“We are God’s Workmanship”
Ephesians 2:1-10
3/25/09 Sermon
This week my remodeled bathroom will serve to
illustrate the renovation that God brings about in the lives of His
people. Just as there will be a “before” and an
“after” state to my bathroom once it’s finished, so
there’s a before and an after state characteristic of
Christians. And here in Ephesians 2:1-10 the Apostle Paul
describes these two states. In fact, these verses can be divided
into three parts: verses 1-3, in which we have a description of
our “before” state of existence, verses 4-7, in which we
have a description of our “after” state of existence (the
condition we find ourselves in now), and verses 8-10, in which Paul
summarizes for us just what’s been done to us, who did the work,
and why.
First, then, we look at verses 1-3, the description
of our lives “before” God began His renovation project upon
us. Before the workers began renovating my bathroom, I wanted my
friends to see just what it looked like in its then present state, so
that they could later compare it to what it would look like once the
work on it was completed. If you were to see my bathroom
“before,” you’d probably be shocked. Mildew is
everywhere in the shower and a constant problem. The shower door
never does look clean, as it has a permanent soap film clinging to
it. Nothing matches. It has a tiny “green”
sink, the drain of which is constantly clogging up. The metal on
the medicine cabinet is starting to rust. The light fixture is
ancient. The linoleum is cracked. To summarize, it looks
awful. And yet amazingly, I have gotten so used to it that I
hardly notice these things anymore. It took someone else to go in
there and tell me how awful it all truly is, before I could see it for
myself.
And that’s similar to the way it was with us
in our pre-renovated state as non-Christians. We lived in the
condition described by Paul in verses 1-3 - a state of death,
decadence, and disobedience. And yet we were perfectly happy and
at home living in this condition. It felt natural to us, because
that’s who we were, who we’d been since our
conception. It took the Holy Spirit to reveal to us by His Word
just how bad our condition was and how unacceptable to God and in need
of renovation we were, in order to wake us up to the fact that we were
living, walking, breathing pigsties, both unwilling and unable to clean
up our lives ourselves. As Paul writes here, we were dead in our
trespasses and sins. A dead person can’t do anything for
himself. If anything is done at all, it must be done to
him. My bathroom can’t renovate itself; it must be
renovated. And yet, unlike a dirty bathroom that just sits there
and looks awful, in our state of deadness we weren’t
inactive. This kind of deadness is a state of active rebellion
against God. We actively lived in sin, following the course of
this world, following the prince of the power of the air (another name
for the devil), living in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the
lusts of the flesh and the mind. In our “before”
state, we lived as our own gods, living for ourselves, determining for
ourselves what was good and what was evil. And as a result, we
were children of wrath, God’s wrath, deserving to suffer under
that wrath not only in this life, but also in the next life for all
eternity. And just like my bathroom, where it was impossible to
make it all better with just a little cleaner sprayed here and there,
none of our own self-chosen cleansers, no amount of “good
works” on our part, sprayed here and there in our lives was going
to clean us up. A renovation had to take place. What was
old, dead, and decaying had to be torn down and something new had to
built up in its place.
And this is what God did and continues to do to our
lives through His Son, Jesus Christ. Verses 4-7 describe this
renovation and what our lives now look like “after” God has
had His way with us. Instead of being described as dead in our
trespasses, we are now described as having been made alive together
with Christ. We have been raised with Him and seated with Him in
the heavenly places. Not only do we have these benefits now by
way of our Baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, but we
also have the promise that in the coming ages God will show us the
immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. And Paul writes that God did all of this for us because of
His great love with which He loved us and because He is rich in
mercy. Helpless as we were to change ourselves, while we were
dead in our trespasses and sins, God had mercy upon us and did the
renovation and remodeling Himself, changing us into the image of
Christ, a work which He began at our Baptism and which He still carries
on to this day, as He drowns the lusts of our sinful flesh and raises
us according to the renovated man, who will live before God in
righteousness and purity forever. Whereas before we bore the
image of the devil, as we lived under him and served him in his kingdom
of darkness, now, after God has had mercy upon us and saved us out of
His love for us in Christ, we bear the image of Jesus as we live under
Him in His kingdom of grace.
Verses 8-10, then, are Paul’s summarization of
this renovation project, where he states in a nutshell what God has
done for us and why. He writes, “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. For
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” With
these words Paul takes away from us any grounds for boasting in
ourselves and anything we might have done to bring about this
renovation of our lives, and instead he gives all the glory to God
alone. We are His workmanship. The fact that we’re
new creatures is all God’s work in Christ and none of ours.
Even the faith through which we are saved is itself a gift to us from
God. It too was created in our hearts by the Holy Spirit when He
spoke the Word of the Gospel about Jesus into our ears. In fact,
it’s not our faith that’s saved us, but it’s by
God’s grace that we have been saved through faith.
God’s grace is His undeserved favor towards us for Christ’s
sake. When He saw us in our sad condition, dead in our trespasses
and sins, He had pity on us. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ,
“who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the
form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being
found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross.” God could have let
us perish in our sins. Seeing what needed to be done for our
renovation He could have determined that it was too costly of a
job. But He loved us too much for that. Instead, He gave
His only-begotten Son to give His life on the cross to pay the price
for our renewal. With His blood applied to us at our Baptism
He’s cleansed us of all sin, saved us, and seated us with Christ,
and now through His Word and Sacraments continues the remodeling He
once began.
If you look at my bathroom in its
“after” stage (once it’s finished), you will see new
furnishings. These new furnishings are not just for show, but
they serve a purpose. The bathroom is built to serve
people. It does no good if people can’t use it. The
same goes with our lives as Christians. Now that God has
renovated and remodeled us, having given us the righteousness of Christ
and recreated us in His image, we have a whole new purpose - to serve
others with our good works. While Paul makes it clear that our
good works have no place in our salvation, our good works do have a
place now as we live out our renovated lives towards one another.
This is the reason why God has brought about our renovation. As
the Apostle Paul writes, “For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we
should walk in them.” The Christian lives to serve
others. That’s why we’re still here and not in heaven
yet. God has called us to serve our neighbors in the various
stations in life into which He’s placed us. It’s in
these stations in life that Christ uses you as members of His body not
only to provide for the physical needs of others, but also to tell them
about God’s mercy in Jesus and His work of salvation through Him,
so that they too might come to faith in Him and be changed.
My new bathroom will look very new and clean once
it’s finished. And yet with use it will get dirty again and
need to be cleaned regularly. You, too, the new creature that you
are in Christ and cleansed of your sins with His blood in holy Baptism,
still get dirty from the sins that you commit on a daily basis.
You don’t need to be washed again, that is, you don’t need
to be rebaptized. But the Holy Spirit continues to use that bath
that you received to daily remove the spots and stains that appear
because of the sinful nature that you still carry. The cleansing
agent He applies to you is the blood of Christ, which cleanses you
better than any manmade product can clean a bathroom, so that you stand
before God holy, spotless, and blameless.
So, when signs of the “before” state of
your existence show their heads once in a while, don’t
despair. Live under God’s grace and mercy and in His great
love for you in Jesus Christ, receive again His cleansing words of
forgiveness, and go to your work trusting in the salvation He’s
won for you in His Son. And you can look forward with joy to the
ages to come, when God will show you for all eternity the immeasurable
riches of His grace in kindness towards you in Christ Jesus. Amen.