Moving From Death to Life

(God’s Magnificent Work Through Christ)

Ephesians 2:1-10

When I was preparing my message on Wednesday morning, I received a surprise phone call from a friend from my former church. I know this call was not a coincidence since I was praying that God would show me a way to illustrate how Christ can transform lives. The book of Ephesians is all about living out our faith, seeing the magnificent work of Christ in our daily lives. My friend was on the phone as he was visiting the US for a short time. We loved each other very much. We talked about the last years when we didn’t have the chance to see each other. I knew him as a student, before he came to Christ. He was a tough guy, advanced in martial arts, indifferent about God. When he met Christ at the college, his life was drastically changed. He dedicated himself to Jesus and to the surprise of his friends and family, became a member of the church. His family didn’t like it. Not only that, he later became a youth leader. He told me how trials came to his life, and how God’s grace kept him going forward. Knowing his old life, it was amazing to hear his testimony about God’s grace.

We move on to the second chapter of Ephesians. We will look at the first ten verses today. Again Paul was excited and he wrote all these verses in one sentence. However, let us divide it to three main parts:

1. First he talks about the problem humanity is facing- alienation from God.

2. Then Paul explains how God solves the problem.

3. Lastly, he gives details about how God solves the problem.

1. The problem- alienation from God.

First let me tell you when Paul says “you”, he is speaking about the Gentiles; when he says “us”, he is talking about the Jews. In this passage, he tells us how terrible life without Christ is for the Gentiles and Jews alike.

What does life without Christ mean?

We are talking about sin, hamartia in Greek. I have said this before, I will repeat it. It literally means missing the target. Sin means failing to hit the target of our life. “Sin is the act of choosing our own way and leaving God out of the picture.” (NIV Com. P. 108). It is when our self is the center and not God. We know that God gives us life. When our actions ignore God, we are living in sin. And when we cut ourselves from God the LIFE-GIVER, we are dead. So we are not just talking about rapists, or robbers, or murderers; we often think only those are sinful people. They are as well as we who consider ourselves clean. Hamartia indicates that all humanity has fallen in this trap, failing in what we ought to be. So sin is not just things we do, it is state of being.

Let me show you a caricature, a picture where the pastor is shaking the parishioner’s hand. The topic of the day’s sermon is written on the wall: “Dealing with Failure”. The parishioner shakes the hand of the pastor and says, “We love it when you preach from your own experience.” This is exactly what hamartia is; he missed the point. He missed looking at sin in his own life.

Let us stop looking around us. I hope these sermons help you see where YOU are in your spiritual journey.

Paul says to the gentiles and then also to the Jews, “…you were all dead in your transgressions and sins” (vs.1). Paul gives two reasons why we end up in sin and eventually in death.

First , it is our choice to follow our sinful nature and to alienate ourselves from God. On the other hand, Paul also talks about the “ruler”, “…in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (vs. 1,2) Who is this ruler? Paul talks in chapter 6 that our war is not against blood and flesh, it is against the Devil, the ruler of the air. Satan enhances our sinful life. Satan attacks anything that helps us come closer to God. Satan’s number one strategy is temptation, doubt, that eventually lead us to alienation from God.

We will continue in the English sermon.