The Unfathomable Riches of Christ, for All Peoples, Above All Powers, through the Church

by John Piper   Listen |   Watch

Ephesians 3:1-13

For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles – ² assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, ³ how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. ⁴ When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵ which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. ⁶ This mystery isthat the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. ⁷ Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. ⁸ To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, ⁹ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, ¹⁰ so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, ¹² in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. ¹³ So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

We are going to focus on Ephesians 3:8-10. And we are going to move backward through this text, passing from the widest view to the most narrow view, or from the biggest picture of things to the smallest, or from the greatest goal of missions backward through three successively smaller means to reach this great goal.

Four Steps

So we will move first from the display of the wisdom of God to the innumerable angelic armies (v. 10); to the means that God uses to display this wisdom, namely, the church, the gathering of the people of God from all the nations of the world (v. 10a); to the means of this gathering, namely, the preaching of the of the unsearchable riches of Christ among all the nations (v. 9); finally to the means of this preaching, namely, you and me, the least of the saints (v. 8).

So we move from the display of God’s great wisdom to the world of angels, to the church gathered from all the nations; to the preaching of the gospel of the riches of Christ to the simple, sinner-saints, who live and minister by grace alone—the missionaries.

I go backward in this order because I want to end with you. God is not done with the work of missions. He said go make disciples of all nations. And then he said, “I will be with you to the end of the age.” The promise is good till Jesus comes, because the commission is binding till Jesus comes. Therefore you and I face the question individually what our role is in obeying the great commission to reach all the unreached peoples of the world with the gospel of the riches of Christ.

That is where I will end this morning, Lord willing. My aim is to awaken and confirm and encourage a sense of God’s leading in your life toward cross-cultural missions. And so at the end of this service I will invite you to come to the front so that I can pray for you and so that you can receive a card from the missions department here for your support and encouragement and guidance. I don’t want you to be taken off guard at the end. I want your decision to come to be prayerful and thoughtful. So let’s pray now that God would be at work to awaken and confirm and encourage your own sense of his leading in your life.

A Picture of These Four Steps

Now I want to create a picture for you of these four steps. Remember we are going to move backward through the text from the display of God’s manifold wisdom (v. 10b), to the gathering of God’s global church (v. 10a), to the preaching of Christ’s unsearchable riches (v. 8b), to the service of God’s ordinary missionary (v. 8a).

The picture is this: Picture in your mind a great, wise painter, painting on a huge canvas with many brushes, most of them very ordinary and messy. The painter is God, so you can’t picture him. He’s invisible. But he intends for his painting to be the visible display of his wisdom. He knows people can’t see him, but he wants his wisdom to be seen and admired. His canvas is huge. It’s the size of the created universe. I know you can’t really imagine looking at that canvas because you are in it. But do your best. And God is painting with thousands and thousands of colors and shades and textures—a picture as big as the universe and as old as creation and as lasting as eternity—a picture we call history, with the central drama being the preparation, salvation, and formation of the church of Jesus Christ. And he is using thousands of different brushes, most of them very ordinary and very small because every minute detail is crucial in this painting, to display the wisdom of the Painter. These brushes are God’s missionaries.

That’s the picture. Now there’s a reason in the text that I am encouraging to have a picture like this in your mind. It’s in the word “manifold” in verse 10: “. . . so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” This Greek word for “manifold” occurs in the Bible only here. It is very unusual. Half of it (poikilos) is used to mean, “wrought in various colors,” diversified, intricate, complex, subtle. It’s basic idea is of varied in color. Then Paul puts a prefix on the word that means “many” (polupoikilos). So the emphasis is very many colors and variations and intricacies and subtleties. So, since that is in the text, I want you to think of the display of God’s wisdom as a universe-sized painting with innumerable colors and shadings and texture. It is unsearchably intricate.

1. The Display of God’s Manifold Wisdom (v. 10b)

Now let’s go to our four steps and start in verse 10 with the greatest goal of history and missions. “. . . so that . . .” You can see from the words “so that” that God’s purpose and aim for missions and the church are now being expressed. The riches of Christ are preached to the Gentiles, the nations, and the church is gathered from all the peoples “. . . so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

So this is God’s goal. He created the world, and he redeemed a people through the death of his son (see Ephesians 2:12-19), and he sends missionaries and gathers his church by the preaching of the riches of Christ “so that that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” That’s the goal of all of history. That is the goal of missions, the central drama of history.

This universe is finally about the many-colored wisdom of God. History exists to display the infinitely varied and complex and intricate wisdom of God. Missions is the means that God uses to gather the church. And that gathering from all the nations is the focus of this wisdom-displaying painting. You see that in the words “through the church”: “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known.”

But stay with the display of God’s wisdom for a moment. The next point has to do with the church. Look who the audience is in verse 10: “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” This means that the painting, and the drama of history and redemption that it portrays, from creation to consummation, is meant to show angels—the good ones and the evil ones—the greatness of God’s wisdom.

Missions exists, and the ingathering of God’s elect exists, and the church exists so that angels would stand in awe of the wisdom of God. God displays his wisdom in history so that the worship of heaven would be white hot with admiration and wonder. The good angels never fell into sin, and only marvel at the wisdom of God’s grace from outside, so to speak. No angel will ever sing Amazing Grace. “How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” They are not wretches and have never been lost.” This is our song and our joy, and they can never sing it or know it. But God wanted them to see it. And so his aim in history is to display the wisdom of his grace in the way he saves the church by justifying the ungodly from all nations by faith alone on the basis of Christ alone. And the angels love to stoop down and get as close as they can to the wonders of redemption and how God prepared and saved and gathered his church (1 Peter 1:12).

And the demons (Ephesians 6:12)—the evil principalities and powers—must look at this painting and watch the wisdom by which they were defeated in the very moment they thought they had triumphed—in the death and resurrection of Christ, and in the blood of the martyrs, just as our fighter verse this week says, “Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Just when God paints a dark color of the death of his witness and the devils begin to gloat, God picks up another brush and with orange and yellow and red makes that dark death serve the beauty of his wisdom. And the demons gnash their teeth.

The final glory of the painting “Missions” is that every brush stroke will add to the infinitely intricate display of God’s wisdom to the armies of heaven.

So let’s turn now from the display of God’s manifold wisdom to through. . .

2. The Gathering of God’s Global Church (v. 10a)

We have seen in verse 10 that it is through the church that the great divine Painter is displaying his manifold wisdom to the armies of heaven and hell. But now notice that the church is being gathered from all the nations. Verse 8-9, “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles [there is the first pointer, the “Gentiles” are the non-Jewish nations] the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone [there it is again: we are to spread the gospel to “everyone”] what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages inGod who created all things.”

The “mystery hidden for ages” is exactly this universal scope of the gospel to include Gentiles and not just Jews in the covenant people of God. Verse 6 makes this crystal clear: “This mystery isthat the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The nations share in the promise made to Abraham. They become part of the historic people of God. They become “true Jews” (Romans 2:29).

We have seen all of this in Romans 11. Wild Gentile branches are being grafted into the tree of promise, and broken-off Jewish branches will be grafted in when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. It’s the complex and strange and intricate way that God is saving his church from all the nations so that none can boast that brings Paul in Romans 11:33 to the exact place he comes in Ephesians 3:10, namely to the praise of God’s unsearchable wisdom: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

That is what God aims at in heaven and on earth—the praise of his many-colored wisdom in the way he is saving and gathering his church from all the peoples of the world. There are twists and turns in history that no one ever dreamed would bring about what God designed. There are no wasted strokes on this canvas as God paints his wisdom in the history of missions.

Which leads us now to the means of this gathering. How does missions advance? How is the church gathered from the nations to the praise of God’s many-colored wisdom.

3. The Preaching of Christ’s Unsearchable Riches (v. 8b)

Ephesians 3:8-9: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages inGod who created all things.” Missions happens by preaching to the nations “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” Missionaries lift up Jesus Christ and all that God is for us in him, and God gathers his elect from all the peoples of the world.

That term “the unsearchable riches of Christ” is worth a year of sermons. But I give you one pointer to what it means. In Ephesians 2:12 Paul tells the Gentiles—the converts from the nations—“Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” In other words, once, all that God had ever promised in the Old Testament for the glorious future of his people was not theirs. They were excluded from everything God promised. Now verse 19 is the gospel message based on the cross of Christ: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

That is what missionaries preach everywhere they go: you—you Uzbeks, you Maninka, you Kachin, you Shandai, you Swedes, you Germans, you Russians, you British—you who trust Christ are now part of the covenant made with Israel. You are fellow citizens. You are members of the household of God. You will inherit every promise ever made if you believe in Christ. All of them are yes to you in Christ. You will inherit the earth. You are heir of the world. You are children of the maker of the universe in Jesus Christ. All things are yours. And Jesus Christ is the sum of all those things, and all things will show you more of him and increase your joy forever.

Ephesians 2:7 says that it is going to take eternity for God to exhaust on you the unsearchable riches of his glory 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.” It will take ages upon ages upon ages for the riches of Christ to be searched out.

That is what missionaries say to the nations of the world and show them—that Christ died and rose again so that people from every nation might be one in this inheritance.

Which leaves just one final question: Who are the brushes? If God aims to display his many-colored wisdom with the canvas of world history, and if the in-gathering church from every people and tribe and nation is the main drama on this canvas, and if missions is the means of gathering and establishing that church among all the peoples, what are the brushes God uses to paint this drama?

4. The Service of God’s Ordinary Missionaries (v. 8a)

The brushes he uses are messy, ordinary people who have seen the unsearchable riches of Christ and are willing, and often eager, to take these riches to the nations. The brushes are broken, sinning, ordinary missionaries—of whom the world is not worthy (Hebrews 11:38).

Verse 8: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” There are two reasons Paul mentioned that he was the least of all the saints. One is because he was a hater and persecutor of the church and of Christ. He never got over that God had chosen him in spite of his horrible past. The other reason is to remind you today that he can do the same for you.

So here is one of the greatest incentives of all to draw you into missions. God intends to use ordinary, messy, small paint brushes on the canvass of the history of missions because every minute stroke of his brush matters. Every bright stroke of triumph and every dark stroke of suffering matters. He is an infinitely wise painter. He knows what he is doing with your life. Not one stroke will be wasted. You can trust him with your life. Yield the wise hand that would paint with your life.

Oh, what riches we have to give!

So I want to invite you to come. And I want those of you who do not come to feel good about not coming because of how committed you are—for now—to sending those who come. This is a partnership. Sitting is an obedience. And coming is an obedience. If God has been at work in your life to stir you to seriously look toward cross cultural missions in your life—short term, midterm or long term—I would like you to come. I would like to pray for you and give you a card for your encouragement and support. Why don’t you who are already missionaries and already committed to going join the rest.

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Ephesians 1 – Dr. Thomas Schreiner

The following links will take you to a 2004 Spurgeon Bible Conference sermon on Ephesians 1 preached by Thomas Schreiner . . .

Spurgeon Bible Conference – Part 1 Dr. Thomas Schreiner • 2004 Spurgeon Conference • Ephesians 1 – 34 min. | Founders Baptist Church

Play! | SUN 03/21/2004

Remember That You Were Hopeless

by John Piper – Listen

This is the word of God to us this morning. Let us obey it together and not resist its discomfort. This is the word of God: “Remember that at one time you Gentiles . . . were without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:11, 12). It is a command, not a suggestion. “Remember that you were hopeless!” It is not something that Paul found people doing, and then said, “Stop doing that. It is bad for you.” It is part of the Christian walk. It is important. It is not to be leapfrogged over so that we only begin reading at verse 13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near.” That kind of leapfrogging has landed the church plop in the kettle of lukewarm Christianity, wondering what’s gone wrong.

The Path to Lukewarm Christianity

Why do we pray, but with so little fervor and affection? Why do so many sing, but scarcely from the heart and with such blank expressions? Why are so few hearts breaking for the lost people around them? Why do not more of us say spontaneously and repeatedly with Dr. Bill Widen, “The greatest thing in the world is to be saved”? Why isn’t the experience of salvation like the first morning of vacation, with the sun rising over the lake, and the air crisp and clear, and the fish biting, and the bacon sizzling, and all the family healthy and happy, instead of being like a grey drizzly day with a hole in the tent and everyone grumbling? Why is lukewarm love for Jesus so common and white-hot devotion so rare? One of the reasons is this: You can’t bring the burner of commitment and affection up to white-hot if you short-circuit God’s heating element and jump the current from Ephesians 2:10 to 2:13. Part of God’s heating element to intensity our affection and deepen our devotion is the command, “Remember! Remember! Remember that we were hopeless!” I can think of no better Sunday to drive home this word of God to Bethlehem Baptist Church than the last Sunday of the year.

The doctrine for our consideration, then, is this: It is of great spiritual benefit to remember the hopeless condition in which we were and would yet be without salvation by grace alone through Jesus Christ. To make the doctrine plain and useful, the questions we should answer are 1) What should we remember? 2) How should we remember? 3) What are the objections to such remembering? 4) Why is such remembering so beneficial?

What Should We Remember?

First, then, what does the text teach us to remember. “Remember that (before Christ brought you near through his death on the cross) you were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” The first thing to notice here is that salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22). For a non-Jew, a Gentile like me, to have any hope at all, I must cease to be alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. I must become a fellow citizen of Israel (2:19) and a fellow-heir of their promises (3:6). There is no salvation outside the true Israel. When redemptive history arrived at the incarnation it did not split into two histories: one for the redemption of Israel, and one for the redemption of the Gentiles. Instead it opened and expanded so as to embrace all believing Gentiles into the people of God, the true Israel. According to Ephesians 3:4–6 Paul teaches a mystery which had not been fully revealed in the Old Testament but is now heralded as the good news to us Gentiles, namely, that (v. 6) “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” As Paul says elsewhere, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). By faith Gentiles join the “true circumcision” (Philippians 3:3), and become “sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:9) and “real Jews” (Romans 2:29). Even though we are wild olive shoots, yet by faith we are grafted in to share the rich root of the cultivated olive tree (Romans 11:17). Therefore, we must never boast as though somehow a Gentile program has replaced a Jewish one. We are simply and graciously and freely granted to have a part in the promise to Abraham. There is only one people of God, the vessels of mercy, the true Israel, whom “God has called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles” (Romans 9:24; Ephesians 2:15).

I count it the most precious of all things as a Gentile to be saved by being joined to Christ, the seed of Abraham, and becoming an heir of all the glory promised to God’s people Israel. I am excited that the true Israel’s destiny is now my destiny and all the promises made to her are my promises. I feed on my heritage in the Old Testament day by day. I stand on tiptoe in expectation looking for my Messiah and the establishment of the glorious kingdom of the Son of David. But if I am to love him as I ought, if he is to find faith on the earth when he comes, then I must do what the text says and remember, remember, remember that once I was not joined to Christ but cut off from him in ignorance and unbelief. Once I was not a fellow citizen in Israel, but alienated from the commonwealth. Once I was not a fellow heir of the promises, but a stranger to all God’s covenants. And therefore I was entirely without God and without hope. In other words, Paul says we ought to remember from what we have been saved. We ought to call to mind our condition before and without Christ.

If you, like me, trusted Christ as your savior when you were very young, you might be tempted to say here, “I have nothing to remember. I have only known faith. I have no great conversion story.” I don’t believe Paul wrote this text just for people with dramatic conversion stories. He is writing it for all Gentiles to urge us to reflect on what our plight would be apart from the mystery of Christ which makes us fellow heirs of grace. And the plight is simply and awfully being without God and, therefore, without hope.

What does it mean to be “without God”? This phrase comes after the statement that we were strangers to the covenants of promise. Therefore, the opposite of being “without God” is probably found in some of the covenants in the Old Testament. For example, God says to Abraham in Genesis 17:7,

I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you . . . to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

And in Jeremiah 31:33 the Lord says,

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.

You may remember from our study of the covenant of Abraham that when God says he will be their God, he means he will be for them and not against them. It means they will be the beneficiaries of all that an infinitely powerful and loving God can give. This included justification (that is, the forgiveness of sins), the working of all affairs for their good, and the gift of a glorious eternal life.

Therefore, when Paul says to us, “Remember that you were without God,” he didn’t just mean, “Remember that you once lacked some knowledge about God.” He meant, “Remember that God was once not your God, and that he would not be yet, apart from the gospel.” And if he was not our God, then he was not for us but against us; he was not our justifier but our condemner; not eternal life but eternal damnation lay before us. And it’s just this that Paul wants us to remember. Remember that apart from Christ, almighty God would be against us; apart from Christ, we would be storing up wrath for ourselves on the day of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:4, 5; Ephesians 2:3); apart from the free and unmerited mercy of Christ, we would go away into “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46). Or, as Paul says in a single phrase, we would be utterly “without hope.”

Therefore, in answer to our first question, what we are to remember, we are to remember the entirety of our hopeless condition apart from the mercy of God in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

How Should We Remember?

The second question was, How should we remember? And I mean “how” in two senses: what is the nature of this remembering, and what are the methods to help us remember? Surely Paul does not mean remember merely in the sense of “have in mind,” be cognizant of. Surely he means, let it grip you. Let the memory seize you and move you. Feel the memory. Feel the plight you have been saved from. An intellectual recollection of facts will be of no spiritual benefit if it does not move the heart. Almost all Christians can list what they have been saved from if you ask them. But they don’t feel it. It does not move them. It’s not real to them. It’s like the lady in the circus who spins on the wheel while the knife thrower pretends to throw knives around her. If you ask her at the end, “Don’t you feel glad that’s over? Aren’t you happy you’re still alive?” she says, “It’s just a trick. The knives pop out of the wheel. What’s to get excited about? It’s just a fake threat.” And so it seems to be with many Christians: if they remember their plight without Christ at all, they remember it like a fake threat. They have never begun to imagine the horror of the reality from which they have been saved. But when Paul says, “Remember that you were hopeless,” he does not mean, “Treat your plight without Christ like a fake threat.” He means, “Know it, feel it, be gripped by it.”

And by what methods can we obey this command? I’ll mention four practical means that I try to use. 1) Pray that God will make your heart soft and sensitive; that he will grant you to be moved by the truth. 2) Then ponder the realities of your plight without Christ—unassuaged guilt, meaningless existence, omnipotent justice against you, and eternal punishment in hell. Lay the Scriptures before you and skip no verses. 3) Then as you move through life and see the misery of the world, the physical suffering of disease and mutilation, the emotional suffering of depression and all manner of retardation and disturbance and abnormality, and the moral wickedness of hardened sinners—as you see every case, say, “There but for the absolutely free and unmerited grace of God go I.” I don’t mean that suffering people are without grace. I only mean that all the misery and corruption we see should remind us that our plight without Christ would in the end be worse than all. 4) The fourth means of remembering our former plight with feeling is to use our imagination. Create situations in your mind of being almost dead and then saved. Imagine the time when you couldn’t swim and you stepped in a hole in the lake bottom and lost your footing and went under, and how you hugged your daddy’s neck when he grabbed you just in time. Imagine being five years old with mom shopping at Christmas time in Dayton’s downtown, and all of a sudden she’s gone and you look around in terror and big tears well up in your eyes, and how you hug her skirt when she finds you. Imagine going rock-climbing and somehow maneuvering onto a sheer face without a safety rope and suddenly finding yourself in a position where you know that if you move you will fall. You can barely inhale without losing balance. Do you not kiss the rope that falls from above?

God has given us prayer, Scripture, living illustrations of misery, and imaginations that we might remember and feel how horrid it would be to have God against us and no hope forever.

What Objections Are There to Such Remembering?

The third question we asked had to do with objections to this doctrine. I only have time to deal with one. How can the command to remember our hopelessness be squared with Paul’s statement in Philippians 3:13, 14?

Brothers, I do not consider that I have already attained (perfection); but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

When Paul says that he forgets what lies behind, is he contradicting his command that the Ephesians remember what lies behind? No, indeed. The context has in view something very different to forget in Philippians 3:13 than to remember in Ephesians 2:12. In Philippians 3 Paul has just said that he counts all things as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ. His great aim is to share Christ’s sufferings, be conformed to his death, and attain to the resurrection of the dead. But then he cautions the church not to think that the strides he has made in this direction approach perfection. No. I don’t consider that I have attained, but forgetting all this, I press on to greater attainments. Paul is not interested in keeping a record of his spiritual attainments. He does not care much about remembering how far he has come with Christ. He cares about how much farther there is to go. Not how much of Christ he has, but how much there is yet to know. Remembering in Philippians 3 would be a threat to humility and a boon to pride. Remembering in Ephesians 2 is a threat to pride and a boon to humility.

Why Is Such Remembering So Beneficial?

And that brings us to our final question. Why is such remembering as Paul commands in Ephesians 2:12 so beneficial? Why is calling to mind and feeling our plight without Christ such an important and valuable spiritual exercise? I’ll mention just three of the benefits. The first one is illustrated in Ezekiel 16, namely, remembering the days of our hopelessness guards us from boasting in our redeemed newness and from trusting in whatever small beauty the Lord may be resurrecting out of the catastrophe of our lives. In Ezekiel 16 God pictures Israel as a baby thrown out to die which he finds and rears and marries and decks with splendor. It’s a picture of what God does with every one of us who trusts him. Listen. Verse 6:

When I passed by you and saw you weltering in your blood, I said to you in your blood, “Live and grow up like a plant of the field.” And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full maidenhood; your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, behold, you were at the age for love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness: yea, I plighted my troth to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you, and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with leather, I swathed you with fine linen and covered you with silk . . . (13b) You grew exceedingly beautiful and came to regal estate. And your renown went forth among all the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor which I had bestowed upon you, says the Lord God. But you trusted in your beauty, and played the harlot because of your renown . . . (22) And in all your abominations and your harlotries you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, weltering in your blood.

Had they remembered, they would not have trusted in their beauty and boasted in their newness and played the harlot. They would have stayed humble and lowly. The beauty of being redeemed is always in danger of becoming self-righteousness and pride. But remembering our plight apart from Christ is a precious preventative of such pride. Let us use it!

The second benefit of such remembering is that it makes us cherish our forgiveness more. It makes us love Christ more intensely. It makes us feel the wonder of the justification of the ungodly by faith. It makes us say with Dr. Widen, “The greatest thing in the world is to be saved!” Do you remember what happened when Jesus went to eat with Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36ff.)? A prostitute, who had found unexpected forgiveness and cleansing from Jesus, came in and “weeping she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” The Pharisee objected, and Jesus told him a parable: “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. When they could not pay, he forgave them both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answers correctly, the one who owed most, and Jesus simply says, “That is why the prostitute is moved to tears and you aren’t. He who is forgiven little loves little.”

Now Jesus does not mean that Simon the Pharisee is not guilty of grave sins. He called self-righteous Pharisees sons of hell. He means that if we are aware of the gravity of our sin, if we remember how terrible our plight would be without him, we would be moved. We would cherish him. Words of affection to Christ would not hang in our throats like a foreign language. We would not sing with blank faces. Business men would speak endearingly of him. Teenagers would not blush to praise his name. We would not pray with rote mechanics, if we remembered and felt the misery for the plight from which we are saved apart from all merit of our own. If you feel you are forgiven little, you will love little. Remembering is a great spiritual benefit because it will help us cherish our forgiveness more deeply. I do not believe it is possible to cleave to Christ with white-hot devotion if we do not remember and feel what our plight would be without him.

The last benefit of such remembering that I want to mention is illustrated in Ezekiel 20:42–44, namely, that it helps us exalt the righteousness of God as the great ground of our salvation and hope. If you have ever known the mingling of joy and shame when someone forgives you and treats you kindly in spite of your sin, then this text may not seem so strange to you. It’s a promise of salvation to Israel, but not without the memory of sin.

And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country which I swore to give to your fathers. And there you shall remember your ways and all the doings with which you have polluted yourselves; and you shall loathe yourselves for all the evils you have committed. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel, says the Lord God.

The two things go hand in hand, the loathing of sinful self and the exaltation of God who does all things for the sake of his name. I want us to be a people who are utterly, thoroughly, radically God-centered; purged of all boasting in ourselves; and aflame with a white-hot love for Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.

Therefore, I beseech you, “Remember that you were once separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”

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Race and Cross

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 2:11-22

Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision ” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands – 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. 17 AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; 18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. In 1983, the Congress established the third Monday of every January as a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he stood for. King’s birthday is January 15 and, if he had not been assassinated in 1968in Memphis, Tennessee, he would have been 71 years old yesterday.Imagine what our recent history might have been had Martin Luther King lived during the seventies and eighties and nineties andtrumpeted his vision during all those years!

Why do I mark this day with a sermon on racial relations each year? – this is the fourth year. There are more reasons than I can tell you. But let me tell you some of them. The main reason is in today’s text, Ephesians 2:11-22 and it has to do with the glory ofthe cross of Christ. I will come to that in a few minutes. But there are personal reasons that might help you understand why it is something I feel a burden to do.

Growing Up White in South Carolina

Start with my growing-up years. I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. You need to know something of the psyche of this statewhere I spent the first eighteen years of my life. The population of South Carolina in 1860 was about 700,000. Sixty percent of these were African Americans (420,000) and all but 9,000 of these were slaves.1 That’s a mere 140 years ago. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, largely in protest over Abraham Lincoln’s election as an anti-slavery president. And it was in Charleston, South Carolina that the Civil War began. Ninety-five years later, when I was nine years old in Greenville, the segregation was absolute: drinking fountains,public rest rooms, public schools, bus seating, housing,restaurants, waiting rooms and – worst of all – churches, including mine.

And I can tell you from the inside that, for all the rationalized glosses, it was not “separate but equal,” it was not respectful, and it was not Christian. It was ugly and demeaning. I have much to be sorry about, and I feel a burden to work against the mindset and the condition of heart that I was so much a part ofin those years. And it goes on. South Carolina today will not give state workers a holiday tomorrow and many pride themselves on flying the Confederate flag.

Another Little Boy

Across town from where I grew up, in the same city, five year solder than I, another little boy was growing up on the other side of the racial divide. His name was Jesse Jackson. I learned last summer that his mother loved the same radio station my mother did:WMUU, the voice of Bob Jones University. But there was a big difference. The very school that broadcast all that Bible truth would not admit blacks. And the large, white Baptist church not far from Jesse Jackson’s home wouldn’t either. This was my hometown.And as an aside I ask, should we be surprised that some of the strongest black leaders got their theological education at liberal institutions (like Chicago Theological Seminary, where Jackson went), when our fundamental and evangelical schools, especially inthe south, were committed to segregation?

Waking Up

God had mercy on me. In the year that I started seminary in California -1968 – Martin Luther King was shot and killed. These were explosive days and I was fortunate to have professors who cared about the issues and were committed to finding the Biblical perspective on racial relations. One of those professors, Paul Jewett, compiled a 200-page syllabus of readings for us called”Readings in Racial Prejudice.” These readings were absolutely shocking. You can’t read about the crimes of vicious hatred toward blacks and come away without trembling. The Introduction of that syllabus ends like this:

And now let us listen to the groans of Frederick Douglass, feel the lash with Amy, endure the satire of DuBois, and measure the wrath of Malcolm X; let us contemplate the pathos of black childhood and the tragedy of black womanhood. And let us not forget that “he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” And let us also remember that if God has given us a revelation of the true nature of man,surely we will render account if we do not live in the light of that revelation, and especially so if we are called to the holy office of the Christian ministry.2

Those were powerful days in my life. And now, thirty yearslater, by God’s amazing grace, I am called to “the holy office of the Christian ministry,” and God has given us a revelation of the true nature of man, and I will render an account of my life and ministry to God as to whether I have lived and preached in the light of that revelation. Hence some of my passion for this weekend and this message.

As secular as the Civil Rights movement was in the sixties,there is no denying the profound Christian impulses that throbbed at the center of it, especially in the life and background of Martin Luther King, Jr. – as imperfect as he was. One little glimpse of it can be seen in the way his father responded to King’s receiving the Nobel Peace prize in 1964. King and other dignitaries were gathered in Oslo, Sweden, and about to celebrate, when the elder King stepped in and said,

“Wait a minute before you start all your toasts to each other.We better not forget to toast the man who brought us here, and here’s a toast to God.” Then in a quavering voice, he told what his son’s prize meant to him. “I always wanted to make a contribution,and all you got to do if you want to contribute, you got to ask the Lord, and let him know, and the Lord heard me and, in some special kind of way I don’t even know, he came down through Georgia and he laid his hand on me and my wife and he gave us Martin Luther King,and our prayers were answered.”3

Called to Be More than We Are

Well, I want “to make a contribution” too, as Dr. King, Sr.said. So I asked God’s help, and he came up through Minnesota – I don’t even know how – and laid his hand on me and Noel, and gave us Karsten and Benjamin and Abraham and Barnabas and Talitha Ruth, andhe gave us a church at the middle of a racially diverse city, and he gave us a people, and he gave us a fresh mandate four years ago for our church in these words:

Against the rising spirit of indifference, alienation and hostility in our land, we will embrace the supremacy of God’s loveto take new steps personally and corporately toward racial reconciliation, expressed visibly in our community and in ourchurch. (Fresh Initiative #3 in Bethlehem’s Vision Statement booklet)

We are called as a church to be something more than we are in living out a manifest, visible racial harmony at the center of the city. To help you see this, and to call you to it, I turn with you now to listen to one clear word from God about racial harmony inour church. This is the ultimate reason for preaching on this issue: God has something to say about it and about how we live together as a church.

“No Longer Strangers and Aliens”

First, let’s notice how this text begins and ends. In verses11-12 it begins with a description of the alienation between Jews and Gentiles -specifically Jewish Christians and Gentiles.”Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh,who are called “Uncircumcision ” by the so-called “Circumcision,”which is performed in the flesh by human hands – remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise,having no hope and without God in the world.”

Then in verses 19-22 the text ends with a description of the reconciliation between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.”So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whomyou also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

List the changes and the way Paul exults in the change in relationships. First in verse 19 two negatives and two positives:1) No longer strangers, 2) no longer aliens, 3) fellow citizens with the saints, 4) part of the same household of God. Then inverse 20 he describes the one common foundation of this new unity:”the foundation of the apostles and prophets” with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone. Then in verses 21-22 he says that this new unity of Jew and Gentile built on Christ’s saving work and his apostles’ teachings is a single building built for the unspeakable privilege of housing God. Verse 21: the church (of reconciled Jew and Gentile) is a temple. And what is a temple? Verse 22 tells us: “a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

That is what God is aiming at in our salvation: a new people(one new man, verse 15) that is so free from enmity and so united in truth and peace that God himself is there for our joy and for his glory forever. That’s the aim of reconciliation: a place for God to live among us and make himself known and enjoyed forever and ever.

Now keep in mind here that the divide between Jews and Gentiles was not small or simple or shallow. It was huge and complex and deep. It was, first, religious. The Jews knew the one true God, and Christian Jews knew his Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Then thedivide was cultural or social with lots of ceremonies and practices like circumcision and dietary regulations and rules of cleanliness and so on. These were all designed to set the Jews apart from the nations for a period of redemptive history to make clear the radical holiness of God. Then the divide was racial. This was a bloodline going back to Jacob, not Esau, and Isaac, not Ishmael,and Abraham, not any other father. So the divide here was as big or bigger than any divide that we face today between black and white or red and white, or Asian and African-American.

Reconciliation and Unity out of Alienation and Separation

So here is the question: What happened between verses 11-12 that describes the alienation and separation between Jews and Gentiles,and verses 19-22 that describes the full reconciliation and unity?

Here we could preach for days. These verses, 13-18, are so richand thick with doctrine that it would take days to unpack it all.So I will leave many questions unanswered and make one main point that I think is the most essential thing.

What happened between the alienation of verses 11-12 and the reconciliation of verses 19-22? The answer is that Jesus Christ,the Son of God died – and he died by design. Yes, he rose and is alive. But the emphasis here falls on his death. Where do we see it? We see it in the word “blood” in verse 13b: “You who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” We seeit in the word “flesh” in verse 15, “. . . abolishing in His flesh the enmity.” And we see it in the word “cross” in verse 16, “. ..and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross.”

The rest of the text is Paul’s explanation of how the blood of Christ – his death in the flesh on the cross – removes the enmity between God and Jew, God and Gentile and Jew and Gentile, and,therefore, by implication, between every ethnic group of Christians who are in Christ who has become our peace. I won’t go into that,as profound and wonderful as it is.

A New Creation – One New People

Let me take this one point and draw things to a close with it and apply it to us as a church. The point is that God aims to create one new people in Christ who are reconciled to each other across racial lines. Not strangers. Not aliens. No enmity. Not far off. Fellow citizens of one Christian “city of God.” One temple fora habitation of God. And he did this at the cost of his Son’s life.We love to dwell on our reconciliation with God through the death of his Son. And well we should. It is precious beyond measure – to have peace with God (Romans 5:9-10).

But let us also dwell on this: that God ordained the death of his Son to reconcile alien people groups to each other in one body in Christ. This too was the design of the death of Christ. Think on this: Christ died to take enmity and anger and disgust and jealousy and self-pity and fear and envy and hatred and malice and indifference away from your heart toward all other persons who are in Christ by faith – whatever the race.

Now here is one concluding implication of this. Paul says in Galatians 6:14 – and I hope we say with him – “May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Is this one of the great aims of our church – never to boast save in the cross of Jesus? Does this not mean, among other things, that week in and week out we want the meaning and the worth and the beauty and the power of the cross of Christ – the death of Christ,the shed blood of Christ – to be seen and loved in this place? Do we not want that? Is that not why we exist – to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in the death of his Son?

And if the design of the death of his Son is not only to reconcile us to God, but to reconcile alienated ethnic groups to each other in Christ, then will we not display and magnify the cross of Christ better by more and deeper and sweeter ethnic diversity and unity in our worship and life? If Christ died – mark this! DIED – to make the church a reconciled body of Jew and Gentile, “red and yellow, black and white” and every shade of brown, then to glory in the cross is to glory in the display of the fruit of that cross.

And So . . .

At the risk of sounding trite on such a great theme and a great goal, I will give you some very practical exhortations:

1) Welcome newcomers every week. Make a weekly aim to welcome someone you don’t know. The loneliest place in the week is in the commons with two hundred bustling people. Talk to the people you don’t know.
2) Invite people of different ethnic backgrounds to church with you.
3) Be glad when different ethnic elements are used in the service.
4) Ponder the cross of our Lord Jesus and what it means.

5) Pray toward more wisdom and sensitivity.

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Israel and Us Reconciled in One Body

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 2:11-22

Therefore remember, that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Last week we saw from Ephesians 1:23 that our destiny as the body of Christ is to be the fullness with which Christ fills all in all. The key that unlocked the meaning of that destiny was Ephesians 3:10 which says that “the manifold wisdom of God will be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” In other words, God aims to make the church, the body of Christ, into a showcase of the glory of his perfections. God will fill the universe with the glory of his Son by putting the body of his Son, the church, on display. He will hold up the church and say to heaven and hell: this is the glory of my Son, his bride, his body, his church.

What Was Israel’s Destiny?

But Paul was a Jew. He knew his Old Testament well. He lived in the hope of that book. And so there was a problem with seeing the church as the embodiment and “fullness” of the glory of God and his Son. The problem was that this was Israel’s destiny. God had made these promises to Israel. Now Paul is saying that the church, made up of Jews and Gentiles, will be God’s people, the glory of God’s Son and the fullness of the Messiah’s glory in the world.

God Had Chosen Israel as His Own Special Possession

Remember that God had chosen Israel from all the peoples on the earth for his own special possession and had given promises to this people unlike that to any other.

For example in Deuteronomy 14:2 Moses reminds the people of Israel,

You are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.

And in Isaiah 43:1 we read,

Thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

God Was Israel’s God in a Unique Way

And not only are they his people, but he is their God in a very unique and special way. The heart and essence of the covenant that God made with Israel in Genesis 17:7 is this: “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you . . . to be God to you and to your descendants after you.” And when he reaffirms it at the Exodus, he says to them, “I will take you for my people and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 6:7).

So Israel was God’s chosen people, he was their God. And Romans 9:4–5 spells out the privileges that status implied: to Israel “belonged the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises . . . and according to the flesh [theirs was] the Christ, who is God over all blessed for ever.”

The Reason God Chose Israel to Receive Privileges

The privileges were unspeakably great. And the reason God chose Israel and gave them these privileges is clear from Isaiah 49:3,

And [God] said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

Or in Jeremiah 13:11 God says that he chose Israel and made them his own possession “that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory.” God’s aim was to fill the universe with his glory and praise through what he did with this people Israel.

Paul is saying, that’s the destiny of the church. How can this be?

Seeking Biblical Truth or Political Correctness?

A while back I called up the main rabbi at Temple Israel, over on Hennepin Avenue (Stephen Pinsky at the time) and invited him to lunch. We went to Rudolph’s (not Pizza Hut) and had a very frank, and sometimes tense, talk about Jews and Christians.

The conclusion of that talk was that the rabbi solved the problem of Jews and Christians like this: God has two plans to bless people. One is the Jewish covenant; and the other is the Christian covenant. Jews do not have to be Christians and Christians do not have to be Jews in order to be blessed. Both can get to God their own way: with Jesus (for Christians) or without Jesus (for Jews).

This is a common idea today among those in Jewish-Christian dialogue. And this idea will win the day wherever people place the new authority of politically correct speech above the old authority of the Bible. The new authority today says that if an idea can be made to sound tolerant or respectful of differences or pluralistic or compassionate, then that idea is good to endorse. Notice, I don’t say, “That idea is true,” because “truth” is emphatically not a politically correct concept. The claim to truth is arrogant and intolerant and disrespectful of differences and undemocratic and uncompassionate. The concept of truth is ruled out by the new authority precisely because it makes people feel put down who don’t agree. And the first and great commandment of the new authority is “Thou shalt not make anyone feel put down.”

It doesn’t matter what your intentions are and what your words mean. All that matters is that someone claims to feel put down when you speak a truth that they don’t share. So in the new authority of our day the victim is always right. Because they know infallibly whether they feel put down or not. And there is no defense against this authority because all your protests about your true intention or the loving value of truth are vetoed by the new absolute, namely, of how people feel about what you say.

And so if you say, for example, that there are not two covenants between man and God: one for Jews and one for Christians, but there is only one covenant and one way to be reconciled to God, then your claim to truth will be vetoed by the new authority as intolerant, disrespectful, undemocratic, unpluralistic, offensive, anti-Semitic, and dangerous. The issue of truth will not even be raised. The issue is: how will it make people feel? And, how arrogant will it make you look?

So you will have to choose this morning whether you will submit to the new authority (of so-called political correctness) that increasingly rules our society, or whether you will submit to biblical authority. I say biblical authority not my authority, and so let’s look at the text more closely so that you can see for yourselves how Jew and Gentile relate to each other, and to God, and to the body of Christ.

A New People of God United by Jesus

Start with Ephesians 2:12 which describes what our condition was as Gentiles before Jesus the Messiah came. “Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” That’s where we start. Then Jesus comes, and all that changes. Look at verse 19, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household.”

The same summary statement is given in Ephesians 3:6 where Paul defines the mystery of Christ that he preaches: “to be specific, [the mystery of Christ is] that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs [with the Jews] and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

What happened? Once we were separated from Christ, now Christ himself has drawn near to us. Once we were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, now we are fellow citizens in Israel. Once we were strangers to the covenants of promise, now we are fellow partakers of the promise. Once we were without hope, now we are fellow heirs of all God has to give. Once we were without God in the world, now we are members of God’s household.

And the whole picture here is not that we move into these blessings on separate, parallel tracks apart from Israel—them, without Jesus, and us, with Jesus—but that we move into them together on one track—through one Savior, one cross, one body, one new man, one Spirit to one Father. The picture here is that the true Israel becomes the church of Christ and the church of Christ emerges as the true Israel. And what unites this new people is Jesus. They are the people of Jesus. Not Jew and Greek, not slave and free, not male and female, not barbarian, Scythian, free, but Christ is all and in all (cf. Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11).

Christ Made Jew and Gentile One in the Church

Now let’s be more precise and notice the actual words that prove this oneness of Jew and Gentile in the new people of God.

Verse 14: “He is our peace, who made both groups [Jews and Gentiles] into one.” Christ did not come to open a second alternative way to God. He came to make Jew and Gentile one in his church.

Verse 15b: ” . . . that in himself he might make the two [Jew and Gentile] into one new man, thus establishing peace.” Here he pictures the church as a single person. Once there were Jewish persons and Gentile persons. Now Christ comes and unites them to himself so that “in himself” there would be only one new person, namely, Christ: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11). Christ is the one new man. Which leads us naturally to verse 16 where Jew and Gentile are the one body of the one new man.

Verse 16: ” . . . and [that Christ] might reconcile them both [Jew and Gentile] in one body to God.” The reconciling work of Christ brings people to God not in two alien bodies, one rejecting him (Jewish) and one trusting him (Christian). Christ brings Jew and Gentile to God in one body, the church.

And not only in one body, but also in one Spirit. Verse 18: “For through him [Christ] we have access in one Spirit to the Father.” So Paul sums up this great unified work of salvation in 4:4–6, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called into the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

Paul’s Answer to the Problem

So what is Paul’s answer to the problem that God chose Israel to be the fullness of his glory and yet now promises that glory to the church? His answer is that the true Israel has become the church and the church has emerged as the true Israel.

There had always been a faithful remnant of believing Jews in physical, ethnic Israel. These were the true Israel. Not all Israel was true Israel (Romans 9:6). But some were. And when Jesus the Messiah came, the proof of whether a Jew was part of the true Israel was whether he confessed Jesus as the Son of God or denied him. John said, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). And Jesus said, “He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him” (John 5:23). If you reject Jesus, you reject God; and if you reject God, you are not part of true Israel.

Jesus is the point in redemptive history where the true Israel becomes the church of Christ and the church (Jew and Gentile) emerges as the true Israel.

There Are Not Two Ways of Salvation

There are not two saving covenants. There are not two saved peoples. And the reason is that there are not two ways of salvation. Verse 16 shows us the unifying foundation of salvation and the people of God. “[Christ] reconciled them both [Jew and Gentile] in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” Jews needed the cross and Gentiles needed the cross. After centuries of animal sacrifices that pointed forward to the True Sacrifice, Jews needed to be reconciled to God and Gentiles needed to be reconciled to God. There was enmity not only between Jew and Gentile, but at root there was enmity between Jews and God and Gentiles and God that needed to be overcome by the peace-making work of Christ.

So there was one great work of salvation on the cross when Jesus died to remove the enmity between God and Jew and between God and Gentile. And he did this reconciling work not separately but in one body, the church. Jew and Gentile are reconciled to God in Christ. That is why being reconciled to God means being reconciled to each other. That is why there cannot be two peoples and two tracks to heaven. For there is one way to be reconciled to God: Christ reconciles us to God by uniting us to himself. And that means we become one body, Jew and Gentile.

Implications

1. Being the body of Christ means that we have been brought into a Jewish inheritance. We have our salvation because we are fellow citizens with Israel and have become heirs of the promise of Abraham—that God would be the God of his descendents. The root of God’s covenant with Israel supports us the grafted in branches; we do not support the root (Romans 11:18). We are not an independent body over against Israel. We have been grafted in to the true Israel. God forbid that anyone would distort the good news of Christ’s reconciling work into anti-Semitism. The new authority of “politically correct” speech will call it that. But God, who wills the salvation of Israel, does not call it that. Our hearts’ desire and prayer to God is that Israel be saved (Romans 10:1)—that Israel according to the flesh become with us the true Israel, the body of Christ.
2. The body of Christ is a body where unreconciled relationships are so at odds with the reality of what Christ has done in creating the body that they cannot endure without casting doubt on a person’s true participation in the body. This is one of the great practical challenges of being the body of Christ at Bethlehem. We must be a reconciling people because we are a reconciled people. Not a people who do not offend and get offended. But a people who are soon on the road to reconciliation.

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Dead In Sins

by John Piper – Listen

Feeling Our Need for a Savior During Advent

There are two reasons why during Advent we should remember our great need for a Savior.

The Preciousness of the Savior’s Coming

The first reason is that the more keenly we feel our need for a Savior, the more precious will be the coming of the Savior.

Picture two people in a car out for a drive along the north shore. The rider knows that there is a time bomb in the trunk and that any second might blow the car to pieces. The driver doesn’t believe there is one, and thinks that his rider is insane. The state patrol has been alerted that the car is indeed loaded with a bomb that will soon go off. They begin their search and pursuit.

The rider suddenly sees the State Patrol far in the distance to the rear racing toward the car. His heart leaps with hope for possible rescue! If you are the rider who knows that there is a bomb in the trunk, the flashing red lights in the distance are very precious, and the closer they get, the more precious they become. But if you are the driver and you don’t think that there is a bomb in the trunk, the flashing red lights are a threat.

I think that the most loving thing I can do for you this Advent season is to help you remember and feel your need for a Savior, so that as he approaches, your heart will leap for joy.

The Command of the Word of God

The second reason for remembering our great need for a Savior is that the Word of God commands us to. Ephesians 2:1–10 describes how God saved us by grace through faith when there was a time bomb of sin ticking in our soul. Verse 11 commands, “Therefore remember!” Remember what? Verse 12 tells us: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” But the key word, practically speaking, is “Remember!”

Paul really believes that even after the State Patrol has caught your car and saved you, you shouldn’t forget that awful chase. You shouldn’t forget what it would have been like if they had not pursued you. You should remember what you were and would have become without a Savior. Part of our ongoing devotional life should be the obedience of Ephesians 2:12—Remember! Remember! Remember that once we were cut off from Christ, without any citizen-rights to heaven; no promises applied to us; we had no hope and no part in God.

We are commanded, “Remember this! Bring it to mind again and again” (v. 11, mnemoneuete: present tense, continuous action). And surely the reason is so that it will have a vigorous and lively role in causing us to love Jesus Christ, our Savior. It is a simple psychological fact: unless we feel a great need for a Savior, we do not feel that he is a great Savior.

An Advent Plan

So my plan for Advent this year is to help us see how great our need for a Savior is, and then, on the Sunday before Christmas, to display the greatness of his salvation. Today we will look at Ephesians 2:1 (”Dead in sins”); next Sunday, Ephesians 2:2–3 (”Captive to an Alien Prince, by Nature Children of Wrath”); and finally on the Sunday before Christmas, verse 4 (”But God . . . “).

In the Morgue, Not the Doghouse

The first reason we need a Savior is that without a Savior we are all dead in our trespasses and sins. Paul says this twice in the text. In verse 1 (literally): “You being dead in your trespasses and sins . . . ” Verse 5: “Even when we were dead in our trespasses . . . ”

If you were to ask most people why sin is a problem, and why we need a Savior from it, they would say that sin makes us guilty before God and brings us under condemnation; and so we need a Savior who can forgive our sins and take away our punishment. And that is absolutely right. But that is not the point of Ephesians 2:1 and 5. That is not all we need.

The reason we need a Savior is not just that we are in the doghouse with God and need to be forgiven for offending his glory. We need a Savior because we are in the morgue. In the doghouse you might whimper. You might say you are sorry. You might make some good resolutions. You might decide to cast yourself on the mercy of God. But what can you do if you are in the morgue?

What Does “Dead in Trespasses and Sins” Mean?

If this means what it looks like it means, we didn’t need just any ordinary Savior, we needed a great Savior. What does Paul mean when he says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins?

Sinners by Nature

Let’s look at the context first. There is a phrase in verse 3 that shows the seriousness of deadness. At the end it says, “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” In other words the things we have done to bring the wrath of God upon us we have done by nature. We need a Savior not just because we have sinned, but because we have sinned by nature. We are by nature sinners.

At the end of verse 2 it says that we are “sons of disobedience.” Which is another way of saying that disobedience is in our spiritual genes. Rebellion runs in the human family. It is part of our sinful nature.

Dead to Righteousness and Faith

Now what does that have to do with being dead? It sounds like we were very much alive and active in our rebellion and disobedience. Indeed we were. But in being alive to disobedience, we were dead to obedience. In being alive to rebellion, we were dead to submission. In being alive to unbelief, we were dead to faith. We had no living spiritual nature to incline us to do anything for the glory of God and in reliance on his power. And lacking that spiritual nature, we were dead: dead to righteousness, dead to holiness, dead to obedience, dead to faith.

Spiritually speaking I was dead. Without a Savior I had no spiritual inclinations at all. For there was no spiritual life at all. And therefore I needed a Savior not only to forgive me for my sins, but also to give me spiritual life so that my heart would incline to trust him and obey him.

In Need of a Savior to Raise Us and Create Us Anew

You can see this implied in verse 10 also. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Note the word “created.” Do you see what that implies? The condition we were in before we had a Savior was so bad that we needed someone not only to forgive us but also to create us. This is an even more radical image than the one in verse 5. There we were only made alive out of our deadness. But in verse 10 we were created as though out of nothing. The point of both these images of conversion is that it took a miracle like resurrection or creation to give us spiritual life. It was non-existent, and had to be created. We were dead and had to be raised.

Our True Condition Without a Savior

So we weren’t just in the doghouse with God. We really were in the morgue. And whatever thoughts we thought or whatever feelings we felt or whatever deeds we did—they were not the thoughts and feelings and deeds of the Spirit but of the flesh. Nothing that we thought or felt or did was spiritual, because we were dead spiritually. Everything we thought and felt and did came from what we were by nature, and by nature we were children of wrath.

Do you begin to see how utterly horrible was our condition without a Savior? Since we had no spiritual life within us but only death, everything we did was sin. For what is sin but falling short of the glory of God, and who does anything for the glory of God when he is spiritually dead? And so before the Savior came, before he quickened us and made us alive, all we did was sin.

Everything We Do Without a Savior Is Sin

But someone will say, “This can’t be, because I know many unbelievers who do good deeds.” Ah, but when you say that, you do not have a view to God. When you judge what is sin and what is righteousness, don’t just think of man! Think of God. We were made for God! He is worthy of all our love and trust and honor and thanks and obedience and worship. We may well build our hospitals and feed the hungry and educate the ignorant, but if it doesn’t spring from trust in God, and if we don’t do it to give him glory, and if we don’t have a view to the salvation of others, all we do is sin with respect to God.

For whatsoever is not from faith is sin (Romans 14:23). And falling short of the glory of God is sin (Romans 3:23; 1 Corinthians 10:31). And therefore presuming to do good to men without pointing them to God is sin. All that any of us can do without a Savior is sin. For by nature we are spiritually dead. And until we are made alive by our Savior, nothing we do is spiritual, everything comes from the flesh. And therefore without a Savior all our so-called good deeds are rags and ashes.

The Mind of the Flesh Cannot Submit to God

In Romans 8:6–9 Paul spells out in more detail what this spiritual deadness means.

6) For the mind of the flesh is death, and the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; 7) because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for it does not submit to God’s law, for it cannot. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9) And you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you.

In other words, until the Savior comes and makes us alive by his Spirit, we are simply “in the flesh” (verse 9). That is, we simply have “the mind of the flesh”; and the mind of the flesh is in rebellion against God (verse 7). It is so much in rebellion against God, in fact, that it CANNOT submit to God’s law (verse 7), and it CANNOT please God (verse 8). Therefore, verse 6 says, “The mind of the flesh is death.” Spiritual death is the condition of being devoid of God’s Spirit and therefore being unable to submit ourselves to God (verse 7) or please God (verse 8). In other words, without a Savior, everything we do is insubordination against God and displeasing to God.

Other Passages Illustrating Spiritual Deadness

We could go on and on multiplying passages that make the condition of spiritual deadness more vivid and terrible. For example:

1 Corinthians 2:14

The natural [i.e., unspiritual] man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually assessed.

Without a Savior to quicken us and make us spiritually alive, we are so perverted in our values that when we hear the truth of the gospel, we will think it is foolishness. And so our perverse sense of values will make us unable to grasp the truth for ourselves and be saved.

Romans 3:9–12

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all; for I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one.

Without a Savior we are ruled by sin. We have no inclination to seek God. None of our deeds is good. All is the veiled expression of sin.

Romans 6:17–18

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Until the Savior set us free, were slaves of sin.

Ephesians 4:17–18

Now this I affirm and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.

Without a Savior, our hearts were so hard that they gave rise only to spiritual ignorance and futility and alienation. This hardness is the death spoken of in 2:1, 5.

Jesus’ Own Testimony

But let’s draw the message to a close by looking at a word from the Savior himself concerning our deadness in sin. Was this just Paul’s idea or did he learn it from Jesus?

Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead

In Matthew 8:21 a disciple approached Jesus and said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” So Paul didn’t originate the idea that there are people who are alive and yet dead—spiritually dead. Leave the dead to bury their own dead.

Inexcusable Deadness

But what did Jesus think of this deadness? Was it excusable? In Matthew 23:27–28 he said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

So here is an example of the “righteous” dead man. A man clean and religious on the outside—like a whitewashed casket in the county morgue—and inside rotten bones and filthiness and death. No, our deadness is not excusable in God’s sight. It is abominable. Our inability to submit to God and please God does not excuse us. The reason we can’t submit without a Savior is because we don’t want to. The power of our CANNOT is the depth of our WILL NOT.

A Warning

And Jesus gives us the most sober warning and the most encouraging hope as we close.

He warns here in Matthew 23:27 that you can have your life squeaky clean on the outside and still be dead on the inside. We need a Savior not just to cap off our good deeds, not just to forgive our sins. We need a Savior because we are spiritually dead and helpless without him, no matter how good we look on the outside.

An Encouragement

And finally the Lord encourages you who are still dead in your sins, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:24–25).

If you have any spiritual life within you, you owe it to the sovereign voice of the Savior. And if you don’t yet have life in Christ, the voice says,

Let him who is thirsty come.
Whosoever will,
let him take of the water of life freely.
(Revelation 22:17)

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Why We Need a Savior: Captive to an Alien Power, by Nature Children of Wrath

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 2:1-3

1) And you he made alive, when you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2) 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. 3) Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”—Matthew 1:21

We are talking in these Advent sermons about our need for a Savior. There are three reasons mentioned in Ephesians 2:1–3. We need a Savior according to verse 1 because we are dead in sin. We need a Savior according to verse 2 because we are captive to an alien power. And we need a Savior according to verse 3 because we are children of wrath.

If it helps your memory, we could say there are three “S’s”:

1. we were sick unto death with sin;
2. we were sabotaged by Satan;
3. and we were sentenced to hell.

Therefore we were in desperate need of a great Savior.

Hearing What You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else

The first thing I want to stress today is that these three things are not what you will find out about yourself in the newspaper or TIME or NEWSWEEK. They are not part of our cultural assumptions about mankind. Virtually no one, outside a fairly small group of evangelicals, seriously believes

1. that without a Savior all people are dead in sin and incapable of any spiritual good; and
2. that without a Savior all people are captured and blinded by an evil, supernatural person named Satan; and
3. that without a Savior all people are under the wrath of God and sentenced to eternal torment in hell.

There are two fundamental reasons why these things are not believed:

1. because they are unflattering to human nature, and
2. because they have to be learned from God not man.

Starting with the Word of God

If there is going to be any salvation at all, there must be a divine revelation. God must reveal these things to us or we perish. We can’t find them out from television or radio or medicine or psychology or art. We learn the truth about ourselves from the Word of God. And once our eyes are opened to the truth that God reveals, then we can see confirmations of it in virtually all the sciences and arts.

Santa Claus and Religion

But if we don’t start with God’s interpretation of who we are, we will be like blind people who go on developing elaborate theories to prove that there really is no such thing as vision, and that color and light and perspective are the inventions pious imaginations projecting onto reality their own dissatisfaction with the dark. “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

That statement is not simply classic Marxism. It is classic American materialism. The difference is that American materialism doesn’t outlaw religion; it imitates it and then uses it. That is the real meaning of Santa Claus.

The true meaning of Christmas—that God sent his Son into the world to save us from our evil hearts of sin (Matthew 1:21), and to destroy the works of the devil in our habits and homes and schools and workplaces (1 John 3:8), and to rescue us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10)—that meaning of Christmas is unacceptable to the spirit of this world. But the impact of the truth of the incarnation is so undeniable after 2,000 years of influence, that the god of this world behind American materialism cannot oppose it outright, but simply imitates it with Santa Claus and a hundred other trappings in order to direct the religious impulses of the masses into economically profitable channels.

The Way Out of Cultural Slavery

The only way out of this cultural slavery is to listen to the witness of God about ourselves. Not the witness of John Piper, or the editorial page, or the evening news, or the Atlantic Monthly. God has spoken. His word is preserved for us in the Bible. If you let this book interpret your condition, to be sure, you will be an alien and an exile in this fallen age. But that is a small price to pay to be in step with God. I urge you to consider seriously today the truth of Ephesians 2:2—that without a Savior we are captive to an alien prince; and the truth of Ephesians 2:3—that without a Savior we are children of wrath.

Captive to an Alien Prince: Three Explanations

Let’s look first at verse 2. Literally verses 1 and 2 go like this:

And you, being dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience . . .

There are at least three things in this verse we need to understand:

1. there is a being who rules over the authority of the air (middle of the verse: “according to the ruler of the authority of the air”);
2. this being is a spirit who works in the hearts and lives of people who have no Savior (end of the verse: “the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience”);
3. the result is that people without a Savior walk, or live, in tune with this evil age (beginning of the verse: “you once walked according to the age of this world”).

Let’s look at these one at a time.

1. Prince of the Power of the Air

What does it mean to say that there is a prince of the power of the air? Or: a ruler of the authority of the air?

Air Is Everywhere

Air is where we live. Between heaven above and the earth beneath is the realm of air, and that is the habitation of man. Sometimes we say things like, “There’s excitement in the air.” What we mean is that excitement seems to be gripping everybody. Its influence is so widespread that it must simply be in the air.

That is Paul’s point. The influence of the power spoken of in verse 2 is so pervasive, that it can be called the power of the air. Man has to have air to live. The power of the air is therefore a power that can get at man everywhere. The whole inhabited world is the domain and the subject of this power.

Fourfold Description of Demonic Forces

But what is this authority or power of the air? The term probably refers to all those beings named in 6:12—”For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers (same word as in verse 2), against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Demonic forces are given four different descriptions. Paul says that we contend with them. That is, they are not far away. They are as close as the air we breathe. Then he calls some of them “world rulers.” Their sphere of activity is not just hell or heaven. It is the world, the place where people live.

When you put all these together, what you have is the “authority of the air” mentioned in 2:2. In other words demonic powers and authorities rule the air, the inhabited world of mankind.

The Prince of Demonic Forces

And there is a prince or ruler over them all. This no doubt refers to Satan. He is called the “prince of demons” in Matthew 12:24. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul calls him the “god of this world.” Jesus calls him the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). And Satan himself in Luke 4:6 tempts Jesus with world rule by saying, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.”

The Norm of This World Is Evil

Now what does this mean? It means that the norm of the world in which we live is evil. During the age in which we live, God permits that the dominant themes and motifs and moods are under the control of Satan.

So Paul says in Galatians 1:3, “Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.”

And in Colossians 1:13 he says that “God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

And John says in 1 John 5:19, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the [power of] the evil one.”

So God has indeed begun to save people from the power of darkness. At the cross the decisive death blow was struck against Satan (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14). “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Nevertheless, the way of the cross is narrow and few there be that find it, and the way of Satan is broad and many there be that find it. By and large the world rejects the Savior. And without a Savior the prince of the power of the air reigns over the sons of disobedience. And people who were made for God are captive to an alien power.

2. At Work in People Without a Savior

That leads to the second part of verse 2. How does Satan exert his rule in the world? At the end of the verse he is called “the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived”—that is, before we had a Savior! So the answer is that Satan exercises his rule by working in the hearts and lives of people without a Savior. He has easy access to their will because all ability to resist him in faith is dead in sin.

In other words we need a Savior not just because we were dead in sin, but also because Satan stood watch to keep us dead.

Moral Corruption and Its Promotion in the World

You can see this all through our culture—the teaming up of individual moral corruption with the promoters and supporters of that corruption which make escape from that corruption harder and harder. For example,

• the moral corruption of drug addiction is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by pushers;
• the moral corruption of gambling is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by legislators who legalize and institutionalize lotteries and para-mutual betting;
• the moral corruption of prostitution is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by pimps;
• the moral corruption of habitual sexual fantasizing is supported and encouraged and made more hopeless by the exploitation of bodies in advertising and videos and movies and magazines.

How does Satan pull this off? How does he work in the sons of disobedience? Let’s look at two other texts that give two answers to this question.

2 Corinthian 4:3–4

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.

In other words the way Satan compounds the hopelessness of people who are dead in sin is to keep them from seeing anything glorious in the gospel of Christ. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18) for two reasons:

1. “The natural man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). So he is blind to the true significance of the gospel because he is spiritually dead—natural.
2. The other reason the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing is that Satan works around the clock to prevent the Word of God from having any effect on the unbeliever’s heart. For example, in the parable of the four soils, he is pictured as a bird that snatches away seed before it can produce life. “When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart” (Matthew 13:19).

In other words, without a Savior, we were blinded by our own disease of sin AND by the work of Satan. So we were doubly blind and doubly in need of a Savior.

Acts 5:3

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land?”

In other words Satan works in the sons of disobedience not only by blinding them to the glory of the gospel, but also by filling their hearts with extraordinary desires to for evil. Luke 22:3 says that “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot . . . he went away and conferred with the chief priests and captains how he might betray [Jesus].”

Our Hopeless Condition Without a Savior

We were not only dead in sin. We were captive to an alien power. Jesus said in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” We were dead to God and enslaved to Satan. There was only one hope, and it was not in ourselves.

Paul put it like this in 2 Timothy 2:25–26—When the ministry of the Word is applied in love to an unbeliever, “God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”

We were captive to an alien power. We were dead to God and fully in support of the wishes of Satan. There was only one hope—a Savior: “God may perhaps grant that we repent and escape . . . ”

How Satan Works in the Sons of Disobedience

So the answer to the question how Satan works in the sons of disobedience is, at least partly, that he blinds them to the glory of Christ in the gospel so that all they see is foolishness, and he fills their hearts with overpowering desires to do his will. In this way we were all once held captive to an alien power and in desperate need of a Savior.

3. Following the Course of This World

That leaves room for just a brief comment about the first part of Ephesians 2:2. We have seen that there is a ruler over the evil authority of the air. This ruler is Satan. He works in all those who are without a Savior. The result is that we all once walked “following the course of this world.” Or literally, we once walked “according to the age of this world.”

Walking According to the Age of This World

The “age of this world” refers to the period of time appointed by God for this fallen world order to endure. During this age (which Paul calls an “evil age”—Galatians 1:3) the spirit of the times is by and large given into the authority of Satan (Luke 4:6). So when the text says that we once walked according to this age, it simply means that we were in step with the times. We were not aliens and exiles. We were natives. We felt right at home with the spirit of the age. Satan ruled the world. Satan ruled us. And so there was harmony, and we fit right in. As far as we were concerned, all was well.

This, then, is the witness of God concerning our condition without a Savior. It is not the witness of “eye-witness news” or national commentators or cinema or journalism. It is God’s testimony. This is the way God sees the world—ruled by an alien prince, blinding the minds of unbelievers, filling them with ungodly desires, holding them captive to do his will, and then causing them to think all is well because they are right in step with the times.

That was the condition of every one of us until we were made alive and rescued from Satan by the Savior.

Children of Wrath

But there remains one more thing to say concerning our condition without a Savior. At the end of verse 3 Paul says that “we were by nature children of wrath.”

Whose Wrath?

Ephesians 5:5–6 puts it like this:

Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

So it is God’s wrath that is coming. We were “by nature children of the wrath OF GOD.” Which means that we naturally did those things which God hates. By nature we rejected the knowledge of God (Romans 2:28), and by nature we refused the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:14), and by nature we were filled with desires that amounted to idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

Righteous Wrath

And what we learn from Scripture is that God would be unrighteous if he looked with indifference on our sin, because our sin dishonors him so much. Therefore 2 Thessalonians 1:7–9 says,

The Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

There will be a division of sheep and goats in that awful day. And the Lord Jesus will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41, 46). As you followed the prince of the power of the air in this life, you will follow him into the next—into “everlasting punishment.”

The Wrath of the Lamb

John calls it the “wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16) to show the indignation of the Son of God against those who spurned his lamb-like meekness and his offers of forgiveness. Soon the age of meekness will be over:

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:12)

The Son of man will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. (Matthew 13:41–42)

If any one’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:15)

He shall drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever. (Revelation 14:10–11; cf. Matthew 5:29–30; 18:33; 7:13; 8:12; 10:28; 13:42; 22:13; 25:30; Mark 9:43ff.)

“Jesus Delivers from the Wrath to Come”

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones died in 1981. He was a great preacher at the Westminster Chapel in London for 40 years. The year before his death when he was 81 years old, Christianity Today asked him, “Do you have any final word for our generation?” He answered simply by quoting 1 Thessalonians 1:10, “Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come.”

For behold, the Lord will come in fire,
and his chariots like the storm wind,
to render his anger in fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire.
For by fire will the Lord execute judgment,
and by his sword, upon all flesh;
and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
(Isaiah 66:15–16)

But for now he is a Savior. Turn to him and be saved—from the sickness of sin, the captivity of Satan, and the sentence of hell. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other name given among men by which you can be saved.

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Why Do We Need to Be Born Again?

by John Piper – Excerpts: Listen |   Watch

Ephesians 2:1-10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

One of the greatest books about God ever written, namely, John Calvin’s Institutes, begins with this sentence: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” What we may need reminding of in our day is not that the knowledge of God is difficult to comprehend and to embrace—that’s more or less obvious—but that the knowledge of ourselves is just as difficult to comprehend and to embrace. Indeed, it may be more difficult, first, because a true knowledge of ourselves assumes a true knowledge of God, and, second, because we tend to think we do know ourselves, when, in fact, the depths or our condition are beyond our comprehension without the help of God.

Who Can Know the Human Heart?

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). David said in Psalm 19:12, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.” In other words, we never get to the bottom of our sinfulness. If our forgiveness depended on the fullness of the knowledge of our sins, we would all perish. No one knows the extent of his sinfulness. It is deeper than anyone knows.

But the Bible does not leave us without help to know ourselves. The fact that we cannot know fully how sinful we are, does not mean we cannot know deeply how sinful we are. The Bible has a clear and devastating message about the state of our own souls. And the reason it does is so that we will know what we need and shout for joy when God gives it to us.

Why Must We Born Again?

We are in a series on the new birth. We have heard Jesus say in John 3:7, “You must be born again.” And in John 3:3, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” In other words, being born again is infinitely serious. Heaven and hell are hanging in the balance. We will not see the kingdom of God unless we are born again. So today the question is Why? Why is it so necessary? Why isn’t some other remedy sufficient, like turning over a new leaf or moral improvement or self-disciple? Why this radical, spiritual, supernatural thing called new birth or regeneration? That’s the question we try to answer today and next week.

Diagnosis: We Are Dead

The text where we take our beginning is Ephesians 2. Two times, in verses 1 and 5, Paul says that we are dead in our trespasses. Verse 1: “You were dead in the trespasses and sins . . .” Verses 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.” So two times Paul describes us as “dead.”

Remedy: “God Made Us Alive”

And the remedy in for this in verse 5 is: “God made us alive.” You will never experience the fullness of the greatness of God’s love for you if you don’t see his love in relation to your former deadness. Because verse 4 says that the greatness of his love is shown precisely in this: that it makes us alive when we were dead. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were deadin our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” Because of his great love for us, he made us alive. If you don’t know that you were dead, you will not know the fullness of the love of God.

I take this miracle, “he made us alive,” to be virtually the same as what Jesus calls the new birth. Once we had no spiritual life, and then God raised us from that state of spiritual deadness. And now we are alive. This is the same as Jesus’ saying that we must be born of the Spirit (John 3:5) and “It is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:63).

New Covenant Love

So we can say then that the work of regeneration, the work of new birth, the work of being made alive, flows from the richness of God’s mercy and the greatness of his love. “But God, (1) being rich in mercy, (2) because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were deadin our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” This is new covenant love. This is the kind of love God has for his bride. He finds her dead (Ezekiel 16:4-8), and he gives his Son to die for her, and then he makes her alive. And he keeps her forever. “I give them eternal life,” Jesus said, “and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

Why the New Birth Is Necessary

So the question is: What does this mean? This deadness? There are at least ten answers in the New Testament. If we consider them honestly and prayerfully they will humble us very deeply and cause us to be amazed at the gift of the new birth. So what I aim to do is talk about seven of them today and three of them next time along with the larger question: Do we really need to be changed? Can’t we just be forgiven and justified? Wouldn’t that get us to heaven? But we save that for next time.

Here are seven of the biblical explanations of our condition apart from the new birth and why it is so necessary.

1. Apart from the new birth, we are dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-2).

Dead implies lifeless. Not physically or morally lifeless. Verse 1: We are “walking” and “following” the world. Verse 2: We have “passions” of the flesh, and we carry out “desires of the body and the mind.” So we are not dead in the sense that we can’t sin. We are dead in the sense that we cannot see or feel the glory of Christ. We are spiritually dead. We are unresponsive to God and Christ and this word. Consider now how this is unfolded in nine other descriptions of our condition before new birth happens.

2. Apart from the new birth, we are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3).

Verse 3: “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” The point of this is to make clear that our problem is not just in what we do but in what we are. Apart from new birth, I am my problem. You are not my main problem. My parents were not my main problem. My enemies are not my main problem. I am my main problem.  Not my deeds, and not my circumstances, and not the people in my life, but my nature is my deepest personal problem.

I did not first have a good nature and then do bad things and get a bad nature. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). This is who I am. My nature is selfish and self-centered and demanding and very skilled in making you feel like the problem. And if your first response to that statement is I know people like that, you may be totally blind to the deceitfulness of your own heart.

Paul describes our nature before the new birth as “children of wrath.” In other words, the wrath of God belongs to us the way a parent belongs to a child. Our nature is so rebellious and so selfish and so callous toward the majesty of God that his holy anger is a natural and right response to us.

3. Apart from the new birth, we love darkness and hate the light (John 3:19-20).

This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved he darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

This word from Jesus spells out some of what our nature is like apart from the new birth. We are not neutral when spiritual light approaches. We resist it. And we are not neutral when spiritual darkness envelops us. We embrace it. Love and hate are active in the unregenerate heart. And they move in exactly the wrong directions—hating what should be loved and loving what should be hated.

4. Apart from the new birth, our hearts are hard like stone (Ezekiel 36:26; Ephesians 4:18).

We saw this last week from Ezekiel 36:26, where God says, “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Here in Ephesians 4:18, Paul traces our condition back through darkness to alienation to ignorance to hardness of heart. “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” At the bottom of our problem is not ignorance. There is something deeper.: “the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Our ignorance is guilty ignorance, not innocent ignorance. It is rooted in hard and resistant hearts. Paul says in Romans 1:18 that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Ignorance is not our biggest problem. Hardness and resistance is.

5. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to submit to God or please God (Romans 8:7-8).

In Romans 8:7, Paul says, “The mind that is set on the flesh [literally: the mind of the flesh] is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” We can tell from the next verse what Paul means by “the mind of the flesh” and being “in the flesh.” He says in verse 9, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” In other words, he is contrasting those who are born again and have the Spirit and those who are not born again and therefore do not have the Spirit but only have the flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit and that which is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:5).

His point is that without the Holy Spirit, our minds are so resistant to God’s authority that we will not, and therefore cannot, submit to him. “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot.” And if we cannot submit to him we cannot please him. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” That is how dead and dark and hard we are toward God until God causes us to be born again.

6. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to accept the gospel (Ephesians 4:18; 1 Corinthians 2:14).

In 1 Corinthians 2:14, Paul gives us another glimpse into what this deadness and hardness implies for what we are unable to do. He says, “The natural person [that is, the unregenerate person by nature] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The problem is not that the things of God are over his head intellectually. The problem is that he sees them as foolish. “He does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.” In fact, they are so foolish to him that he cannot grasp them.

Mind you this is a moral “cannot,” not a physical “cannot.” When Paul says, “The natural person . . . is not able to understand them,” he means that the heart is so resistant to receiving them that the mind justifies the rebellion of the heart by seeing them as foolish. This rebellion is so complete that the heart really cannot receive the things of the Spirit. This is real inability. But it is not a coerced inability. The unregenerate person cannot because he will not. His preferences for sin are so strong that he cannot choose good. It is a real and terrible bondage. But it is not an innocent bondage.

7. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to come to Christ or embrace him as Lord (John 6:44, 65; 1 Corinthians 12:3).

In 1 Corinthians 12:3, Paul declares, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” He doesn’t mean that an actor on a stage or an hypocrite in a church cannot say the words “Jesus is Lord” without the Holy Spirit. He means no one can say it and mean it without being born of the Spirit. It is morally impossible for the dead, dark, hard, resistant heart to celebrate the Lordship of Jesus over his life without being born again.

Or, as Jesus says three times in John 6, no one can come to him unless the Father draws him. And when that drawing brings a person into living connection with Jesus, we call it the new birth. Verse 37: “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” Verse 44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Verse 65: “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” All of these wonderful works of drawing, granting, and giving are the work of God in regeneration. Without them we do not come to Christ, because we don’t want to come. That is what has to be changed in the new birth.

A Personal and Urgent Response

There is more to be said about why the new birth is necessary, but that is enough for today. We conclude by going back to the amazingly hope-filled words of 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.”

There are two ways to respond to this: One is theoretical and impersonal; the other is personal and urgent. One says: How can this be, and how can that be? The other says: God brought me here today. God spoke in these texts to me today. God’s mercy and love and grace seem desperately needed and beautiful to me today. O God, today, I submit to your amazing grace that has brought me here and awakened me and softened me and opened me. Thanks be to God for the riches of his mercy and the greatness of his love and the power of his grace.

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But God…

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 2:1-9

And you he made alive, when you were dead through 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 these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 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 (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 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 because of works, lest any man should boast.

In these last two messages we have been trying to be obedient to the command in Ephesians 2:12.

REMEMBER that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Cherish or Perish

Remember that! Don’t ever forget it. Once we forget our need for a Savior, we will not cherish him. If the motto of university faculties is “Publish or Perish,” never forget that the motto of the Christian church is “Cherish or Perish.” We have not been playing games with optional matters. This is essential.

If I do not cherish Jesus as my Savior, I do not have him as a Savior.

• “For we know that all things work together for good for those who cherish God and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
• “What no eye has seen nor ear heard, God has prepared for those who cherish him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
• “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have cherished his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8).
• “If anyone does not cherish the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22).
• “Grace be with all who cherish our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternity” (Ephesians 6:24).

This is the Word of God! If we do not cherish him as a Savior, we do not have him as a Savior. And if we do not know and feel our need for a Savior, we will not cherish him.

Our Threefold Need for a Savior

But Paul longs for us to cherish Jesus Christ, and I long for you to cherish Jesus Christ this Christmas (and some of you for the first time!). Therefore he wrote and I have preached three things from Ephesians 2:1–3 about our need for a Savior. There is a downward spiral: Verse 1, we need a Savior because of our corruption in sin. Verse 2, we need a Savior because of our captivity to Satan. Verse 3, we need a Savior because of our condemnation to hell. Dead in sin, captive to an alien power, children of wrath.

Imagine yourself in any crisis in the world—captive to a gunman in a French court, streaking to earth in a crashing jet, frozen ten hours in a bank of snow, hovering on the brink with a Jarvik-7—whatever crisis you could imagine yourself in, I tell you on the authority of God’s Word your condition right now in this room and at this moment is more critical and more urgent and more threatening without a Savior than anything you can imagine.

No one in the world is going to tell you this. Only God and his messengers care enough about you to warn you to flee from the wrath to come. And, as one of those messengers, I have warned you. And now may God give every one of us the grace to cherish what comes next.

Good News

Verses 4–7:

4) But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 5) even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6) and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7) that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Look at this!

• We were dead in sin, BUT GOD made us alive with Christ.
• We were captive to the prince of the power of the air and enslaved to the course of this world, BUT GOD raised us with Christ and made us sit with him in the heavenly places.
• We were children of wrath and deserving of an eternity in the torments of hell, BUT GOD, instead of pouring out wrath, will spend eternity showing the immeasurable riches of his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, this is good news!

Nothing Is Impossible for God

O that men would reckon with God when their plight is hopeless! You say, I am dead. No hope. No hope. You say, I am captive. No hope. No hope. You say I am hell-bent and doomed. No hope for me. No hope. Well, read on! BUT GOD! BUT GOD! Yes, dead. Yes, captive. Yes, doomed. BUT GOD!

Isn’t one of the greatest truths of Christmas the word of the angel to Mary?

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?”

And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you . . . For with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 2:31, 34–35, 37).

“How can I have a baby? I have no husband. I’m a virgin.” That’s right Mary, you can’t. But now learn the most important lesson in the universe: reckon with the reality of God! A virgin can’t produce a baby. BUT GOD can!

Reckon with God and His Promises in the Word

O that you would reckon with God! Consider now what the Word of God says concerning those who trust in him. Here is the way we will handle the text.

• We will put verse 3 over against verse 7—we were children of wrath, but God promises endless kindness.
• We will put verse 2 over against verse 6—we were enslaved to the spirit of this age, BUT GOD freed us to sit with Christ in heaven.
• And we will put verses 1 over against verse 5 and 6—we were dead in sins, BUT GOD made us alive with Christ.

1. Kindness in the Place of Wrath

First, notice what God gives in the place of wrath.

In verse 3 at the end it says that “We were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” By nature we were so rebellious against the law of God that we were suitable objects of God’s wrath.

Jesus’ Merciful Warnings of Hell

Every Christmas when I sit in front of our living room fire, and watch it consume paper cups and marshmallow bags and hot dog wrappers, I cannot help but think of hell. It isn’t fire and brimstone preachers who put these images in my mind. It is Jesus Christ.

He’s the one who warned the church most vividly to cut off your sinning hand rather than go with two hands to hell (Matthew 5:30); that all evildoers will be thrown into a furnace of fire (Matthew 13:42); that the goats on his left hand will go into eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46); that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12). Again and again he warned that it is appointed unto man once to die and after that comes judgment (Hebrews 9:37). And these are not the hostile harpings of a country preacher. They are all mercy—just like the glass doors on the front of our fire place are mercy to little Barnabas.

God’s Merciful Promise

But now, in typical biblical fashion, after the merciful warning comes the merciful promise in verse 7. For those who trust Christ, God commits himself to the following purpose:

. . . that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Notice how Paul piles up words to make a deep and lasting impression on our hearts. God’s settled purpose is to be gracious to those who are in Christ Jesus. And lest we miss the sweetness and gentleness and gladness of the word “grace,” he adds the words, “in kindness toward us.” Now ask yourself this question: If there were one person in all the universe the benefits of whose kindness you could choose, who would it be? Would it not be God? You might be able to think of a thousand things that would be kindness to you. But then your imagination would run out. But God’s imagination will never run out.

Help for Faltering Imaginations

And to make this clear Paul uses the word “riches.” God’s purpose is to spend the “riches of his grace in kindness on us.” And then to assist our faltering imagination he adds the word “immeasurable” or “surpassing” or “incomparable.” How rich is God? I read in the paper recently that Queen Elizabeth is worth about four billion dollars. Now if you got a letter in the mail from Queen Elizabeth which said that she had taken an oath by the blood of her son to spend her riches to show you as much kindness as she could for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you get excited? And her wealth compares to God’s like a grain of sand to the Sahara Desert.

But that’s not all. She could only show you kindness for a few years—ten, thirty, sixty maybe. But look what Paul says God intends to do for you? “That in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” How long is an age? And how many ages are coming? Well, the answer is simple: all of them that lie in the future are coming. So it doesn’t matter how long one of them is.

Do you know why Paul had to say it this way? Because that’s how long it will take God to run out of fresh ideas about how to show you kindness. When eternity ends, God will have run out of ways to show you kindness. Now tell me, when does eternity end?

The Meaning of Christmas

This is the meaning of Christmas: Christ came into the world to die for sinners so that God would have a people who would value the riches of his kindness forever. Are you one of those? How can you not be one of those, when you compare the wealth of God with the wealth of Queen Elizabeth?

We were by nature children of wrath, BUT GOD has promised us eternal kindness instead.

2. Freedom in the Place of Captivity

Second, notice what God gives in place of captivity to an alien power.

Captive to Satan

According to verse 2 we all once followed the course of this world. We were in step with the times, in tune with the world, at home in the spirit of the age. The reason for this is that Satan is at work in the sons of disobedience.

There is a personal, supernatural reality called the prince of the power of the air, and he has easy access to the hearts of the disobedient. And so he easily keeps their behavior in his approved channels—sometimes moral, sometimes immoral, but always self-centered. He blinds their minds to the glory of Christ in the gospel and so protects his captives from the rescue operations of the church.

Seated with Christ in Heaven

That condition is hopeless—just as hopeless as a virgin trying to give birth to God. O that we would reckon with God! Captive to an alien power . . . BUT GOD (verse 6) “raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places.”

Now what does that mean? We are all right here in this room, aren’t we? Or are we? What did Tony Bennett mean twenty years ago when he sang, “I left my heart in San Francisco”? Well, he meant that San Francisco still holds his affections. San Francisco is always pulling him back. San Francisco governs his tastes. He may look like he is in Chicago. But Chicago has no claim on his affections. It’s a foreign land. He is not interested in being like the natives of the windy city.

That is the way it is with us when we are converted. God takes our heart and puts it in heaven with Christ. Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” So just like it is with Tony Bennett and San Francisco, so it is with us and heaven. It’s heaven that holds our affections. It’s heaven that’s always pulling us upwards; it’s heaven that governs our tastes. We may look like we are in the world. But the world has no claim on our affections. It’s a foreign land. We are exiles and aliens.

Freedom from the Spirit of the Age

In a word, when we are converted, God frees us from the spirit of the age and the god of the age. It’s as though we had been kidnapped and brainwashed and made to think we were really citizens of the enemy territory. And then the king’s intelligence finds you and shocks you out of your stupor, and you suddenly realize that what the enemy has to offer would never satisfy the deepest longings of your heart. Your heart is in the homeland. But the king says stay for now, and, though it may be dangerous, live like an alien in love with the homeland, and when you come home, bring as many with you as you can.

Don’t you really want to be FREE from the spirit of the age? Why would anybody want to be jelly fish carried around by currents in the sea of secularism? You can be a dolphin, and swim against the currents and against the tide. Jelly fish aren’t free. Dolphins are free.

The Meaning of Christmas

This is the meaning of Christmas: Christ came into the world to die for sinners so that God would have a people who are free from the prince of this world and the spirit of the age.

Once we were captive to an alien power, BUT GOD rescued our hearts and put them in heaven and made us free from Satan’s tyranny.

3. Life in the Place of Death

Third, notice what God gives in place of deadness in sin.

According to verse 1 we were dead in trespasses and sins. That is, we were spiritually impotent. The corruption of sin was so deep that we had no spiritual inclinations at all. We may have been open tombs of immorality, or we may have been whitewashed tombs of religiosity. But there was no spiritual good within us.

BUT GOD, when he walked by my open grave, instead of turning away from the stench, he said to his Son, “I want that mess alive. Will you die for him?” And he said yes. And that’s how I got saved. And that’s how you got saved—or can get saved.

And that’s the meaning of Christmas: Christ came into the world to die for sinners so that God would have a people who are spiritually alive and holy.

Once we were dead in sin, BUT GOD made us alive!

Once we were captive to Satan, BUT GOD made us free!

Once we were children of wrath, BUT GOD has promised to spend eternity unwrapping the riches of his grace in kindness toward us!

How Can We Have These Riches?

O that we might all reckon with God this Christmas! But how? What can we do to have these riches? Verse 8 points the way: “By grace you have been saved THROUGH faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.”

If life from the dead is given to you by grace, and freedom from Satan is given to you by grace, and the hope of eternal kindness is given to you by grace, then there is only one possible way to receive these things—through FAITH. “By grace are you saved through faith.”

Faith in the Face of Temptation

And here’s what that means. It means that from here on out you will trust in your heart that the death of Christ has covered all your sins, and guaranteed all the promises of God on your behalf.

So, for example, if you are tempted to steal, instead you’ll put your trust in the promise of God that “He will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). And you don’t deny that promise by stealing.

And if you are tempted to lie to get yourself out of a jam, instead you will trust the promise of God that “The Lord withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). And you will not deny this promise by stealing.

And if you are tempted to take revenge for wrong, instead you will trust the promise of God, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). And you will not deny the truth and value of this promise by taking revenge yourself.

Trust Christ

By grace are you saved through faith. So I urge you all to trust Christ. Trust him with your sin. Trust him with your relationships. Trust him with your job. Trust him with your health. Trust him with your money and leisure. And trust him with your future—all the way to eternity.

For he is a great God of wonders! He makes the dead to live. He sets the captive free. And he will spend eternity lavishing the riches of his kindness on those who trust him.

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His Body: The Fullness of Him Who Fills All in All

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 1:15-23

For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

A Link Between Suffering and the Body of Christ

One link between the series on suffering, which we just finished, and the series on the church as the body of Christ, which we begin today, is that the suffering which Christ began to experience in his earthly body he continues to experience in some sense in his body called the church. You recall how before Paul was converted, he persecuted the church. Acts 9:1 says he was breathing out threats and murders against the disciples of the Lord. On his way to Damascus to capture and imprison Christians “a light from heaven flashed about him.” Acts 9:4 says, “He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”

Jesus Identifies with His Followers

Now Saul did not believe that Jesus was alive. He thought the whole thing was a delusion. He was persecuting deluded Jewish fanatics that thought a dead criminal was the Son of God. But that was not the way the Son of God saw it. When the Son of God spoke, he said, “Why do you persecute me?” So not only is this crucified criminal alive, but he is so identified with his followers that to persecute them is to persecute him.

This is the link between suffering and the body of Christ. When Christ was on the earth, Christ had one kind of body, a physical body like ours. And with it he suffered and died that we might live. Now he is raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of God; but on the earth he has another kind of body, namely, the church. Christ was united to his body then, and felt the blows of his enemies. And he is united to his body now, the church, and he feels the blows of his enemies still.

Matthew 25

You can see this connection between Christ and his people in numerous texts. For example, in Matthew 25 Jesus says to his people at the final judgment, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me . . . ” (vv. 35–36). And they ask when this happened, since Jesus wasn’t there; he was in heaven. And he answers, “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (v. 40). The brethren of Jesus are the church. If you persecute the church, you persecute Jesus, and if you show love and affection to the church, you show love and affection to Jesus. The church is his body; it is the physical form of his presence on earth. Touch the church and you touch the body of Christ, which means you touch Christ.

1 Corinthians 6:15–16

Another striking illustration of this is 1 Corinthians 6:15-16, where Paul says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?” If you are a disciple of Christ, then you are a member (i.e., part) of the body of Christ, and the parts of your body are parts of Christ’s body—so much so, Paul says, that if you commit fornication or adultery, you drag Christ himself into bed with you and make him do what you do.

The Aim of This Series

I’m going to devote a whole message to that text in November. But I just want to illustrate now the reality of Christ’s presence in the world in the form of his church, his body. Today on the earth Christ has a body, the church. It has legs to walk and arms to work and mouths to talk and feet to be blistered and backs to be beaten, and hunger to be fed and loneliness to be visited. Paul said that his aim in life was that the life of Jesus might be manifested in his mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:11). In other words, his aim is that his body might make Christ’s body real to the world. Jesus said, “Whoever receives you receives me” (Matthew 10:40).

We are going to spend about 12 weeks talking about this amazing reality—the body of Christ: Christ is present in the world in his body, the church. And our aim is not just to fill our minds with knowledge, but to fill Minneapolis with Christ. To become what Christ wants to be in his body not only for each other but for this city and for the unreached peoples of the world.

Today’s Text: Three Observations

Now take that goal of “filling Minneapolis with Christ” and you will see the connection with today’s text, Ephesians 1:22–23, “And he [God] put all things in subjection under his [Christ's] feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” Notice: “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” So this text speaks to the issue of filling Minneapolis, or any other city, or the whole world and the whole universe with Christ.

Let’s make three careful observations from verse 23:

1. The Church Is the Body of Christ

First, the church is the body of Christ. Verse 22 ends by saying, “God gave Christ as head over all things to the church.” Then verse 23 refers to the “church” when it says, “Which is his body.” The church is Christ’s body. Not the building called the church. (In the NT the word “church” never refers to a building.) But the people of God, the disciples of Jesus, the elect from all the nations—they are the body of Christ. That’s the first observation: the church is Christ’s body.

2. Christ Fills All in All

Second, Christ fills all in all. Verse 23: “Which is his body, the fullness of him [i.e., Christ] who fills all in all.” So Christ fills all in all. Or as the present tense and the middle voice imply: Christ is now filling for himself all in all.

I take this to mean that Christ is filling every sphere of existence everywhere in the universe in all the ways he pleases. The best guide for what this means that “Christ fills all in all” is found here in the immediate context of verses 20–22 and in 4:8–10. Look at that text first.

Something He Does with His Authority as Risen Ruler

Paul is talking about the way Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven; and in doing so he broke the bonds of death and captured for himself a host of captives, and led them free from sin and death and fear. Then Paul says Jesus did this that he might fill all things.

“Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ 9) Now this expression, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10) He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

What this shows us is that Christ’s purpose to fill all things is accomplished by his rising from the dead and his ascending into heaven as victor over his enemies. In other words “filling all things” is something Jesus does with the authority he has as the risen ruler over all things.

Christ’s Resurrection and Exaltation over All

That takes us back to 1:20–22. Here Paul is doing the same thing as in 4:8–10, namely, describing the resurrection of Christ and his exaltation above everything and his triumph over everything. Let’s pick it up in verse 20b:

20b) [God] raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21) far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. 22) And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church.

Notice the four things God does for his Son in these verses:

1. he raises him from the dead (v. 20);
2. he gives him the seat of kingly authority at his right hand (v. 20);
3. he puts everything in the universe in subjection to him (v. 22), which includes every form of evil power and every being which is now or will be in the future (v. 21); and then
4. he gives his Son with all that universal power and authority to the church as the head of his body.

Asserting His Authority over All Things

Now Ephesians 4:10 says all that happened “that he might fill all things,” just like verse 23 says this Christ is “filling all in all.” So the filing all things is the effect of Christ’s ruling all things. And the most natural meaning of the filling then would be that he fills all things with the assertion of his rule and authority. That is, asserts himself and his rights as fully as he pleases in all things.

Picture him as the king over many territories that are not fully subdued to him. This text is declaring that Christ is indeed the king of the universe. He is “above ALL rule” (v. 21). He is over “EVERY name” (v. 21). God put “ALL THINGS” under his feet (v. 22). He is head over “ALL THINGS” (v. 22). And by this authority he will sovereignly fill all his territories with absolute sway. He will accomplish his purpose in every sphere. He will make himself unmistakably known in every place. He will be preeminent in every nook and cranny of the universe. Even the outer darkness of hell will be filled with his authority and his power and his wrath and the knowledge of his wisdom.

So the first observation in verse 23 is that the church is the body of Christ; and the second observation is that Christ fills all in all. The glory of Christ will pervade “all in all”; that is, the glory of Christ will pervade everything in every way that the wisdom of God ordains for his maximum renown and splendor. There will be no place where his power does not hold sway to accomplish exactly what he wants for the dissemination of his all-filling glory.

3. The Church Is Christ’s Fullness

The third observation, in verse 23, boggles the mind even further, namely, Christ’s body is his fullness which fills all in all. “[The church] is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” His body, the fullness. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ. Which most naturally means, the church, the body of Christ, is the fullness by which Christ fills all things.

Now how does that fit together with what we have said before? We have said that Christ fills all things by asserting his authority over all things to make himself known in all things—to fill all things with his power and his wisdom and his glory. We are saying that this fullness with which Christ fills all things is the body of Christ, the church. What does that mean?

Ephesians 3:10 Provides a Clue to the Meaning

Look at Ephesians 3:10 for a clue. Paul says that he has been called to preach the riches of Christ and reveal the mystery of Christ, “in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”

Now look at what is going on here. It takes your breath away if you believe it and you are part of the church. The first thing is that the wisdom of God—the manifold, many-sided wisdom of God—is being made known to the rulers and authorities. These are satanic, demonic powers in the universe. They are the very ones that according to 1:21 state that Christ now is seated above with his feet on them.

What is going on here is, first, that God means to fill the habitations of demons with the manifestation of his wisdom, the wisdom that conceived and ordained and planned and brought about and will consummate the salvation of his people—the unfathomable riches of Christ. Not even the place of demons will be left without a revelation of the glory of Christ, the wisdom of God.

The other thing going on here in 3:10 is that this revelation that fills the habitation of demons happens “through the church”—”that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” I think this is an illustration of our third observation from 1:23, namely, that the church, the body of Christ, is the fullness of him who fills all in all.

The Church as the Embodiment of Christ

It means: God AIMS to fill the universe with the glory of his Son, Jesus, by making the church the showcase of his perfections. Or, to put it another way, and include the idea of body: God means to fill the universe with the glory of his Son by putting the church on display as the embodiment of his Son.

Christ fills the universe with his glory by showing the universe his body—how he chose her, how he destined her, how he came for her and taught her and suffered for her and died for her and rose for her and reigns for her, how he called her and justified her and cleansed her and kept her and will raise her and glorify her and satisfy her forever and ever with himself.

One Final Observation

There is so much more to say about this text and our unspeakably great calling and destiny as the body of Christ. And I will apply more of this text to us Wednesday evening. But let’s close with this final observation from verse 22. “[God] put all things in subjection under [Christ's] feet”—so that as sovereign ruler of all he might assert his truth and right and power and wisdom in all the universe and fill all things with his kingly glory.

Yes, all of that, but not without the church. The verse goes on: “[God] put all things in subjection under his feet, AND GAVE HIM AS HEAD OVER ALL THINGS TO THE CHURCH.” God did not exalt Jesus and subject all things to him and then simply say, “Now go ahead and fill the universe with your glory; fill all things with yourself.” Instead he raised him and exalted him and subjected all things under him and then made him one with the church, as head to the body, and said, “Now, my Son, you and those with whom you are united as head to body, go forth in the universe and fill it with all that you are in your body. Let everything, from the highest heaven to the lowest hell, be filled with a revelation of your glorious perfections in the form of a chosen, destined, blood-bought, called, justified, holy, glorified, and infinitely, everlastingly satisfied people, your body, the church of the living God. Amen”

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Discussion Questions for Small Groups

“His Body: The Fullness of Him Who Fills All in All” (Ephesians 1:15–23)

You might want to begin the discussion by asking what one truth from the sermon had the most impact on some of the members of the group. Remember the goal is to strengthen each other’s hope in God. Constantly draw the focus onto what builds more faith with its joy and peace and courage to love.

1. We just finished a series of messages on suffering. How does the suffering that Paul was bringing on the church lead us to see the church as the body of Christ? See Acts 9:4. Even though this verse implies we suffer as Christians, why is it encouraging?
2. If Acts 9:4 says that when we are persecuted Christ is persecuted, then Matthew 25:35–40 seems to say that when we are loved and cared for, Christ is loved and cared for. Do you agree with pastor John that “the least of these my brethren” in v. 40 refers to Christians? Compare Matthew 10:42. How might this union between Jesus and his people motivate our practical acts of ministry to each other, or the Christians in Somalia? Does it help overcome the sense that little acts like visiting are somehow insignificant?
3. How does 1 Corinthians 6:15–16 show that our participation in the body of Christ is not just a general corporate thing, but also a specific physical thing that includes our bodies? What are some other behaviors (besides sexual immorality) where this truth will affect the use of your body (eyes, ears, stomach, voice box, etc.)?
4. In three brief sentences, what were the three observations pastor John made from Ephesians 1:23? (1—The church is the body of Christ. 2—Christ fills all in all. 3—Christ’s body is the fullness by which he fills all in all.)
5. What is it about Christ that is stressed in Ephesians 1:20–22 which prepares us for the way Christ fills all in all? How is this confirmed in Ephesians 4:10? How does it help to picture Christ as a king with many territories who do not yet honor him as king? What does he intend to fill them with so that they submit to him as sovereign Lord? In view of what we see in our own modern culture, what effect does this truth have on our daily lives?
6. The most astonishing observation from Ephesians 1:23 is that the body of Christ, the church, is the fullness by which Christ fills all things! Be sure to see the very words where that observation comes from. Now if Christ is using his absolute authority (described in verses 20–22) to fill all the universe with his glory, how can it be said that it is the church that is this fullness with which he is filling all things? Use the clue in Ephesians 3:10 (”through the church”).
7. What is the emotional effect on you in knowing that God intends to make the church the showcase of his perfections in the whole universe, including the demonic world itself (3:10)?

Suggestions for Prayer Focus

1. that God would hasten the day when this great work of filling all things with Christ will be done (”Thy kingdom come!”);
2. that we would have the eyes of our hearts enlightened to see and feel the awesome calling and destiny that is ours as the body of Christ;
3. that we would conform more and more to the image of Christ that our families and businesses and schools and city may be filled with Christ here and now.

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