Sermon 15th October 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches. The reading is from Ephesians 2v1-10.

I would like to complain about…

Les Misérables, most famous today for its musical version, is a story of grace. It begins in 19^th Century France, Jean Valjean, the hero, is being released after 19 years in prison. But his conviction makes it impossible to start over and make a new life; no one wants to give him a chance. In despair, he returns to a life of petty crime.

He is caught by the police after stealing silver from a church, where a bishop had offered him shelter. But when the police bring him back to the church, everything changes. The bishop denies the charges, and insists the silver was a gift. And as Valjean leaves, the bishop says to him, “You forgot I gave these also.  Would you leave the best behind?” And the bishop gives him the most valuable silver candlesticks in the church. Valjean deserves judgment and condemnation, but instead, he receives grace. Not just forgiveness for his sins, but an abundant, over-the-top gift.

The passage from Ephesians that Cyril has read for us is one of the richest passages in the Bible about God’s grace and what it means to be saved. In it Paul says it twice – that it’s by grace that we’re saved.

There is the rather unfortunate picture of a fanatical Christian grabbing an unsuspecting bystander by the lapel and saying, “Are you saved, brother?” But salvation is an important theme throughout the Bible, and not just a hobby horse of Paul. So, what does it mean to say that we are saved? Well, Paul describes what it means in our passage from Ephesians. And his explanation splits into three parts.

Firstly, in verses 1-3, Paul describes the life we're saved from.

Secondly, in verses 8-10, the latter part of the reading, he describes the life we're saved to.

And thirdly, in verses 4-7, he tells us how to get from verses 1-3, our old life, to verses 8-10, our new life.

The first three verses provide a very comprehensive picture of what human beings are like outside of God.  It says very famously that we're dead in transgressions; we're dead in sin. So, what does Paul tell us about what it means to be sinful? The answer is: It means to be “enslaved”. In verse 2 Paul writes, “You followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air...” and in verse 3 he writes of following the desires and thoughts of our flesh.  He writes of following the wrong things.

The word “follow” in English is quite weak. It doesn't really get across the Greek word which means “be mastered” or “be controlled”. If we're in sin, we're mastered or controlled by our sinful nature. We're enslaved. To what are we enslaved? According to Paul, three things.

·      The first is the way of the world, the spirit of the age.

·      The second is the rule of the Kingdom of the Air – the Devil.

·      And the third is gratifying our sinful nature.

The Greek word for “sinful nature” is the flesh. Not your body, but your sinful nature, your self-centred sinful nature. That's the thing that masters us, that's the thing that controls us. The Devil also features in Paul's list, but I'm not going to dwell on him. I believe evil exists as a very real force in the world, but if we look to what Paul said in his letter to Timothy, we can see that it's self-centredness that made the Devil the Devil.

The well-known American preacher, Tim Keller, points out that in 1 Timothy 3 Paul warns about the danger of Christian leaders becoming conceited and falling under the same judgment as the Devil. Arrogance, pride, self-centredness is what made the Devil the Devil. It's basically the same problem that we face – self-centredness. Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Reformation, gave a very apt diagnosis – the human heart is curved in on itself, seeking to use God and everything else, things and people, for its own ends.

Self-centredness can make you a very cruel person. If we consider all the tyrants of history, the great dictators who slaughtered millions of people – we can say that they were selfish, self-centred and egotistical. We can say the same of serial adulterers and those who abuse young people. Their self-centredness is likewise easy to recognise. But self-centredness can also be much more subtle.

You can be living an outwardly very moral life and still be self-centred. If you are self-centred, a very good way to feel good about yourself is to put other people in your debt. You're a very good person. You're helping the needy, you're a good parent and a loyal friend. But you are helping people not for their sake, but for your own sake. You are helping people, but its self-centred – to make yourself feel good. It's all about you. We're trying to convince ourselves that we're worth something.

CS Lewis, the great 20^th Century Christian writer, tells us in The Screwtape Letters how he saw it:

“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

What's our approach to other people? Do we think, “What can you do for me. How can you enhance my life?” The more we put ourselves first, the further away from God we travel. And eventually we may travel so far away from God there may be no turning back. That’s what we’re saved from – total and utter separation from God.

If that’s the life we’re saved from, what sort of life does God want to save us for, what kind of life does he want to give us? The answer lies towards the end of the passage. Verses 8 and 9 contain two key words, grace and faith; “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –not by works, so that no one can boast. “

Paul is saying we’re not saved by how good we are, by how moral we are. Salvation is a gift. And once we realise that salvation is a gift, we should see everything as a gift. Faith is not something we have created; it’s something that God has given us. The perspective on life that God encourages is to see everything as a gift. Not to say to ourselves, “We’ve worked hard, so we deserve the things we’ve earned.” But instead to see everything as a gift that we don’t deserve. Including faith.

Faith doesn’t simply mean intellectual belief. It means no less than that, but it means so much more. It means trusting in God, resting in him, and realising it’s all about Jesus. Faith isn’t a matter of ability. If it were, people with faith could be proud and boast. But because faith is a gift of God, there’s no room for any human being to boast, as Paul emphasises. Once we’ve been saved, there’s no room for boasting.  We’re saved not by our good works, but through faith. And faith is a gift of God.

There’s no room for boasting. When we hear the word “boast”, what do we think? We probably think it means “bragging”. But boasting meant something much more profound in Paul’s time. In the great battles of the past, what was going to get a warrior into battle? What was going to get them to risk death? The night before the battle the soldiers would boast, and say things like: “We have great chariots, and they don’t. We have 20,000 soldiers, and they only have 5,000. We have the greatest warrior king, he has the sharpest sword and the longest spear. We are the greatest!”

Yes, they’re boasting. And why? To give them confidence to face something hard. Boasting is saying, “We can do it!” So, why is Paul saying that the great thing about Christian life is that it puts an end to boasting? We don’t need to boast, because we can have confidence in Jesus,

Everybody boasts. Life outside Jesus Christ means that everyone is looking for something to be proud of, to give ourselves confidence to face life. Everybody is trying to find something that gives you a sense of value and strength. When the warriors facing battle boasted of their weapons, their superior numbers, their chariots and their warrior king, they were putting their trust in them. That gave them the confidence to face battle. And in many ways we’re like that. Deep down we’re insecure, we doubt our worth and we boast to boost our identity and self-worth.

Some of us look to our careers for worth. Some of us look to our salaries. Or to moral decency. We look for something to boast about. But this is exhausting. Because if we’re looking for something to boast about, we’re looking for something we must achieve or acquire. And they’re hard to get, and we may well fail. And we will feel we’re not good enough. But if we realise that we’re sinners saved by grace, then we can relax. If we are living a life of faith, we don’t need to boast, because we’ve got confidence in Jesus.

So, how do we get from that old life to the new life? The answer is grace. Paul tells us that twice, in verses 5 and 8, “It is by grace you have been saved.” But let’s have a closer look at the middle verses. Verse 6 is actually remarkable in what it says; “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

God has seated us with him in the heavenly realms. We believe as Christians that Jesus was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God the Father. The people of Paul’s time would have understood the image.  If you had conquered in the battlefield, and you had achieved glory for your people, you were given the most glorious place possible. You were seated at the right hand of the throne. You stood next to the king or emperor. You were given the place of honour, because you had conquered. And so it made sense to Paul’s listeners that when Jesus conquered death, he was taken into heaven and seated next to the Father, the most honourable place, the most honoured seat in the universe. And Paul says we’re there as well. What does this mean?

Paul uses the past tense. “God [has] seated us with [Jesus]…. in the heavenly realms.” We have been seated. It can’t mean we’ve been raised from the dead; it can’t mean we’re literally there – because we’re here. One day we may literally be there, but not yet. It must mean, because we’re not literally there, that we are legally seated there. When we believe in Jesus, all our sins are so hidden, so covered, that we are treated as if we have done everything that Jesus has ever done. And God delights in us and honours us. God accepts us and he rejoices in us, in the way he does over his Son. How could that be? There’s a hint here, in verse 7, “[G]od’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” The word “kindness” in English doesn’t get across the Greek word. The Greek word doesn’t just mean sentiment, it means costly action. It doesn’t mean simply being helpful; it means putting your money where your mouth is. It means doing something costly. And that is what Jesus did.

The first three verses of Ephesians 2 tell us that sin is putting us where God should be = at the centre of our lives.  Only God should be there. Sin is putting ourselves where God should be. What is salvation? It’s God putting himself where we deserve to be. On the Cross. Jesus Christ took our seat, where we deserved to be. It wasn’t just physical death that he went through. He took the wrath of God, the wrath which according to verse 3 we deserved. Jesus was cut off from his Father and he experienced the agony that we would experience if we were cut off from God for all eternity. Jesus sat in our seat, so that we might sit with Jesus on the right hand of God.

Jesus is the antidote to self-centredness. To save us, he did the most radically unself-centred action that’s ever been done. Though he was equal with the Father, he emptied himself of his glory and took the place of a servant. He said, “My life for yours.” And when we realise that, we won’t need to be self-centred, because we’re seated with Jesus.  We’ve got all the honour that we can possibly want.

There’s one boast that will stop all boasting. It’s in Galatians 6 where Paul wrote; “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Like Paul, let’s look to the cross on which Jesus died for us. Let’s put aside self-centredness and boast only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Lord, we’re so grateful you’ve given us such tremendous salvation. You have saved us, you have rescued us through Jesus. We pray that you will help us to lead lives worthy of your grace, knowing that we find our self-worth in you. Amen.

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[i] 15 October 2017