Made Us Alive – Part 2 – Ephesians 2:5
In Ephesians 2:5, Paul continues showing the miracle of regeneration: God made us alive together with Christ. Spiritual life is not generic spirituality, religious interest, or moral improvement. God does not merely awaken people to spiritual things so they can decide what to do with Him. He gives life specifically in union with Christ. There is no saving life apart from Jesus. The same resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead is applied to believers, so that those who were spiritually dead are made alive in Him. Christ is not only the One who gives life; He is our life. Therefore, where there is new life, there will be new living. Regeneration does not make believers sinless in this life, but it does make them different. A dead thing cannot come to life and remain the same.
Paul also shows that regeneration produces evidence. Those who have been made alive hear the voice of Christ in His Word, come to Christ by faith, grieve over sin, desire holiness, and cling to Jesus as their life. These evidences are both a warning and a comfort: a profession of faith without spiritual life is not true regeneration, but even the weakest believer has real life if he has Christ. Paul then breaks out in praise: “By grace you have been saved.” Regeneration has to be by grace because dead sinners cannot produce life, obedience, faith, or fruit on their own. God saves the guilty and gives life to the dead by His undeserved favor. Therefore, believers must not put their hope in religion, baptism, church membership, family heritage, or past decisions, but in Christ alone, who died, was buried, and rose again to save sinners.
FULL SERMON TEXT:
Go ahead and be turning in your copy of God’s Word to Ephesians chapter 2.
If you were here last week, you know where we’re going to be. Well, that’s true any week, I guess. But if you were here last week, you’ll realize that we didn’t get through an entire verse as intended. So, we’re going to go back to this verse again.
And first of all, before we even jump into this, I’m so grateful that that’s the way the Lord worked it out because I got to spend another week meditating on this wonderful truth that God has made us alive together with Him.
Last week, we looked at the beginning of Ephesians chapter 2, verse 5, and we are talking about the doctrine of regeneration, or the new birth, the giving of spiritual life, that sovereign act of God where He makes dead sinners alive.
And we saw the first two truths from that section, from that verse. Last week, first we saw the timing of regeneration, where we covered once again something we’ve already talked about just a few verses previously in chapter 2, verse 1.
We were dead, even when we were dead in our trespasses. God did not wait for us to improve or to take the first step. He didn’t wait for our permission. He acted when we were dead.
And then the second point we looked at was the author of this regeneration, where we had to back up to verse 4 to get the subject of the sentence.
Who is God who has made us alive?
The dead sinner is not the main subject.
You are not the main subject in your salvation. Amen.
God is.
“But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive.”
Subject, verb.
We’re the direct object, not the subject.
God alone gives life. The dead sinner does not raise himself. And so regeneration is not man helping God to save him. It’s not God saving those who, or helping those who, help themselves.
It is God doing what only God can do.
And so today we pick up there. We pick up in the next part of my sermon, the next point here, the next part of the verse, and hopefully we’ll get through the rest of this verse this morning.
In the rest of this, Paul is not just saying that God made us alive. He gets specific. He says that God made us alive together with Christ. And then he adds that final phrase, “by grace you have been saved.”
So today, we will pick up. We’re going to keep looking at this God who gives life. We’re going to look at the life that He gives, and then the evidences that that life produces, and then end with the grace by which it comes.
So, if you will, stand with me for the reading of God’s Word. Ephesians chapter 2, and I’ll read verses 1–10.
2 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 flesh 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.
Father, this morning, as we continue through this wonderful, marvelous, glorious chapter that takes us from the lowest of the low and raises us up to the highest peak to show the immeasurable, marvelous, wonderful grace that you have shown dead, worthless sinners, so that we can see the glory and the majesty and the wonder of Christ our Savior and what He has done to accomplish our salvation.
Lord, as we go through this passage, continue to work in us. Teach us, correct us, rebuke us, train us in righteousness. Lord, use your Word to do these things in our hearts in order that we might be complete, equipped for every good work.
Lord, do this for your glory by your Spirit who is at work within us so that Christ may be lifted high. May He be magnified. May He be worshiped as He deserves, Lord, so that your people may be a light in a dark world.
Lord, do this this morning for your glory alone.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen. You may be seated.
So, I shared the main idea of this verse last week with you, of what we were going to cover and talk about, and it’s going to be the same this morning since we’re just covering the second half of that verse.
It is that God alone gives spiritual life to dead sinners by uniting them to the risen Christ, and this saving work, all of this saving work, is entirely by God’s sovereign, electing, and irresistible grace.
So we looked at the timing of regeneration. We looked at the author of regeneration.
And now let’s look at the union of regeneration.
And it says, “Even when we were dead in our trespasses,” bracket, God, remember He’s the subject, “made us alive together with Christ.”
This is not just an add-on phrase. Just add Jesus to the end of every sentence. That’s not Paul’s purpose here.
This is vital to the entire thing.
God cannot make us alive apart from Christ. Amen.
He makes us alive together with Christ.
So spiritual life, this new life, this spiritual life that we have, is not a generic kind of spiritual life. It is not just making us more religious people, making us spiritual people.
God is not after just awakening some spiritual feelings in us. He’s not trying to make us more spiritual people, trying to open up our chakras or align our chi.
That sounds weird when you say it like that because I’m not talking about cheese food. You know what I mean?
He’s not trying to make you more mystic, so you’ll be open to spiritual things out there.
And He doesn’t just bring spiritually dead people to life just so that they have some spiritual life there without any kind of purpose or reason for it.
He makes sinners alive together with Christ.
The spiritual life that God gives to mankind is not just some spiritual life so that then you can decide whether or not you want God or not. It’s not just some sort of spiritual thing that allows you to then be open to some other things.
You are made alive. You are given spiritual life together with Christ. It is very specific.
The spiritual life of a Christian is incredibly specific.
It comes one way through one person, Jesus.
And it comes for one purpose, His glory.
Jesus alone, as Scripture tells us, is the way, the truth, and the life. And that’s the spiritual life that we have now. It is not just spiritual life in general.
Every single person is spiritual. Did you know that by the nature of being human, you are a physical and spiritual being?
So he’s not saying you didn’t have a spirit and now you do. He’s saying the spirit that you had was dead towards God. And the only way to be alive towards God is through the one way, Jesus.
He’s not just giving generic spiritual life.
He’s giving life in Christ.
All saving life is in union with Christ. There is no saving life apart from Him.
All the things that we’ve already talked about back in chapter 1, we are chosen in Christ. We are redeemed in Christ. We are forgiven in Christ. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Christ.
We are made alive with Christ.
He’s the whole purpose. He’s the central character.
Again, God’s the main subject in this sentence. God’s even part of the verb here, “made us alive together with Christ.”
You’re still not the main part of this.
It’s all of Him.
It’s all of Christ.
We are made alive together with Him.
Apart from being united with Jesus, you don’t have spiritual life.
So these people out here that call themselves spiritual, run.
You don’t have spiritual life unless it is in Christ, in your union with Him.
Regeneration is tied to Christ’s resurrection.
Scripture is clear about this. We talked about that in Ephesians chapter 1, and now we see it again here in Ephesians chapter 2.
In Ephesians chapter 1, it shows us the power of God in raising Christ from the dead. And now it shows us that this resurrection power is applied then to believers through Jesus to us.
Romans 6:4 tells us that we were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
His resurrection made sure of our regeneration.
And it is the same power that raised Christ from the dead that brought us from a dead spiritual state to alive in Him.
Paul explains this similar idea to the Corinthians in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. I’m not reading all of it because it’s a big section, but basically it’s saying that Christ’s resurrection from the dead guarantees our own later physical resurrection from the dead.
When Christ returns, the only people who get that resurrection from the dead are those who have been spiritually raised from the dead in Christ Jesus.
Christ is our life.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Hold on.
So God raised Christ physically from the dead. And now God raises believers through that same power because of Christ’s resurrection.
Not just with the same power of it, but because He was resurrected, He raises believers spiritually from the dead, from our death in our sin.
And then those who He regenerates, this is future now, He will also one day glorify with new resurrection bodies at the second coming of Christ.
Oftentimes we equate that resurrection body, as 1 Corinthians 15 discusses, as firstfruits of a one-day resurrection. But it’s not just proof that one day we will be resurrected. It’s proof of regeneration here and now.
If Christ was not raised from the dead, we are of all people to be pitied.
If Christ was not raised from the dead, none of us are alive spiritually.
So then, getting to where I was jumping ahead, Christ then is the believer’s life.
He is our life.
He’s not just who gives us life.
He is our life.
John 14:19 says, this is Jesus saying, “Because I live, you also will live.”
And then over in Colossians chapter 3, Paul tells them, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ,” here’s the bracket, “who is your life,” not when Christ who gave you life, “who is your life appears, then you will appear with Him in glory.”
The Christian life is found in Christ.
The Christian life is not just found in Christ.
The Christian life is Christ.
We do nothing in our Christianity, in our sanctification, in our following after God, in all the things that we do. We do nothing of our own strength and power.
Amen.
It is Christ in us who is the hope of glory.
And now, since we in this regeneration have been given Christ’s life, have been given spiritual life in Him, this union with Christ then must change us.
He didn’t just give us life to keep us the way that we are.
We are not saved by changing and becoming acceptable to Christ. We are saved by His regenerating power. We are given new life.
And where there is new life, there will be new living.
There will be change in our life.
Regeneration does not make a believer sinless in this life.
Anybody in here can claim that?
Okay.
There are some groups who do.
We are sinless in eternity before Christ. We are no longer condemned before God. We have eternity settled already. That’s why the sins that we commit now do not separate us again from God.
We are not made sinless in that moment of regeneration.
However, when a dead thing comes to life, something’s going to be different.
It has to be.
If it’s the same, if your life has not changed since your so-called conversion, there’s a problem.
You can’t go from death to life and still remain as you were.
It’s impossible.
Dead spiritually people can do nothing, right?
We mean dead in sin means dead to the things of God, as we’ve been talking about, unable to please Him, unable to love Him, unable to obey Him.
But if we have been made alive, then we are now able to do those things, and the proof is in the fruit that comes out in our life.
So let’s talk about the next point here. The evidence of regeneration.
Where God gives life, there will be evidence of that life.
So, someone who has been given spiritual life now hears the voice of Christ.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying Jesus’s voice is out there in some radio wave and spiritual life is like you got the antenna on, you put it on the right channel. Okay?
I’m not saying He speaks to you audibly. That’s not what that means.
What it means now is as Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
So where can we hear this voice of Jesus?
What is Jesus called?
The Word.
“In the beginning was the Word.” And “the Word was made flesh,” it says down in verse 14 of John chapter 1. We know this Word to be Jesus.
Where do we hear this Word?
From the Word.
So when those who have been regenerated hear the Word, when they read the Scriptures, when they are taught the Bible, they no longer just hear words spoken by a person or read words written on a page. They’re no longer just hearing noise. It’s not just information.
They hear the voice of the shepherd.
They hear the voice of our Savior.
I don’t know how many of you, well, I hope all of you that are saved have this same testimony where when you’re reading, it’s not audible, but you know that your Savior is speaking to you.
This is my God wants me to know His heart. He wants me to know His mind. He wants me to know these things. So when I hear this, I hear my shepherd.
And what does that do for us?
By the way, this is free. I just didn’t write this one down.
When somebody who’s not our shepherd speaks, I know that’s not Him.
That’s not my God.
Don’t tell me you think that’s what God’s Word says, because that’s not what I hear.
His sheep hear His voice.
When we have been regenerated, when we have truly been given new life, we hear the voice of Christ.
And the first instance of that is when God, as we talked about last week, is effectually calling us to salvation through the gospel.
That first time that we truly heard, not maybe the first time we heard it in general, maybe it’s been information just for a long time, but the first time we really understood, that first time when we realized, “I’m a sinner. I need Jesus,” and we responded in faith and repentance, that was the first time you heard the voice of our Shepherd say, “Come,” and we came.
Spiritually alive people, spiritual life hears the voice of Christ.
One who has been regenerated, second here, another evidence, is that not only do they hear the voice of Christ, we come to Christ.
The regenerate sinner comes to Him.
We recognize our sinfulness.
We come empty-handed.
We stop hiding from Him.
We stop trying to negotiate with God.
We stop excusing ourselves of our sin.
And the only thing we come with is empty hands presenting the righteousness of Christ as our only plea.
We come to Him by faith, turning from all else, which is repentance.
We come to Him as Savior and Lord.
And that faith and that coming to Christ and that following after Him doesn’t end when we first come to Christ.
We continue to follow Him.
We continue to follow our Shepherd.
We continue to come to Him.
Those who have been given spiritual life continue to follow, continue to come to Jesus.
A third evidence of someone who’s been regenerated is that they grieve over their sin.
The sins that we once committed before Christ that used to feel free and make us feel something now feel heavy, feel like bondage, feel like what they actually were and we didn’t realize it.
Now again, we still struggle in this life. We still have to deal with sin in this life, but we’re no longer at peace when we are engaged in those things.
We’re no longer able to just live it up because we realize there’s no life in that. There’s nothing to live up.
It’s death.
We can’t be at peace with it anymore.
As we’ve been regenerated, that means the Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us, again, so that Christ is our life.
And that Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin.
And He does so in order to remind us of the utter sinfulness of sin that we’ve been talking about over those first three verses of chapter 2.
He reminds us of these things, not in order to crush us under the weight of our own sinfulness or to punish us.
That’s not what God does to His people anymore.
He does it now in order to show us what we’re doing and in order to point us back to Jesus to say, “Confess that sin. Confess it honestly.”
And then He enables us to put off the old self, to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, to put on the new self so that we will continue to follow after Christ.
Those who’ve been regenerated grieve over sin.
Number four, we also desire holiness.
Those who have been given spiritual life desire holiness.
It’s not only that we grieve over sin. It’s not only that we just want to stop doing the bad things.
We want to do what God said.
We want to follow after Him.
We want to think His thoughts.
We want to speak His words.
We want to do what He did.
We want to act like our Savior.
This new birth brings along with it, this new life, this new spiritual life that we have been given, brings with it new desires, new appetites, new longings that we didn’t have before.
This living soul, this new life now hungers, as Jesus says, hungers for righteousness.
We want to obey our Jesus.
We want to worship Him.
We want to fellowship and commune with God.
See, we’re no longer dead in sin. No longer separated from the life of God.
Sin no longer satisfies us like it once did.
And we find that holiness, true holiness, relieves our hunger and our thirst.
Jesus told His disciples, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Why?
“For they shall be satisfied.”
No more looking for the next thing anymore.
No more looking for something else that will satisfy us temporarily.
We have found what satisfies our soul, and it is holiness.
It is that holiness by which we will see our Savior face to face one day.
We don’t just grieve over sin.
We want to be holy as Christ is holy.
And so that leads to the next thing then, that somebody who’s been regenerated holds on tight to Jesus, clings to Him.
It doesn’t say, “Thank you, Jesus, for the new life. I’ll take it from here.”
No.
Thank you, Jesus, for this new life. Lord, help me to live it. I need you every hour. Help me.
We don’t boast in ourselves.
We don’t look to ourselves.
We don’t look to anything else.
The cry of our heart now is, “I must have Christ.”
He’s not just useful to us.
How awful. How awful.
For those who think that Jesus is just somebody there to give you a little boost to be useful in your life like something you can just push a button on a vending machine and ask for what you need.
He is our life.
He is life itself.
So those who have been regenerated and are filled with this life want this life, want Jesus more than anything else.
Because listen, if we’re clinging to Christ, what are we not clinging to?
Anything else.
So these evidences of regeneration are a warning and a comfort.
First of all, they’re a warning to the false convert.
A profession of faith that does not have spiritual life is not true regeneration.
A profession of faith without these evidences is not regeneration.
Whatever you want to call it, it’s not biblical new life.
You might look religious. You might look moral. You might have even been baptized. You may be even attending church for the last 50 years and still be very dead in your seat.
You must be born again.
But it is also a great comfort to those then who are believers.
But especially, listen to me, it is especially a great comfort to those believers who feel weak or to those believers who are weak. They’re new, maybe a new believer, a fresh believer, or never been discipled, never have taken steps towards seeking holiness in a practical way, whatever it might look like.
You have true regeneration, but you’re very weak in your faith.
It’s a great comfort to you.
Why?
Because the question here about whether or not somebody’s been regenerated is not how mature you are in Christ.
None of what I explained here said you no longer sin as much, that you actually are more holy today than you used to be.
No, no, no, no.
It’s grieving for sin. It’s hungering for and pursuing holiness. It’s clinging to Christ. It’s not being Christ.
The question is whether there is life or not.
And life doesn’t have to be big for it to exist.
See these little ones walking around? They’re not very big, but there’s life there, isn’t there?
And it’s the same thing spiritually.
You might be a babe in Christ, but there’s life there.
Christ is your life.
So even the weakest, whether that’s true of you or you just feel like it, even the weakest who is truly a believer, who has been regenerated, has life because he has Christ.
So God made us alive together with Christ.
And we’re going to get through this last section. I’m not going to split it up again.
Listen, listen, listen to what he says.
He says, “Even when we were dead in our trespasses,” God again, “made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.”
So, we’re not going to dig into this as much as we could because Paul is giving here just a preview of verse 8. We’re going to get there in a few weeks.
But it’s here, so we’ve got to cover it at least somewhat. We’ve got to introduce this phrase to us.
Paul, it seems, got ahead of himself here. I tend to do that sometimes, and you catch me, and I even try to catch myself.
He got ahead of himself.
I love that God uses Paul’s way of thinking and way of writing that shows that he’s human just like the rest of us. But he wrote down exactly what He wanted us to hear and to see by Paul’s example.
Even we learn something here.
We need to back up. We need to look at what’s going on here when he says this.
Why does this interjection here come from Paul?
Think about it for a second.
He has just gone through those first three verses talking about the deadness of our nature before Christ, the fact that we were sons of disobedience, that we were children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
And then he glories in the wonder of this.
“But God, who is 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.”
And all he can do at that point is go, “Woo! For by grace you have been saved.”
This is Paul just going, “I can’t believe what I just wrote.”
He’s breaking out in rejoicing.
This is like him singing.
And he’s like, “For by grace you have been saved. For by grace you have been saved.”
I mean, I can just see it.
He’s overwhelmed. He’s busting at the seams. He can’t hold it back.
Now, it doesn’t have to be loud like that. But even as I read it, my spirit rejoiced.
It is overwhelming to meditate on the marvelous grace of our loving Lord.
Grace, grace, God’s grace, grace that is greater than all our sin.
This is what comes out from Paul. He can’t hold it back.
So we learn from the example here of this interjection, like, hey, if you aren’t rejoicing at this point, something is wrong.
“For by grace.”
This points us to Jesus. It points us to God. It points us to the Spirit. It points us to His marvelous grace.
What a wonder it is.
And that’s what catches Paul’s attention here.
Here’s the point here. Let me give you a few things on it. We’ll dig in deeper in verse 8, but regeneration has to be by grace.
If God made us alive when we were dead, then salvation cannot be by good works.
It cannot be by you being a better Christian or a better person in order to be accepted as a Christian.
It has to be, if all the things that we just read are true from verses 1 through 4, it has to be by God’s sovereign grace alone.
There is nothing we can do.
There is nothing we can offer.
It is by grace.
And this grace is God’s undeserved favor towards guilty sinners.
It’s not God rewarding those who’ve worked really hard and done really good.
It’s God saving the guilty and giving life to the dead.
And then this grace, again, we’ll dig in deeper later, produces the things that we just talked about a minute ago.
It produces this obedience. It produces this love for God. It produces worship and all of this.
Obedience does not produce life.
It’s life first, then obedience.
It’s life first, then faith.
It’s life first and then the fruit.
It’s grace.
And if we reverse the order, we lose the gospel.
Grace.
“For by grace you have been saved.”
So this verse in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 5, shows us the absolute miracle of regeneration.
We were dead in our trespasses, but God made us alive together with Christ.
This is the doctrine of regeneration.
This is the new birth.
This is the resurrection life that we have through Jesus Christ.
It is God doing what only God can do.
And so if He’s the only one who can do it, who gets all the glory?
He does.
That’s right.
So don’t think that you can work harder. Don’t put your hope in your religiosity. Don’t put your hope in the fact that you got dunked at one point. Don’t put your hope in being a good church member or because grandma was good or some past decision that you made to walk an aisle.
You must be born again.
You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
You must believe that He died on the cross for your sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again three days later in accordance with the Scriptures so that He would justify those who would call out to Him in faith.
If you will confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.
Amen.
And this morning, beloved, if you are in Christ, don’t forget you only have this life, you are only alive in Him, you only have been regenerated because God made you alive through Christ.
By grace you have been saved.
Amen.
Amen.
Let’s pray.