Tag: salvation

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Not of Works, but For Them – Ephesians – 2:8-10

This is one of the most beautiful passages in the New Testament, but it is also calling us to something. It’s confrontational, it gets into your face.

There is a gift being offered to us, freely, but it’s a stark choice. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters,” says Jesus in Matthew.

We need to understand that God is not like us. Evil cannot stand in His presence. He is a righteous judge and we are a criminal standing before him. But he offers us life instead of death, freedom instead of bondage.

But that offer is, as Paul writes here, a gift, with nothing that we can do to earn or deserve it. We have no way to point to our own deeds or our own goodness. If we are going to boast, Paul writes elsewhere, we should boast about Christ.

We receive the gift by faith, and that faith is impossible outside of the revelation of God. One of our jobs is bringing that revelation – Paul writes in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

But when we respond in faith, we are re-created by the creator and united with Christ. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, we must be reborn to enter the kingdom of God.

And what that rebirth means is explained in verse 10. You can’t detach verses 8 & 9 with their beautiful message of grace and faith from verse 10. We can’t use the truth of grace as an excuse to do whatever we want. We are a new creation, “God’s workmanship,” specifically outfitted to do good works. Salvation is by faith alone, but faith itself is never alone.

In Matthew 7, Jesus tells us that we will be assessed by the fruit, the result, of Christ in us. Good works do not lead to Christianity, but Christianity leads to good works, says Martin Lloyd Jones.

We can’t mistake this for legalism, but we also can’t miss the truth that we are called to works. But the works prepared for us are not for ourselves, but for others and for Christ.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 6, 2020

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Dead in Our Sins – Ephesians 2:1-3

At the close of chapter 1, we saw that the job of the Church is to do the will of Christ – we are the body of Christ and he in turn is the Head of the church. And we are to seek that will in prayer and the study of the scriptures, and to pray for opportunities and boldness to share God’s love and Christ’s message of hope.

That followed the opening of the epistle, when Paul erupted with the praise of God for his gifts, in particular, salvation. Then he moved on to a prayer for the Ephesians, of both thanks and for the further refinement of their faith.

At the beginning of chapter 2, Paul zeroes in on “you,” dead in your sins. We are not on our deathbed and needing to accept medicine, we are dead and decaying. We are not drowning and needing to grab a life preserver, we are dead, bloated and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We need the Father to do for us what he did for the Son – to raise us from the dead. We have no part in our justification – we were helpless to accomplish any part of it.

He uses the death metaphor, and then slavery. We are enslaved to three things – the course of the world, the ‘prince of the power of the air’, and the desires of our flesh.

The world of full of ideas and philosophies that are contrary to the truth of God, and we much be aware and on our guard against them. Likewise, the devil, the prince of the lower atmosphere, also at work in the “sons of disobedience” – not something we talk about a lot as a church, but maybe we should? Jesus did, and Paul will even more as we go through Ephesians.

So we have these outside influences, but ultimately we all have lived in our own passions and fulfilling our own desires. We have all broken faith with God and are “children of wrath.”

We must understand the hopelessness and despair that surround the status that God saved us out of, so that we are properly grateful for the greatness of our salvation.

This should also guide how we see others. Those around us are dead in their sins, and we have the secret of life.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, August 23, 2020

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Before the Foundation of the World – Ephesians 1:4-6

Today we’re going to talk about salvation. What is it, and how do you get it? Spurgeon said,

Salvation is, in short, deliverance from sin, deliverance from the guilt of it, from the punishment of it, from the power of it.

Sin is like going to war with God. And God’s response, somewhat bafflingly, is adoption. God has chosen you, not because you earned it, but because he loves you.

JI Packer wrote that a “a Christian is someone who has God as father.”

Not only did He adopt us, but Paul writes that he predestined that adoption “before the foundation of the world.”

Predestination is a difficult topic, because it’s rubs up against our free will. We make choices every day, and get offended when those choices are taken away. But our few will is subject to, even a slave to our nature. Think about a lion – lions can, to some degree, make choices. But a lion won’t ever choose salad over meat, no matter how well we make the case.

And our nature is to sin. Calvin writes

…all of us tend to evil, and we are not only inclined to it, but we are, as it were, boiling hot with it.

It often doesn’t seem like we are totally depraved. We all know atheists who do good and love people – this also comes from God, a result of Common Grace. “The rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous.”

But ultimately, we cannot make it to even a decision for God on our own. Calvin writes that the faith that brings us to salvation itself is the fruit of the election, the choice of God. And that faith itself is the evidence of that election.

And that election was in place before the foundation of the world – just as Christ is called the “lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.” And God didn’t look ahead and see that we would choose Him.

Why does God choose some and not others? Why does God not choose everyone? These things have not been revealed. These are among the “secret things” described in Deuteronomy 29:29.

Another thing revealed in this passage is that we have been chosen for a purpose – to be holy and blameless in love. The verse in Ephesians mirrors 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13. How are these concepts of being holy and blameless and of love connected? In God, they are inseparable. Too often we try to pry them apart, loving without seeking holiness or seeking holiness without love. But in reality at cannot separate them in ourselves or we will fail at both.

So we are saved in and for holiness and love, for and in “the Beloved” – Christ Himself. We are made to be monuments to the glorious grace of God in, for and through Christ.

So how do we respond? “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the patterns of your former ignorance,” writes Peter. We must look at how we act, speak and think. What in there mars our role as monuments to the grace of God? We should seek towards the holiness that God has already declared in us. God Himself will keep us from stumbling.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, July 19, 2020