  Mercy lets me off the hook, and God is literally full of it.  He lets us off the hook A LOT.  His mercy is truly great (2Samuel 24.14, Psalm 119.156), infinite and inexhaustible, and it pervades all that He does (Psalm 145.9, Romans 9.15 --> cf Exodus 33.19).  He values mercy so much that He commands it of His people (Luke 6.36, 10.37), and gets seriously angry when people fail to show mercy to their fellow man (cf Jeremiah 50.42; Matthew 18.33, 23.23; James 2.13).  The manifold mercies of God turn out to be our great and ultimate motivator for serving Him (Romans 12.1).  The ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence with His people, was actually covered with what was called the seat of mercy, which was to be sprinkled with the blood of the sin offering (Leviticus 16.15), and it was from above this seat of mercy that God would speak to Moses (Numbers 7.89).  God so prefers mercy, and has always gone to great lengths to reinforce this truth.  From the very beginning, He has over and over again shown that He would much rather show mercy to people (cf 2Peter 3.9) than to do them harm.  Adam and Eve?  Mercy.  They didn’t die right away.  Yes, their spirit died and God had to drive them out of paradise, but He did that so that they would not be able to eat from the tree of life and live forever separated from Him.  Driving them out was divine mercy, and before doing so He killed two of his creatures in order to make clothes for them (Genesis 3.21-24)(which perhaps is more an example of grace than mercy but the two are often intertwined with God).  To be sure, His holiness and justice must be satisfied, but do you see now how God’s infinite mercy then becomes the driving force behind sending His beloved Son to die in our place, to pay the just penalty for our transgressions thus paving the way for total forgiveness?  "Be full of mercy", Jesus said, "just as your heavenly Father is full of mercy".  Having received mercy, we are perhaps most like Him when we likewise show mercy to our fellow man.  To our kids.  To my spouse.  To the unfortunate soul who is holding up the line.  To the clever chap who just cut me off.  Mercy says it’s ok and lets it go.  Turn the other cheek.  Go the extra mile.  Not mere platitudes, these - this is God showing up in and thru my life and doing what He do.  These are the deeds of mercy.  Loving and blessing and praying for and doing good to my enemies and to those who hurt or offend or perhaps merely annoy me begins with mercy.  Letting it go.  Not exacting revenge or payback.  Mercy stays my hand and silences my tongue when my instincts drive me to want to exact justice and teach them a lesson.  Perhaps that lesson should be for them a glimpse of mercy...

-Far easier it is to show mercy to someone for whom you actually care.  The more you care about someone, the more willing and likely you are to let them off the hook.  God’s rich mercy combines with His great love in this case, His giving, no-strings-attached love being the driving force and motivation behind this mission of mercy.  For God so loved the world...  Here we get a glimpse of how deep, how wide, how great the Father’s love is for us, so vast beyond all measure.  He showed how much He loved us when He gave up His Son to be killed by those who were in fact His enemies.  But He has always loved us, even as enemies, from before we were born, before the beginning, endless, enduring, everlasting love which knows no bounds.  To truly comprehend and know what is the extent of this love - that is precisely the apex of paul’s aspiration and prayer for these believers in the next chapter (Eph 3.17-19).  So yes, I can verbally regurgitate the fact of God’s love, but have I soaked up and been saturated with a deep understanding of how truly and unfathomably great is His love for me, for my neighbor, for the world?  Does it both deepen the peace in my soul and disturb my sleep?  In this area as in so many others I have a long, long way to go...

Ephesians 2:3 - Not what God wants...

"...in whom also we all lived formerly in the desires of the our flesh, doing the wants of the flesh and the mind, and being by nature children of wrath as also the rest."

-Children of wrath - not at all what God intended.  Objects of His righteous anger, not doing what God wants but rather what I want even to the exclusion of all else, and indulgently so, so self-indulgent, giving free reign to my desires and my dying flesh and outcast mind.  Whatever those want, they get.  Enslaved am I to my desires and wants.  In other words, if I want it, I get it, eat it, do it.  And if I don’t, then I don’t.  Perhaps I am able to maintain some discipline, reign in my wants, exert a level of self-control in certain areas of life, for a season, but even then I am most likely pursuing something I want.  I am master of my domain, my wants rule, and rarely if ever would I - on my own - land on wanting with pure motives something which God might actually want.  This is the way we were, the way we all lived at one time, including those of us who are now in the company of those who are following Christ.  Paul even includes himself.  We were all in the same boat, enemies of God, unable to please Him or make peace, unwittingly (for most) incurring His displeasure and His anger and doomed to eternal destruction.  

-The wrath of God is not some figment of a deranged imagination.  No fantastic concoction of primitive, unenlightened minds, this.  Neither is it consigned to the allegedly-backward less-evolved theology of the Old Testament.  Jesus talked about it (Matthew 7.13; Mark 9.43-48; Luke 12.5; John 3.36, 15.6), the New Testament authors wrote about it (Romans 1.18, 2.5; 2Thessalonians 1.9; Colossians 3.6; Hebrews 10.27; 2Peter 3.7; Jude 7; Revelation 20.10, 20.15, 21.8).  It is the real deal, revealed from heaven against all the deeds and ways of man which fall short of God's standard of perfection.  Yes, it is real, frighteningly so, it is eternal, it is horrific, and it is to be avoided at all costs if at all possible.  And no, this is not at all how God designed it, not ever what He wanted or intended.  Which is why He did something about it...

Ephesians 2:2 - The cult of the dead

"...in which formerly you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the authority of the air, the spirit the [one] now working in the sons of disobedience..."

-Everybody’s doing it (and so were you).  Not simply an excuse or justification for making bad choices, it is in this case universally true, a sad indictment of the sons of Adam.  The great and terrible parade of humanity, this - blindly goose-stepping their way towards the precipice of an eternity separated from their surpassingly glorious and awesome Creator, spurred on and led by the deceiver himself, the father of lies, who was a liar from the beginning.  Questioning and challenging God and His Word and what He wants, choosing to do what I want instead, testing and failing God in my mind and subsequently given over to a mind that fails the test, falling short and missing out on glory at every turn.  I am lost, but I don’t even realize it because I am in such good company, everyone around me heading in the same direction, a rushing river of lost souls coursing its way in the wrong direction, away from God, just as deceived and lost as I am.  And therein lies the pernicous power of the lie.  When I am wounded or burgled or otherwise overtly transgressed against, I know it, but when I am deceived, I do not.  Thus I am lost, I am deceived, surrounded by a host of other souls blindly wandering about in similar straits.  It has all the earmarks of a cult, actually, an entire system designed to pull the wool over our eyes and to keep us there, trapped, enslaved to sin, born into disobedience and unable to avoid it, dead and dying, helpless and hopeless or with false hope at best.  And I truly am helpless - unable to help myself at all - when I am dead...  I need rescuing.  Read on...

Ephesians 2:1 - A deadly empty existence

"And you, being dead in your trespasses and sins..."

-We go from God's plan A - life at its fullest - to death.  That which is left after life has left.  Still a kind of existence, this, sad and tragic, a far far cry from the way we were meant to live as image bearers of the Divine.  

-Cause of death?  Sin.  Falling short, missing the mark.  We were born into sin, freely choosing to live life apart from our Creator, hiding from Him, willingly choosing to put me first and do what I want rather than what He wants.  Sins of commission, sins of omission, adding up, so many choices to disobey in fact, and yet just one would suffice.  And it did.  The first parents chose to disobey and their offspring do the exact same thing, born to sin as sparks fly upward.  Me first.  Mine.  No need to be taught or instructed in the ways of sin - we emerge from the womb with the me-first-mine instinct fully developed. Yes, we are all born this way now, unable to not sin, our native impulse to transgress, to get right up to the line and step right over, doing precisely what we are told not to do, to reach for forbidden fruit.  This deadly empty existence is one of separation from the true Life-Giver-and-Life-Filler, separation from life at its fullest, separated unto death, which had we continued in this separation would have become permanent, eternal death and destruction apart from the Source of life and goodness and joy and peace and beauty.  Oh, what terrible and dire straits we were in...

Ephesians 1:23 - God's plan A

"...which is the body of Him, the fullness of the [One] the all in all filling."

-Christ is indeed over all things, and that includes those who have trusted in Him for salvation.  In fact, Paul says He is the Head of the Church, the gathered global Assembly of the people of God, which is the Body of Christ, and He is in charge.  He is in control.  He sets direction and make the decisions.

-This Body is the fullness of this One Who fills up all things with all things.  In other words, this Body is the ultimate expression of what God’s filling up looks like.  You could say that were you able to completely remove the presence and activity of God, His goodness, His sustaining and upholding power, His grace and provision, you would be left with nothing.  Disorder and chaos would ensue, randomness, anarchy, evil, and ultimately death and destruction, as the very particles of matter themselves would fly apart.  But in all the created universe, we find in this Body of Christ the finest and fullest expression of what it looks like for God to completely fill to overflowing, His presence, His goodness, His power and love, His peace and joy.  This is the pinnacle of God’s creation, men and women fully surrendered and freely choosing to love Him with all their hearts and to love one another and their neighbors with all the love of God, come what may, laying down their interests and their lives for others, even unto death.  This is life at its fullest, life as it was always intended to be.  This was His plan from the beginning.

-Another way of looking at this metaphor of the Assembly of believers being the body of Christ is that they become the primary means of locomoting His life to the ends of the earth, of disseminating the blessings of God to the nations.  this living, moving, breathing spiritual mass are the hands and feet of Jesus to men, women, and children everywhere, guided and animated by Him Who is the Head.  The Church is God's plan A for bringing the peoples of the earth into contact with His glory, into the white-hot enjoyment of His breathtaking greatness and goodness.  When He declares that all the earth will be filled with His glory (Numbers 14.21) - this is how He intends to do it, as God is most glorified when His people are finding their highest satisfaction in Him, in all things, whatever they do, wherever they go (1Corinthians 10.31).