God’s Workmanship-Ephesians 2:1-10
Good afternoon! Happy Sunday and happy Labor Day Weekend! As you know, Jim gave us a message on Ephesians 1 two weeks ago, so I decided to continue to chapter 2 today. Unintentionally, my message happened to fall on Labor Day weekend and there happens to be something mentioned about work; however, not man’s work but God’s work. Especially, God’s powerful and intricate work in the lives of all believers. But more than that I would like to talk about our God, who is rich in mercy and grace. We all want to be rich in something I believe. Our God is rich in grace and mercy that changes our identify from wretched and condemned sinners to God’s precious and glorious children. Let’s learn from Paul’s writing in chapter 2 how we became new creations in Christ.
OUR GOD IS RICH IN MERCY AND GRACE
Ephesians 2:1-10
Key Verses: 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…”
Look at verse 1. “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins…” Paul had concluded chapter 1 writing about the incomparably great power of God that raised Jesus from the dead. Chapter 1:19-20 reads, “…and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” In brief, he was expounding on the great miracle of Jesus’ resurrection because before we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we were dead spiritually. Paul begins chapter 2 writing about the past spiritual state of the believers in Ephesus and which also includes the state of those, including us, before they received salvation in Jesus’ name. He wrote, “you were dead in the trespasses and sins.” In the Bible we can find three states of death—physical, spiritual, and eternal death. Obviously, physical death is when our bodies have ceased to exist because of some health issues, accident, or old age. Spiritual death is separation from God because of unrepentant sins, which keeps our souls empty of the presence of God. Eternal death is after the Final Judgment which is called in Revelation the “second death,” when we are separated from God forever and ever. In verse 1, Paul was addressing the second type of death, spiritual death, to remind the believers about their past. In other words, their pre-salvation spiritual condition. How did they become to be in that state?
Look at verse 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…” Before receiving salvation and meeting God personally, we walked following the trends, cultural norms of the world, and our own sinful passions and desires. As walking is normal in our daily lives, just following sinful ways looked normal to many people, which included us, because everyone was doing them. Just look at many social media sites and copy what famous influencers are doing. Or just do what our worldly friends and other people around us are doing. These days, we can see many people proudly parading and exposing their sinful ways for all the world to see. To them it’s normal to be walking around and flaunting their sinful ways—wanting many people to follow their examples. We call such bad influence as cultural sickness or cultural transmission. But the problem is that there is a greater influencer than the influencers, who is called in verse 2 “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience…” Who is Paul writing about? Of course, he is talking about the devil and his demonic minions who work in the hearts and minds of the “sons of disobedience.” They are influencing those living in rebellion against God, like the devil who rebelled against God’s sovereignty and authority. As you know and see, there are powers and authorities in this world that want to destroy and degrade the Christian moral values that we acquired from the Bible and our Christian heritage. Especially, in regards to family values, marriage, two genders as taught in Genesis, and our moral stand on sex outside of marriage. In our age, we can see the pervasive dominance of post-modernism, materialism, and sexual immorality. In post-modernism, there is no absolute truth and many people believe this absolutely—contradicting their own stand. Truth is considered to them as relativistic and can be considered truth to the person espousing a truth claim. We not only understand the work of the enemies of the gospel because our minds have been open to see their schemes, but we also participated with them in the past.
Look at verse 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.” By using the pronoun “we,” Paul was including both the Jews and the Gentile believers. The Jews wanted to stand on the high moral ground because they were given the Law of God. However, due to man’s fallen state they too could not maintain the high standard of God’s law. Paul included himself in the pronoun “we.” As a strict Pharisee and religious leader in the past, he did his best to live a moral upright life. But he could not control his passion, hatred, and anger towards the early believers that he wanted to kill and put to jail before his conversion. He had lived as an enemy of God and under God’s wrath and judgment. As we also can understand, “we” includes us because we were all objects of God’s wrath because of our sins before the Holy God. We lived to satisfy the lust of our eyes and desires of the body. Paul included in verse 3 the sins of “the mind.” These would include evil and perverted thoughts, intellectual pride, and rebellious thoughts against God’s sovereignty and authority as well. We are reminded of Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” God was displeased when he created mankind in his holy image committing and imagining many evil ways to commit sin. In other words, like religious people we can look good and nice outwardly, but if our hearts and minds are far from God, we are sinning and rebelling against our Sovereign Creator—who created us for his glory and purpose. Therefore, we are all sinners as Romans 3:23 reads, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Without God’s intervention all mankind would be hopelessly lost and destined for eternal destruction. But thank God who interjected himself into the world to pull out dying sinners from the miry clay.
Look at verse 4. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us…” Here we find hope for mankind because of God’s abundant and overflowing mercy. Here God “being rich” is an understatement in our English language. We think of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos as being rich, but in comparison to God, who owns the universe and everything in it, they look like poor beggars. However, God is not rich in dollars, even though we put his name in our dollars, but “rich in mercy.” Amen. Rich in mercy means that God does not give man what he deserves. What do we deserve? (A raise or pat in the back?) Yes, we deserve condemnation and eternal punishment for our many sins. Look at verse 4a, “But God” decided to forgive us of our sins and acquit us our guilt because of his great love. God’s motive in forgiving us and making us new creations is out of his great love. Nothing more and nothing less. In 1 John, the Apostle John wrote “God is love,” pure and simple. This is agape love. As humans, we can love others, especially our family and friends, but it’s impossible for us to love those who have harmed us or our close family members. Only God’s agape love for sinners can provide salvation and forgiveness.
One pastor gave this example: you are driving, and God forbid, you hit and kill a child by accident. The law will put you trial, convict you, make you pay restitution or even jail time. After you have completed your punishment for your negligence the law has to set you free. However, you are not truly free because the parents of that child hate you for taking their child away. You are only truly free when out of their mercy and love, the parents of the dead child forgive you and holds nothing against you. This is what we did with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, when we put him to death. Jesus died a horrible death on the cross in order to take the punishment of our sins upon himself. God should have destroyed mankind many times over for murdering his Son. However, because of his act of love, God decided to completely blot out our sins and remember them no more. This is why the Bible teaches that God is merciful and abounding in love. Exodus 34:6-7 reads, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…’” and again in Psalm 145:8-9, “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” We were saved from our sins by God’s abundant mercy and grace alone.
Look at verse 5. “…even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” Here Paul reiterates how the great power of God to raise Jesus from the dead, raised us out of our state of spiritual deadness to a new life in Christ. Earlier we learned that mercy is not getting what we deserve. Here we learn that grace is getting what we don’t deserve. God forgave our sins in Jesus. We are now forgiven sinners and will not go to eternal condemnation. If God allowed us to end our earthly lives and then disintegrate and be no more, we would still think it’s still fair. But God decided to do more, much more, for forgiven sinners. More than we could ever ask for or imagine. God decided, out of his great mercy and love, to make us co-heirs with Christ in the kingdom of God. Even though we were his enemies God decided to adopt us as his children. Romans 8:17 reads, “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” In other words, God adopted us as his own children. To be adopted meant you not only received the name of the father, but have rights and privileges like any of his other children to receive his inheritance and riches.
Look at verse 6. “…and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Wow! Amazing love! We will have a special place in God’s kingdom. Jesus also had promised to his disciples that he was going back to his kingdom to prepare a special room for each of them in his Father’s house. As we remember from the gospels, Jesus’ disciples argued about who would sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in the kingdom to come. Jesus told them that those places are determined only by God. But whether we sit close to Jesus or not God gave all believers the great blessing to sit with Jesus in the heavenly places. When we remain in Jesus, we have a great and wonderful future, which God has prepared for us.
Look at verse 7. “…so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” There are so many faithless and unbelieving people in the world who have the wrong view of God. Many ungodly people think that he is cruel, indifferent, and unloving. But in the end, God’s gracious kindness, loving, and gracious character will be revealed. How? According to Paul, they will be revealed through us. God wants to use our lives as object lessons to “show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” As an athlete, I received many awards and I was proud at that time to display them to others. But all of my trophies have become rusted and thrown out. One of my bigger trophies was used to keep the door open. All our accolades and human accomplishments in this world will fade and be forgotten someday. But after our resurrection from the dead and receiving new resurrection bodies, God will display us to the universe his immeasurable riches and grace. I don’t mean that we will be sitting on God’s shelf forever and ever. It means whatever and wherever God has plans for us in eternity we will always reveal God’s glory and majesty. Many people in this world dream of becoming famous movie stars or sports stars, but in the life to come God will make us like shining stars in the heavens. We will shine and glow with God’s holiness forever and ever. We will become the evidence that our God is indeed the God of great mercy and abounding in love. We are God’s exhibit A, as in court evidence. Even if we look disgraceful, foolish, and guilty in the eyes of the world, God will display us like his shining glory in the new heaven and new earth. God himself will do all this for us by his mercy and grace so that no man can boast of anything he or she has done.
Look at verses 8-9. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Paul again makes it clear that we have been saved by grace alone. There is nothing that we can boast about ourselves because even the faith we have in God is a gift from God. To believe in him and his Son, Jesus Christ, was a saving knowledge given to us by faith from God himself and his wonderous gift for all believers. Therefore, there is no human work we can do to inherit salvation. This is the big difference between Christianity and all the other religions in the world. All other religions teach their members that they must do something religious and good works to enter paradise. But members of such religions can never know if they have done enough good works to tip the balance in their favor because they have done many bad things as well. On the other hand, in Christianity we know that it is only by God’s grace, and coming to God with genuine repentance, and faith that Jesus died on the cross for our sins do we receive salvation. However, though we are not saved by works, we have been saved for works. Works does not give us salvation, but good works are the evidences that we have been saved.
Look at verse 10. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Here the word “workmanship” in Greek, poiema, is our English word for poem. We are God’s artistic and beautiful work of art. In the New Living Version, the word “masterpiece” is used instead of “workmanship.” God is the greatest author and artist. Just look at the beautiful and majestic universe that he has made. All artists appreciate their work for they reflect his own character and personality. God wants to reveal his own character and personality to the universe through us. God is working through a spiritual process to reveal his mind and heart to the rest of creation.
We can ask ourselves, “Whose workmanship, are we?” Are we the workmanship of other people, who have a strong influence on us? Does our work or family background define who we are? All these things should not define who we are. We are defined by God’s work and love in our lives because he is molding us to be his masterpiece. We can either live our short life in this world like in verse 2, just walking like everyone else in the world or walk as God’s masterpiece in this world as written in verse 10b, “that we should walk in them.” One pastor said, “we can either live in this world as a mess or God’s masterpiece.” We are God’s trophy of grace. These works, including our salvation, was planned by God long ago. God, who created us for his glory, had been waiting for us to repent of our sins, accept his Son, Jesus, as our Lord and Savior, and begin the wonderful works he had planned for us to do.
Since it is the Labor Day Weekend, I decided to do a little history search. I like history which was my Minor at UIC. The Labor Day Holiday was “to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.” It was written in to law in 1894 by President Glover Cleveland that on the first Monday of September the holiday would be celebrated. I don’t know much of anything about President Glover Cleveland, except that he was very heavy, but thank God he signed into law the Labor Day Holiday. We have to work in the world in order to earn wages to support our families, pay for food and rent, or for university tuition and offer tithes. It is the way citizens can build up the country, support the government with taxes, support gospel ministry, and save for the future. Though this is important for our survival, we must know that God has good works or good deeds for us to do as well.
Look at verse 10 again. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” In the book, Serving God by Ben Patterson, I learned that serving God is not like a rock band but a symphony, with Jesus as the symphony leader. In a rock band there is usually one leading singer that stand out as the symbol of the band. Some examples would include Freddy Mercury of the band Queen or Jon Bon Jovi of the band Bon Jovi, etc. But in God’s work, which is like a symphony, all work together to make beautiful music. God will bless our work in the world to be used for the gospel work. As a lay missionary in Ukraine, I worked 19 years in Kyiv International School. God used this work as a blessing for my family and ministry because through this work we could remain in a foreign country for they provided work visas and a good income. At the beginning I worked as a middle school math teacher, but in the same year we pioneered Podil UBF ministry God promoted me to be a high school fitness teacher. Through this change in position, I had more time to prepare Sunday messages and have one-to-one Bible studies. God also used my work to support our ministry through sports fellowship at my school. Since I was a PE teacher, I had access to all the sports facilities and we could invite our Bible students after church for volleyball and American flag football. God even fulfilled my heart’s desire to be a championship basketball coach. Through these experiences I realized that God is truly rich in grace and mercy. Most of all, because he forgave my sins and gave me a new life. This coming Wednesday, Maria and I are planning to go to Ukraine in order to bless the wedding between Vlad and Dasha. We finished the last marriage lesson with them yesterday. We know that this is God’s work for us because Ukraine is under attack and needs much help, especially from God’s people. We thank God for WestLoop members prayers and support. Please pray for us to have a safe trip and carry out God’s good work that he has planned out for us to do. God may bless each of us to fulfill the good works God has prepared for each of us. Amen.
God’s Workmanship
Bible Study Questions
Ephesians 2:1-10
Key Verse: 10:
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
- Look at verse 1. What was Paul reminding the early believers about their past? What does it mean to be spiritually dead? What do spiritually dead people need?
- Look at verses 2-3. What does the phrase “the ways of the world and of the ruler of the kingdom of this air” mean? Who did Paul include among those gratifying the sinful nature? Why were they and us objects of God’s wrath?
- Look at verses 4-7. What did Jesus say about salvation? (Mt. 19:25-26) What did God do for those destined to suffer his wrath and hell? In what ways are we identified with Christ? Why is salvation work for God’s glory?
Matthew 19:25-26: “When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
- Look at verses 8-9. What does it mean to be saved by grace? Why cannot man save himself by his works? (We will talk more about it question 5 as well) Who should we boast about in? (1 Cor. 1:31) Why must saving faith include repentance and submission to Christ as Lord?
1 Corinthians 1:31, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
- Look at verse 10. What does it mean to be God’s workmanship? What is the difference between the following phrases, “We are not saved by works” vs “We are saved for works”? From Bible verses like Mt. 7:15-17 and Ti. 1:16, how are good deeds related to salvation? Compare that to verse 10. What “works” do you believe God has prepared for you?
Matt. 7:15-17, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.”
Titus 1:16, “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”
1And 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.
