04 Ephesians 2:10 Sin and academic perfection

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, a serious Bible study applied to real life. Today is Wednesday, February 12th, 2014. Our passage is Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. This is the fourth message in our series on the book of Ephesians. Krisan Marotta: We are in Ephesians chapter 2 today. We're in Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. In the last few years, I've reconnected with my high school friends through Facebook. Probably a lot of you have done that too. And there were 36 in my graduating class. So we all knew each other pretty well back in the day. And when we graduated, there were about um three or four of us, just a fraction, who were believers. And I be I myself became a believer very late in high school. So a lot of my friends weren't even aware that I had uh of my conversion because it was happened so it was right near the end of high school. So as we've reconnected, we've discovered that the vast majority of us are now believers. And we're all having the same reaction. You? You no, you couldn't possibly be. You're a believer? And we're just shocked. I mean, even our c our uh class delinquent is now a believer. And it it's striking to me when my high school friends look at me and go, You teach a Bible study? And people come? You know? You really? You know, like, wow, every week? So, you know, because the last time most of us saw each other, we were 18 and stupid. So we're we're really shocked that there's this transformation now all these years later. And that transformation is the topic of Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. That's what we're gonna talk about today. So Paul is gonna contrast how dark our lives were before Christ came into them and how rich we have it now. So the, you know, just like you take diamonds and you put them on black velvet to see how shiny they are. I think that's what Paul's doing today, is contrasting who we were before Christ and who we are now so we can appreciate what we have gained. So let me just review where we are in the letter. In chapter one, Paul begins the letter by reviewing the incredible blessings we have in Christ. So we're chosen by God, we're adopted as his children because of Christ, we're redeemed by the blood of Christ, our sins are forgiven because of Christ, we are given an inheritance and sealed with the Holy Spirit as a pledge of that inheritance. And he goes through all that in the first 14 verses of chapter one. Then he prays that we would fully understand that, that at the deepest levels we would understand what it means to have been, to become a child of God. And the phrase he uses is that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened. He prays for that. I just love that phrase, that we would fully understand and it would change us from the inside out. And he's going to continue that theme now in chapter two. And I'm about, I'll read the passage, but as I read it, note the contrasts between who we were by nature and what we can become by grace. So he's he starts about and he gives us the perilous position of those who are outside Christ, and then he contrasts that with our current status. So he talks about we were dead in verse 1, but now we've been made alive in verse 5. We were walking according to the course of this world in verse 2, and now we are raised up and seated with Christ in verse 6. We he talks about God's wrath in verse 3, and then his mercy and love in four, and his grace and kindness in seven. And then so you just all through this you're going to see these contrasts. So just listen for those as I read it. So this is Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it's a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his worksmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we might we would walk in them. The first thing I want you to notice about this is it begins with the word and, and that connects it to the previous section. And I think some translations obscure that they put as for you or something, but it I think it's a stronger connection than that. So, and you were dead. So we want to look back for a second at night at the end of chapter one and realize what the connection is. He says, at the end of chapter one, he's talking about Jesus was dead, but God made him alive and seated him at his right hand in the heavenlies and put all things under his feet, and you were dead. And he's gonna go on to say, and God made you alive with Christ and raised you and seated you in the heavenly places. So he has this connection. Jesus was dead and God made him alive, and you were dead. And look what God did for you. He made you alive as well. And I think that's important because he's that's the rock on which our faith is built. Jesus' resurrection. So whenever you have those doubts, you I don't know, maybe I'm the only one where you think, oh, what if I'm kidding myself? You know, what if I'm just you I'm gonna walk all away from this, and and what if I'm just fooling myself and going through the motions? How do I know it's all true? Or maybe you have those mo those moments where you see your sin squarely again, you know, for the first time, and you think, oh, I'm worse than I even thought. I must be kidding myself. I'm not getting better. The rock you cling to in those moments is the resurrection. Jesus was dead and God made him alive. That's a historical fact, and there's very, very good evidence to believe it. And Paul is saying he was dead and God made him alive. So we've seen this profound demonstration of God's power and God's love and God's mercy, and that same power is at work in you. You were dead too, and God isn't, and look what God has done for you. All right, so let's go through the passage. He starts out, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Basically, he says, Okay, look at where you were. You were lost, you were alienated from God because of your sinfulness. And trespasses and sins is an inclusive phrase. It means all of it. So, like we might say that, oh, all night and all day, and we mean all the time, and we're using night and day to be inclusive. That's what trespasses and sins is. It's like we're all of it, we're covering all of it. So trespasses is a false step. So you either cross a known boundary or you step off the right path. So you can think of trespasses when you go the wrong way. You either cross the step off the path, you deviate from what's true, or you cross the boundary. A sin, on the other hand, has the idea of falling short. So you miss the mark. So, like if you're shooting at a target and you miss. So together they cover everything. Either you deliberately or uh set off the path, or you just missed it and didn't do the right thing. So you may have heard the theological terms of commission and omission kinds of sins, or active and passive sins. It covers all of that. Both the things that we should have done and didn't do, and the things that we shouldn't have done and we did do. So we were rebels and failures, lost, far from God, without hope. So again, this is he's painting the dark picture for us so we can fully appreciate where we are now. So he says, look, your former lifestyle was not freedom, but bondage to the tyranny of sin. He says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. So let's let's go through what those phrases are. In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world. So this world in contrast to the age to come. So this world that's marked by the fall, marked by darkness, with uh the age that was ushered in by Adam, this age, as opposed to the age that has will be ushered in by Christ when all things are put right. So it's everything, our social value, our cultural systems, everything that is apart from God and alienated from Him. And you lived your lifestyle according to this, to this, all everything that was apart from God. Walking has the idea of living your life in a way that's clear what governs you. So you're it's the way you live and it reveals who you are and what you think and what you value. That kind it's that kind of idea. So you lived your life formally according to the world. According to the prince of the power of the air, the the word prince is um it means a local or tribal leader. It's used the Hebrew word that translates this is used in the Old Testament for like a tribal head or a local leader. And in the ancient world, the air was the realm between heaven and earth. So that was when they wanted to talk about where evil spirits lived, where the devil lived, they would talk about the air, and it was supposed to be the space between heaven and earth. So I think he's referring to Satan, and he the Prince of the Power of the Air is the idea he's in that realm, that in-between place. Then the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Some people see that as just another word for the devil. I lean toward it as our sinful nature. So according to the nature that governed you, the operating principle of your life was sinfulness, fallenness. Um, sons of disobedience. That's what characterized our lives. It was disobedience to God. We rebelled against God's authority and we were marked by sin and death. And notice the pronouns as he goes through. He says, You were dead. Then he quickly moves to we too also, and then he concludes in verse 3 with even as the rest. So he's not leaving anyone out. He's saying he addresses them personally, but he says, this applies to us too, and even as everybody else. So it's not that there were some pagan cultures that were really bad, and the rest of us, well, we were kind of mediocre and not doing so, you know, kind of not so bad off. He's saying, no, all of us were this way. All of us were children of wrath, all of us lived this way. Jews were no better off than Gentiles, uh, the religious were no better off than the non-religious if they were just going through the motions or the rituals. So he's saying we were all dead in our sins. Now let's talk about what he means by dead. This will be a review for some of you. I've I teach this almost every time I teach because it just always comes up. So when the New Testament talks about death, he it means more than just that one day your heart will stop beating and you will stop breathing. It's the idea that everything in our life is falling apart. Everything is breaking. Kind of a moral entropy. So it's not just that one day we will cease breathing, but that now everything falls apart. Relationships fall apart, trees, mountains erode, um buildings come down, water pipes break, you know, all the things, everything. It's like we're in this race with the junkyard, you know, to see if we can pay for it before it breaks. And that idea of nothing being permanent, of everything falling apart is what the Bible uses the term death for. So it's like if some of those of you are probably familiar with physics, the idea of entropy. Any ring a bell? Entropy is the idea that the universe is losing energy, and that like if you if you wind up a clock, it will unwind. Or if you roll a ball down the hill, eventually it will stop moving, that energy is lost. Or you leave the refrigerator door open, eventually all the heat will be lost. It's unwinding. So that's the the physical idea of entropy, and the Bible says that's happening in the world. So the synonyms for death that you see are corruption, decay, defilement. It all points to this inevitable process of relationships breaking down, parents and children getting becoming alienated, marriages falling apart, nations going to war, office politics, friendships break up, left to ourselves, things fall apart, they don't get better. And that's death. And the Bible, and Paul is saying that's what your existence was marked with because you were in rebellion to God. You were dead in your sins. So you were trapped in this world where everything will fall apart. And we are ruled by our death because of our rebellion to God. So that's the bad news of the gospel. So let me, some of you have seen this before in my hands analogy. So if this is us, my left hand's us, and my right hand is God. We before the fall, we are face to face with God in fellowship with Him. And what happens at the fall is we turn our backs on God and say, ooh, I want to be God. I want to do it my way, not your way. And when that happens, we now experience death. And that's what Paul is saying. You are dead in your sins because of your rebellion to God. So now our lives are going to be marked with sin and death, as I've just defined it. That's the first consequence of our rebellion. The second one is what he's going to go on to say in verse 3. Among them we too all formerly walked in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the flesh of and the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath. That's the second consequence. So he's saying, You rebel, you get sin and death, but there's a greater consequence, now you're under God's wrath. So God turns his back on us and says, What you did was not just tragic, it was wrong. And justice needs to be satisfied. There's a penalty that must be paid. So in this state where God has his back to us and we have our back to God, if we turned around, and I don't think we can, but apart from God, but if we could, it would do no good because there's this problem of God's wrath. Something has to satisfy God's wrath. And Paul's pointing that out. So he's saying, you rebel against God, you will now experience death. That's the first kind of logical necessary consequence, just like gravity, you drop a book, it will fall to the ground. When you sin, you will get death. But the further news is that now you are trapped in your sin and death. Now you are under God's wrath. That's the second consequence is that now we are children of wrath. Now we were under uh prisoners of sin and death. In Romans, Paul uses the language God gave them over to their sin and death. It's the same idea. What have I left out? Oh, so lust of our flesh is not just our body, it's our minds and our bodies, the idea that it's not just physical, it's everything that we kind of crave apart from God. Um so we keep living, we kill still keep breathing, but now our existence is marked by death. Now we are people who will deal with all the tragedies of life, this um uh the all the things I just talked about bitterness, disappointment, depression, wrath, war, anger, uh, hostilities, brokenness, and all its forms. And God's not going to remove that until our debt to justice is paid, which is where we get the best words in the Bible in Ephesians 4, but God. Yes. So left to our nature, left to ourselves, by ourselves, we are disobedient, we are children of wrath, we are enslaved and trapped, but God did something about it. And now, and so in one through three he gives us the darkness. This is the where who we were before. Um, and now he's gonna say, but that look at who you can become because of grace. So let's look at four through seven. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing richness of the of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So we're dead, we're trapped, but God made us alive. So we were dead and the dead stay dead. There's nothing the dead can do about it, but God can do something about it. He makes us alive. We're slaves, and slaves have no hope of freedom, but God raised us and up with Christ. We were condemned and guilty children of wrath, but God showed us mercy and seated us in the heavenly places. So he takes these three verbs of death, slavery, and condemnation, and he contrasts them with made alive, raised us up, and seated us with Christ. So they correspond to what God did for Christ. So that just like what he said in the previous section at the end of chapter one, he made Christ alive, he raised him from the dead, he and he is seated him in the heavenly places. So that's what we commonly call the resurrection, the ascension, and the session. So we see that you know, for those of you familiar with the Apostles' Creed, the third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. So the resurrection, the ascension, and the session, it's those ideas. And Paul's saying, you we saw that power at work in Christ and your next. So what makes you a believer? It's not what church you attend, it's not what church doctrine you hold, it's not the moral standards you strive for, it's that God made you alive in Christ, raised you, and seated you. And notice every verb in that section is modified by with Christ or with him or in him or through him. So through Christ, God did for us what we could never do for ourselves. So we're in this predicament of we're under God's wrath and rebellion to God, and he sends Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins, solving that problem of his wrath, the judicial penalty, or the criminal penalty, if you will, so God can now turn around and offer us life, and then he draws us to him. So we're back in fellowship with him. So he made us alive again, he solved that problem of his wrath through Christ's death and resurrection on the cross, or death on the cross and resurrection, and that now power is available to you. So how he does this is through Christ, but Paul also gives us a glimpse of why he did it. Look at verse 4. But God being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, and in verse 7, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ. So why did he do all that? Because he loves us, because he's rich in mercy, and because he's uh kind and gracious. Notice it doesn't say because we deserved it, doesn't say because we earned it, doesn't say because he had to. He did it because of who he is, not anything about us. John Stott puts it this way in his commentary. We were dead and so hopeless to save our helpless to save ourselves. Only mercy could reach the helpless, for mercy is love for the down and out. We were under God's wrath. Only love can triumph over wrath. We deserve nothing at God's hand but judgment on account of our trespasses and sins. Only grace could rescue us from our deserts, for grace is undiscerned favor. Why then did God act? Out of his sheer mercy, love, grace, and kindness. More than that, he saved us in order that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace. So he moves us out of death and into life because of his love, his riches, his grace, his mercy. Okay, so let's talk about life then. So God made us alive. Obviously, one day we are physically gonna stop breathing, but life is the opposite of death as we just defined it. So we have to understand what the Bible means by death to understand what life is and thus our future inheritance. So the promise of life is more that you're gonna more than that you'll live forever, it's that you'll live forever in a very different way than what we live now. Imagine a world where there are no troubled marriages, no broken hearts, no office politics, no disappointments, no tragedies, no misunderstandings, no selfish professors, no terrible bosses, whatever. Imagine that if marriages just naturally, you didn't even have to work on it, they just naturally grew closer together because that's who we were, or if parents and children naturally and inevitably understood each other, and there were no disobey disobedience or problems because we were just right people, or if war was unthinkable because of of course we understand each other, we would automatically be quick to share and sacrifice. So think about having a kind of a Midas touch so that everything you touch is better and right and good and enhanced just because you came in contact with it. And that's the promise of life. And God says that's where you're headed. God made you alive in Christ, Jesus paid our debt to justice, and the good news is God is making us creature. Of life, people who we will one day be the kind of people where everything is better just because we've been there. So because his wrath is no longer an obstacle, he will once again impart life to us. Not just that we will have eternal life, but that we will have a kind of life free from all of sin and death, as we've just talked about it. That's worth waiting for. So the phrase eternal life means life of the age of ages, life in the age to come, the kind of life we will have then, when there is no more entropy, where things don't fall apart, they get better both physically and morally and subjectively. And we will be creatures who enhance that process. That's our hope. That's where we're headed. Now we get a taste of it now as God changes us and makes us more like Him. We begin to see it and we catch glimpses of the kingdom. But the full installment has yet to come. I think that was this was Jesus' point in the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, where he says, if we could just catch a glimpse of what that promise is and what it will be like, we would gladly sell everything to gain it. And I think that's what Paul prayed for at the end of chapter one, that we would cat we would catch fire, our hearts would catch fire and understand that. That we've been given a glimpse of what life will be like and we wait eagerly for it, this incredible gift, and that the more we understand that, the more it makes the trials, the pain of this life tolerable. It gives us hope in the midst of it. So as Paul says in Romans, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we were trapped in our sin and death. We were trapped in death because of our sin, but the free gift of God is we will have life now because of Jesus. Amen. Okay, so let's look at 8 through 10. This is where he sums it all up and he explains the nature of our salvation. I love these verses. This is perhaps the most concise summary of the gospel in the Bible. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not as 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 so that we would walk in them. So he says you were saved by grace through faith. So salvation is more than forgiveness. It is forgiveness, but it's also this deliverance from death and slavery and condemnation. So all the the tr the slavery he talked about in one through three, you were delivered from that. And he says you were saved by grace. Grace is God extending favor toward uh unmerited favor, so doing for us what we do not deserve, as opposed to mercy, which is doing not giving us what we do deserve. So he says we were dead, we deserved nothing, we couldn't do anything about it, but God made us alive again because of Christ. He did for us what we could never do for ourselves and what we didn't deserve. And he says you were saved by grace through faith, and what is faith? Hopefully this is reviewed for you. There's lots of kinds of faith. There's kind of ordinary everyday faith, but what is saving faith? What is the one thing we must know that counts, that is the faith that saves us? It's recognizing that we're sinful, so who we are apart from God, the things he talks about in one through three. So knowing I'm sinful, knowing I can do nothing about it, left to myself. That's the second thing. Third thing, knowing God does not owe it to me. So I've done nothing to deserve it. I can't twist my arm into it. So I know I'm sinful genuinely, as a, you know, not just theologically, but I genuinely know I'm sinful. I know I can't do anything about it. God does not owe anything to me, and I trust that God will make me righteous because of the blood of Jesus. That's the final thing. So it's knowing you're sinful, wanting to be holy. Um, what those are kind of the same thing. Knowing you're sinful and wanting to be free from it, knowing that you can't do it on your own and God doesn't owe it to you, but counting on God to make you holy because of what Jesus has done. And he says, all of that is part of the gift. By grace you have been saved through faith. Um he says in five, and then he repeats, and that not of yourselves, it's a gift of God in 2.8, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. So notice the balancing statements. It's not of yourselves, it's not a re result of works. The difference between those, I think, is human effort and reward. So he's saying it's not of yourselves. You didn't you didn't muster it up, you didn't conjure it up by human effort, and it's a gift, so you didn't earn it either. It's not a reward. It's not like wages paid for work done. So he's he covers all the angles and says, in no way did you earn this or or um deserve it. So the big debate is in the commentaries is what is the phrase that referred to in verse 8, that not of yourselves? Is the that faith, or is the that the whole phrase, by grace you have been saved through faith? And there you can read pages and pages on that. Uh at different times in my life I believe different ones, probably depending on which argument I just read. And I I lean toward the whole phrase for grammatical reasons, but scholars with better Greek than me say, oh no, the grammar goes the other way, and they argue. But I wouldn't get into an argue over argument over it because both are true. It is true that faith is not of ourselves, it's a gift of God, and it is true that our salvation is not of ourselves, it's a gift of God, so it they're probably probably meant one or the other, but they're both true, so I'm not sure it's worth fighting over. In either case, we know that they are a gift. So I tend to think it means the whole phrase, the whole idea of by grace you have been saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves. And then he adds this wonderful phrase intend, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared before them so that we might walk in them. And the idea I think was kind of like, well, why does he throw that in at this point? And I think part of it is to say the good works that we do are not the cause of our salvation, they're the fruit of our salvation. So lest we think that, you know, there's some, as most Americans do, you know, that there's this scale out there, and God's going to weigh the good and weigh the bad, and if the good outweighs the bad, then he'll let me in. Paul's saying, nope, it doesn't work like that. The good works that you do are not anything that that impresses God. They are part of his gift to you. They, because he has changed you, they are now possible in your life. So they're not the goal, they're the goal of your salvation or the fruit of your salvation, not the cause of it. And that makes a difference, I think, in our attitude. You know, when you do something, when you have those wonderful moments where you realize, wow, I was actually kind and I wouldn't have done that five years ago. And is your reaction, hey God, look at me. Look, look what I did. Aren't you impressed? That's the wrong response. Because the right response is, hey God, you changed me. Thank you for making me that kind of person. There's the response should be gratitude, not, hey God, look at me, look how good I am. But thank you. This is evidence of you at work in my life. This is evidence of all the things that you have done to change me, and that I am on that path toward salvation. These are the the first fruits of the of the full inheritance that we've been promised. Well, the problem people have with verse 10 is if God authors even our good works, then how do we have value or worth? And there's a lot of people that write about that, but that I don't know why that's never been an issue for me. I think because the idea behind it is God chose you to play that part. So, yes, he's authoring your works, but he's authoring them for you. He could have chosen a million people on the planet to do them, or none of us at all. And out of the billions, he chose you to be in this point in history, this city, this church, these people, your friends, your neighbors, no one else is in that spot. And the author and the creator of the universe wrote that part for you and you alone, and you're the only one that can do it. And to me, that's that's worth. That's like you want a self-esteem booster, that's it, I think. So our part of the plan is not earning or gaining our salvation, it's letting God use us. It's it's walking in those good works, expressing God's character, reflecting His grace and mercy and compassion, and being a little bit of light in the dark world. And that's an amazing thing. And Paul's saying, you know, as God comes along, he fixed your broken choosers so that you can now choose good. He starts changing you from the inside out so that you're not only a person who wants to be righteous, but can start becoming righteous. And how does he do that? Well, the amazing thing is he does it through the body of Christ. I mean, he could snap his fingers or say, let it be so, and changes in an instant, but he's chosen to use the process of us talking to each other, crying with each other, encouraging each other, admonishing each other, you know, working side by side and shoulder to shoulder, and you know, maybe rubbing against each other with those hard, you know, rough edges to make us more like Christ. So we are all part of the plan. As we show grace and generosity and mercy and kindness, or as we need help and let others help us, or as we give help, we are tools God is using to be instruments of grace and peace in each other's lives. And that's kind of amazing. I mean, we are his workmanship in that sense. We have been created in Christ Jesus for good works. We are part of the plan of bringing all this about. And I think that's the basis for our self-esteem. We deserve destruction, and not only did he save us, he's letting us be instruments of his grace. That's pretty exciting. Okay, so just to wrap this up, so what are some implications of this? Um, I would like to have a well, okay, so what section. The the first one that really strikes me is we need a healthy view of our sin. Because the good news of the gospel only makes sense against the backdrop of the bad news of our sinfulness. And we don't really understand grace unless we understand why we need it and how little we deserve it. Charles Spurgeon wrote this in 1850. A spiritual experience which is thoroughly flavored but with a deep and bitter sense of sin is of great value to him that hath it, hath had it. It is terrible in the drinking, but it is most wholesome in the bowels and in the whole of the afterlife. Possibly much of now think eighteen fifty. Possibly much of the flimsy piety of the present day I was like, hey, you don't know anything. What did he see, you know, 2010? So possibly much of the flimsy piety of the present day arises from the ease with which men attain to peace and joy in these evangelistic days. We would not judge modern converts, but we would certainly prefer that form of spiritual exercise which leads the soul by way of the weeping cross and makes it to see its blackness before assuring it that it is clean in every way. Too many think lightly of sin and therefore think lightly of the Savior. He who has stood before God, convicted and condemned with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honor of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed. And I think in modern America we prefer to emphasize a God loves you gospel or a love wins gospel, but that's not really an accurate picture. It's not as we do people a disservice to say God loves you just the way you are. He loves you in spite of who you are. And when we de-emphasize sin and the cross, I think we have we are breaking a very large piece of the gospel. We do that at our peril. And there's a we talked about this a few weeks ago. There's a whole kind of movement called emergent theology which does exactly that. They're they specifically write that that, you know, they say, Oh, that cross stuff, that's just too offensive. You know, we can save that for later. We'll get people in the door with by telling them how much God loves them, and then and then after they're in, then we'll explain the cross, maybe. You know, that's kind of too offensive, it's just not inclusive. And I read those and I think, mm, no, that you know, that's not the way we want to go. His we must understand who we were without Christ to truly embrace him as Lord and Savior. And it's interesting that in one of the church history classes I took, they pointed out that every time a denomination turns liberal, so whatever the denomination or sect, when they begin to turn away from the gospel, the first doctrine to go is the doctrine of sin. And that's that's just historically. That's you just look, that's the first one they start, they kick out the door. So we should be warned. Um sin, understanding our sin is important. More positive note, another, my second so what, a more positive implication is thinking about the fact that we are God's workmanship. So just as we need to understand how dark and hopeless our lives were before Christ, we can marvel and rejoice at the riches we have gained in him. God is using us to write history, to glorify his name, and to tell the story of his gospel. So we, rebels, failures, and former slaves to our sins, get to participate in the grace and mercy. John Stott summarized it this way in his commentary, and I want to leave you with this picture. He said, Toward the end of my time as a theological student at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, the Reverend Paul Gibson retired as principal, and a portrait of him was unveiled. In expressing his thanks, he paid a well-deserved compliment to the artist. He said that in the future he believed people looking at the picture would not ask, Who is that man, but rather who painted that portrait? And you are God's portrait, you are his worksmanship. And the promise of the gospel is that people are gonna look at you and say, Who is your God? Because you are become in that process of becoming so beautiful and glorious that uh even angels are gonna marvel and say, Who is your God? And I think that's all wrapped up in the the idea that we're his workmanship, we're the picture he's painting. And um that gives us worth, it gives us purpose, it gives us a reason to get up every morning when life is hard and and tragedies strike, and there's um all we're facing all the death and despair of the world, knowing that God's not through yet, the picture's still being painted, and we're part of it. That we are in the process of being made alive, raised up, and seated with Christ, and one day the angels will say, Wow, who is your God? Let's pray. Father, thank you that you did for us what we could never do for ourselves. I think probably some of the best words in the Bible are but God. Um, being rich in mercy. Thank you that you loved us enough to send Jesus to die in our place. Um and I know for us, we've probably heard that off and on and ever since we were children, and maybe it doesn't mean much anymore, or it's just words or we haven't understood. So I pray, as Paul did, that you would um that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened so that we truly and deeply embrace what that means, who we were before, and what we can become by grace. And that if anyone does not yet know Christ as Savior or Christ as Lord or the riches of his grace, that you would make those truths now real in her heart so that she would know who she is, that she's a sinner in need of a savior, and that that savior is Jesus Christ, and he has done everything we need. All we have to do is trust him. In Jesus' name. Amen. Speaker: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. For notes and study questions related to this message, please visit our website, wednesdayintheword.com. We hope you'll join us again, and may God richly bless you.