Ephesians, 2:1-5
Bradley W. Maston · Feb 22, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926125104813

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

2, 1 through 5. I'll alert you right now for a typo. I just noticed it now. I wrote 3, 1, but it's not as if we jump forward a chapter and then back a chapter. It's actually 2, 1 in the center of the first page. So you can scratch that out or however you like to notate that. Jeremy, would you mind reading 1 through 5 for us?

Sure. Any particular Bible? 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 lusts of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being 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." Outstanding. Okay.

So we're starting today a new section, which I believe Bob alluded towards at the end of last week's session. The first section obviously was the greeting, where Paul greeted the Ephesians 1-3, and we actually talked quite a bit. What was the next section about? If someone wants to summarize that briefly, chapter 1, verses 3-14. What was the second section of this epistle about that we studied? Verses 3-14 of chapter 1.

A tidal wave of grace. A tidal wave of grace. I like that. A tidal wave of grace. Beautiful. So, our blessings. Doug, did you have another good summary statement? I wouldn't want to miss out on another great statement as a tidal wave of grace. That's fantastic. You know, that section, you can tell that Paul was just so overwhelmed with the immensity. unable to even express it with enough superlatives, because there's so many superlative words in here that he freely bestowed upon us.

He lavished on us. It just kind of makes you excited when you read it. I just think about it, which is really cool. So then he moved into 15 through 23, which was what, as we just studied? This is the section we just finished, obviously. These aren't trick questions, by the way. It's prayers. It's prayer, right? And we got to study a really cool section. We did it obviously quickly, like we're doing in all of this book, but about the way that Paul chose to pray for his brothers and sisters in Christ, and what he saw as kind of a worthwhile thing to pray about. Cool.

Now we're moving into a new section, which is Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. And it gets into... Paul, and he's been addressing it, whether we know it or not, but it gets into Paul's big problem with the Ephesian church. Some commentators have said that there was no problem in the Ephesian church, it's special because there was no issue there, and so Paul was just expounding the wonders of grace. Actually, I think if you study it more carefully, or as we study it more carefully, we find that the Ephesian church did have a problem, and that problem was with the the body being the body, the body being together, the body being united. It seems as if there were Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and they didn't fully get along, they didn't fully jive, from what we can tell.

So Paul was telling these Jewish Christians, these Gentile Christians, and if you read the letter with that understanding that he's doing that, there's all these we's and you's, us and you, and you and them, and all these things, and we'll even see it today, that Paul is Gearing a good portion of this letter in this section while talking about our salvation is also talking about Why we have no basis for disunity in the body.

He's actually going to use 1 through 10 is some sort of a template for 11 through 23. He's going to like almost repeat himself for lack of a better term. So when you read those two, you realize they're almost parallel passages. One, talking about your personal salvation, and two, talking about both Jews and Gentiles being united in Christ.

But we'll see that as we go forward. But realize that he's starting to do that. Also, Ephesians 1-5, which we're going to study today, tells us how much room or reason as believers we have for self-confidence, which is roughly, like on a percentage, how much do we have? 0% reason for self-confidence, which I kind of like. We'll discuss it a little bit later at the end of, I think, 2 and 3.

So, verse 3-1 says, And you were dead in your transgressions and sins. So, who is the subject here? What word stands for the subject here? Yeah, you, believers, absolutely. So I'd say that you can make an incredible argument for the fact that Paul is saying you as the Gentiles, but then in three he says, hey, we also, being the Jews, formerly lived. So he includes the Jews and the Gentiles together in this state of sin, but I think he's starting to start to highlight that Jew-Gentile dissimilarity, because the Jews were distinct from the Gentiles, right, prior to the church age. And they define themselves by that distinction.

However, it's important for us to realize as we read this that it is talking to us. I mean, it is about us. All these statements were true of us before we came to Christ. This is just as we could read 1-3-14 with incredible personal application, so we can here as well, which is kind of exciting.

So, moving into the hot button issue, and forgive me if we're moving fast, if there's a point you'd like to highlight or see highlighted more, please raise your hand. But, moving into death, obviously kind of a hot button issue in the theological world, what would you Think of if you saw death in the newspaper, the word death.

What does that mean? Or dead. Somebody's physical life ended. Physical life ended. Exactly. So that's kind of our first connotation for death. How, just based on your experience, how has death been defined theologically in the past? How have you heard it defined? Separation. Separation? Definitely a definition that has a lot of merit, I think. Has it ever been defined in any other way? Yes. Yes.

Those who hold to a one nature position say that when you're, well, when we're talking about the sin nature, that it's dead, it no longer exists anymore. It's gone. It's annihilated. It's out of the picture completely. Experientially tough to back that one up, but hey.

So death has been seen, especially by Calvinistic or Reformed roots, as being completely dead out on a slab, unable to respond, right? I mean, has anybody ever been exposed to that? Like, ah, evangelism's kind of a waste of time because no one has any will in the matter. God's got to first wake them up and then, thank heavens, we also have this wonderful doctrine of irresistible grace that says that once they're awoken by God, they also can't say no to God, so it's pretty much just an absolute open and shut, yeah, fatalist view of the world, which I don't think is backed up by scripture. So, as a matter of review, would someone be so kind as to read, and it's right on your handout, but if you'd like to turn to it you may, Genesis 2, 16 and 17.

And what happened? He did. It happened. And did he die? Instantaneously and in stages. I like that summation of it. That's pretty good. But he didn't die immediately, physically, right? He didn't immediately just stop breathing upon eating the apple. So what's going on with that? How in the world can we say that that God was true to his word. He got to change his mind. Well when God breathed the breath of life into them it was the breath of lives and one of them was spiritual life. And then said no more spiritual life.

That was the dead immediately part. Very good. It's interesting that God didn't cut off all communication with Adam and Eve. We know that the relationship that they had was incredibly changed. The intimacy could no longer exist. He didn't cut off all communication with him because he still loved him and he still wanted to reach out. This is phenomenal.

So here we see that death was a separation from God. Would someone be so kind as to turn, and I don't have it on the handout, but John 17, 3. Yeah, while you're finding it. So it wasn't just a suspended sentence, right? Death, the spiritual death, or the death that incurred immediately on the day that he ate of it was the death of the separation from God, from the good perfect fellowship that he had with God into this new half-life of not being fully connected as we were designed to be. Wayne, do you have John 17? And this is life eternal, that they might know the only true God, Jesus Christ, without that sin. So how did Jesus define life? Eternal. Eternal? Knowing God. And knowing God. Eternal life is knowing God.

Which is really cool, because we'll see that that's what's been opened up to us. And actually, I think, probably we need to say not only knowing the Father, but also knowing the Son. because he does say the only true God and Jesus Christ only ever sinned. And of course he followed through on that promise. He took the Holy Spirit who had the things of Jesus and made them real to each one of us. Absolutely. Certainly.

And in addition to the fact that we couldn't know the Father. That's the sad thing of the new kind of spiritualistic world. that surrounds us, right? The idea that you could know God the Father without knowing God the Son is, of course, astounding. Cool.

So now we get into trespasses and sins. How do you differentiate between trespasses and sins? Is Paul just being redundant? Well, you sin all the time in the old nature, especially if you're not saved. And you may not notice the other, but it still happens. And then just plain saying, well yeah, you knew you could. And there it is. All this ugliness.

Anybody else have any thoughts on differentiation between trespasses and sins? Isn't one kind of accidental and the other is purposely? I never thought of it that way, to be honest. I've always felt that, so trespass, right, comes from the Greek word, just like in the English, it's being off the path, right? Being in the wrong place. That's the idea of trespass, you're not in the right place. So the wild thing is, so we were dead, or separated from God, in our trespasses and in our sins. So our trespasses is being in the wrong place.

A great example of this is, if you're walking down the Highline Canal, as I like to do, or liked to do when I lived closer to it, you go and see occasionally the a lake that's fenced off and it's private property and then they're even so kind as to notate that by saying that if you trespass you'll be shot. Well, is the act of swimming illegal? No, the act of swimming is a good thing and all the wellness and fitness places will say, yeah, you should definitely swim, it's a good thing. But if you swim in that lake, are you doing something illegal?

Yeah, you're doing a good thing in the wrong place, right? I mean, to me this is an easy way to look at the good works of non-believers. You're doing a good thing, but you're doing it in the wrong place. Or even the good works of our flesh, right? If we're doing a good thing, like helping someone out, but we're doing it out of our flesh, what's that before God? It's really nothing before the Lord, right? One of the interesting things that is unique here is that if you go back to Romans chapter 5, you see he connects it with Adam because Adam sinned. In verse 12, in death pass upon all men for all have sinned.

And in that context, all three words are used. Trespass, sin, and transgression. And they're all different. When we look at Greek words, or any word, One of the things we look at is not the similarities, but we look at the differences. And so Paul is not redundant. He doesn't mention transgression because it's unique. Transgression is related to the law. We can't transgress today because there's no law. We don't live under law.

So the apostle Paul uses trespass with a ma ending, which is very unique in the original language because it talks about the reality of result of an action in the mind. We can trespass in the mind, but we sin when we carry that out. And so, sin is the activity of what we think. It's like, in that context, Paul is talking about the desires of the flesh. Desires of the flesh is not wrong, because we're all going to have those desires. But when we fulfill them, according to Galatians chapter 5, not to fulfill the lust of the flesh, not to carry it out. All of us have desires of the flesh, but when you control them by changing your thought patterns and going to the third heaven and thinking of things above in your position, what it does, it releases you, it separates you.

That's why Paul says in Romans 6.11, he says, Reckon ye yourselves to be dead to the sin nature and alive to God. The sin nature is not dead, we're to be dead to him. So we separate ourselves mentally go to the third heaven it separates us from the sin nature and its desires and then you have works of the flesh you have the mind of the flesh you have the desires of the flesh and you have the works of the flesh and all three are distinct in this context in which Paul's talking he's saying that in your mind we can carry out what we think but God and we did and it tells you that we fulfilled the desires of the flesh in that whole context and he saved us, and in spite of it all, he placed us in Christ.

And so the unique thing is that when you go to Romans chapter 5, you see all three words used. Paul, when Adam failed, if you look at it, you can see it. Sin, transgression, and offense. Offense is trespass. So Adam did all three. But the reason why Paul is only using two is because we're no longer God. and is trespassing sin. It's unique. It's very unique and beautiful. Isn't it fantastic? Thank you very much for sharing. That's exactly what I'm getting at.

We were in the wrong place. We were doing the wrong things. And our very mindset was only fit to make sin because of our trespass. And we actually did our sins of commission and omission, which kind of solidified, not solidified, but was an apt expression.

So thank you very much for sharing. That's exactly it. trespass, sorry, we were dead in our trespasses, in our very place, in our sin, in our sins, our actions or inactions, as the case may be. How unbelievably true, I guess, although you can never say that. Cool.

So, If this is the case, what is the good in going to non-believers and helping fix them up? We know they're dead in transgressions and sins, we can point out their sins, we can see where positionally everything that's coming out of them is wrong. What should we really be after? Should we be trying to fix up all of our non-Christian friends?

We'd make him stop doing the things we don't like. Yeah. Polish up the old man then. Exactly. If I could just get this guy to stop drinking, then everything would be alright, right? If I could just fix this little symptom, this little action, if I could just make him stop being so mean, then everything would be fine, right?

Does anyone ever get caught in thinking that? I know I do. work with non-christians, live with non-christians, and just think, man, boy, and when non-christians talk about getting right with God, what do they mean? Oftentimes, not going to, you know, drink, smoke, or chew and go with girls who do, right? Isn't that kind of where it, where the, so where's the disconnect in thinking? Where is that not biblical thought? It's still not sitting in the mind of things in Christ, so that he can transform you.

I think the key is here, and then you brought it out before, is that we gotta look at the position of an unsaved man. He's an atom. And as long as he's an atom, he's not in Christ. No matter what you do with a person in atom, for instance like, when God looks at this man according to Ephesians 2, 1-3, he looks at us in a prior condition and position. No matter what we did, we were fulfilling the desires of the flesh no matter what we did we were controlled by the prince of the power of the air no matter what we did we were in this world and we loved the things of the world and we were dominated by them so all three enemies are mentioned here and all three are controlling the believer and they don't even know it we're enslaved to it and we think we're doing right but we're not as long as God sees us in Adam no matter what we do it's going to be wrong even if you did good Because your righteousness is our filthy rags, anyway. No matter what you do, because flesh is carrying out a good work, you might say.

But it's outside of the realm of being in Christ. So you can see the positional change later on in verse 4. When we're seated in the heavenlies, in verse 6 and 7, God took us and placed You know, Jeremy, I'm sorry. I'm pretty much saying the same thing. One, there says that in your trespasses and sin, which seems to be a huge contrast to chapter one, where it's all about in Christ and our separation of verse two is where we're identified with our trespasses and sins are identified with the Adamic nature, not Christ's nature.

That's why the English, I don't know what the Greek is, but it's not, you're dead because of your trespasses and sins. It's you're dead in your trespasses. Your identification is with those sins. As long as you're identified with them, you're going to be separated from Christ.

That's why it's unique, you're in Adam. That's why all three words are used in Roman spice. know really and we're all separated in that. God sees two groups. Either you're an Adam or you're in Christ. You mean there's no gray area? You can't be like an Adam but kind of slowly working your way towards being in Christ? I'm in trouble. I've got to go study some more. Amen. Awesome.

So let's look because because of time restraints. Let's look at 2 verses 2 and 3. Doug, would you mind reading Ephesians 2, 2 and 3 for us? We all had our conversation, in time past, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."

So, the term walk here, does anyone... How did most people get around in the first century? They walked, right? You'd be lucky to have a horse or a... even a donkey to ride on. I mean, there's a sign of incredible wealth in there. So Watt became... But I have trouble reading that according to the course. I have a note here from a previous lesson. Age. Age. Age. According to the age of this world. Yes. Fantastic. Age. So the course, yeah. I couldn't see it. Oh, brilliant. I truthfully didn't highlight that in my study, so that's really neat to know, the age of this world.

So we live under the present evil age, according to Galatians 1.4, and Satan is the god of this age, and you find in 2 Corinthians 4.3.5, that the god of this age has blinded the minds of them that believe not.

So one of the problems in the translations is a lot of people, when they translated the King James for instance, they took the word, they didn't know what to do with the word age. So they took it and they made it a course or a world. A lot of times if you look at your concordance in our Greek things you find that many of the words world are translated, age, are translated world. So they didn't know what to do with it.

And so that's the problem with that interpretation and translation because the age It's not the church age. It's the present evil age. The dispensation of grace is the dispensation of the church. And they parallel each other. And that's the problem. But the god of this age, the present evil age, is Satan.

So, going back to the term wok, it was a Jewish metaphor, if you like, for the way you conduct your whole life, right? Because that's how they got around, that's how you got here and there. So I love the fact that Paul was saying, hey, you walked according to, in every aspect of your life, every interaction, every loving interaction, every hateful interaction, every happy interaction, every sad interaction, you walked completely according to the course of this world, or sorry, the age of this world. You walked completely according to your flesh.

You were completely, every step, every movement, every action, every thought of your life was controlled by what I'll playfully call the unholy trinity here. So as we move into that, and we've already alluded to it, but what is the unholy trinity? What are the three enemies of the believer that are here mentioned? World. the flesh and the devil awesome and they all get mentioned here which is kind of neat because they're not a whole lot of like that so how do we how do we how do we describe the world what's what's the world because for God so loved the world right what's how do we define the world when Paul uses it in this sense as the enemy the system right Not just, not all the people in the world, because God loved all the people in the world, but the system that is controlled by, in part by Satan, in part by the flesh of the believers. I mean, that's why I like the idea of calling it an unholy trinity, because they're all connected.

I mean, I don't believe necessarily that Satan is up there masterminding all the advertising on TV, but I certainly believe that there's people people who are going, hey, I can appeal to everyone's flesh by putting this on and make them buy. I can put their... and not to say that Satan's not involved in that.

I'm not being so presumptuous this evening. Do you have a comment? Yes, I do. I guess I would prefer calling it the Three Enemies of the Believer, the Raw Flesh and the Devil, as opposed... because I think of the Holy Trinity as being the dragon, Satan, the Antichrist and the false prophet in Revelation 13. Yeah, that's definitely a fair distinction to make.

That's why I said playfully here. Yeah, exactly. That's just what I was going to say. He said playfully. He's just making a... I think it's... That's actually the true theological unholy trinity found in Revelation. Absolutely. Thank you for pointing that out. So maybe better to put the threefold enemy of the believer.

The word here, world, is cosmos. And this is cosmetics. and a lot of people don't realize that when you put on cosmetics, the word cosmetics comes from this word. Cosmosis. It's a system, orderly system in which Satan is the god of this world, connected to it is the age. The present evil age that's connected, belonging to this world system. So the god of this age is really the one who orchestrates the mindset of unsubbed people concerning the world and its things.

Isn't that fantastic? I mean, not fantastic, but isn't it amazing once you realize it? I mean, the whole world is working against bringing people to Christ. The whole world. And it's not hard to see once you know it's there. But, you know, we spend so much energy, or think about it, spending so much energy trying to reform the world, or trying to fix up the world, or trying to stop this or that, or save these little things about our society. Well, who's in control? of our society and who's in control at the end of all things, right? So I'd say, anyway, just realizing that it's going to be the enemy is going to do well. Awesome. Once again, in the interest of time, the devil, Satan, the accuser of the brethren. Yeah. Let's do a time check real quick. Page four. We're a little over halfway. Okay, cool.

What do we know about this character? So obviously we find out about the devil, or a couple of the passages we can learn quite a bit about the devil, Genesis 3, Job 1-3, Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, and obviously in Revelation, we can find out a whole lot about the devil. Actually, going back to the world, how are we supposed to deal with the world? That's kind of what we're going to, the other thing I'd like to mention.

What should our response be? to the world. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. For if any man loves the world, the world is not in him. Yeah. So the scripture gives us a way to deal with the world. Hey, don't love it anymore. Stop loving it. Stop loving the system. Stop loving the advertising. Stop loving whatever it is that you love. Stop seeking the comfort of the world.

Right? So now as we move on to the devil, what are we told, how are we told to deal with Satan, or demonic power, or whatever you want to call it. Resist the devil? Brilliant. So we're not to be praying that we bind the devil, or as Vern says, who keeps letting them go? We're not supposed to be binding the devil, we're not supposed to be going on spiritual exhibition trips, we're just supposed to resist the devil, right?

That's what we're called. We're given spiritual armor, which we'll get to study very soon. It's almost entirely defensive in nature. It's a defensive outfit to stand against the devil. We're not told to attack the gates of the enemy. We're just told to stand in what Christ has already won for us. So that's scripturally how we're to deal with the world, by not loving it, deal with the devil, by simply resisting, standing against, standing in what Christ has already done, and now finally the flesh, right? The enemy closest to home.

What is encompassed in the term when I say the flesh? It's me, it's my mindset, it's my where we talked earlier about the lusts of the flesh, it's those desires that I have that are not in keeping with, not in alignment with what the Lord wants. And that's exactly what I was looking for. So I love Romans 6 because it views the sin nature or the flesh as this deposed dictator.

You use the word death again to mean separation. If you want to define the death of our old sin nature as annihilation, you're going to have a lot of trouble assuring yourself of your salvation because you're going to continue to deal with that flash. You're going to continue to deal with this because it continues to be around.

So we've been separated from it, but just like a deposed dictator who is allowed to sit maybe in the throne room, he can shout orders at you. Hey, listen to me. Don't listen to the guy on the throne of the earth. Don't listen to the guy who's in control. Don't listen to the Lord of your life. Listen to me. Fulfill what I want you to do. He can still nag at you. He can still order, shout, command, do whatever it is he can do to get you to do what you want, what he wants you to do. Oh my, that was a terribly convoluted sentence.

Erase it from your memories. Let's get a new one. So how are we to deal with this enemy within? Well, you have to reckon yourselves dead to separate from the scene. Awesome. So reckoning, once again, is a matter of, as I thought Bob pointed out very well, our faith is too small, our faith is too small, our faith is too small. I think there were seven of them. I'm not sure. The reality that we are not putting our faith in the fact that God says, hey, if you've been baptized into Christ's death, you're dead. You're separated. You don't have to listen to that sin anymore. Reckon yourselves dead unto sin. Jeremy?

Well, it seems like with all of these, The way to deal with them is to not deal with them. I mean, what this passage is saying, and other passages, is that Christ has dealt with all of them on the cross. And all of these are only affecting the old man, which the old man is not there anymore.

And so for us as Christians to, as unwant to do, too often is think, well how do I deal with the world? Well we don't. I mean, our position is in Christ. We're supposed to set our affection our focus on things above, and we're to behold in Christ, and we... I mean, the Bible teaches about these things. Obviously, we know that there is a world of flesh and the devil, but those are all connected to the old man.

They really don't have any effect on our life right now, in Christ. And our focus is supposed to be on Christ, because all those things have been taken care of, and we simply need to rest and have faith in who we are now in Christ, and not focus so much on those other things. Those are not a priority for us at all. And you've all probably heard of this phrase a lot, please be seated. Well, be seated in the heavens. There we are. There we are. Fantastic.

I think Galatians 5 is really the answer to the connection with our position, because the reality of our position is not made real until the Holy Spirit is. You walk by means of the Spirit, you will not fulfill the your life in the same word that Paul uses in Ephesians. The unsaved man prior to our salvation, while in Adam, we ordered everything in reference to our own desires. We did. Everything we saw and touched.

You have to remember that the unsaved person is governed by his five senses. Really. He interprets life through his five senses. What he touches, sees, tastes, feels. And so when you look at the music of the world, it's all sensual, it's all... It touches one of those senses. But a believer is no longer there. I mean, he's there if he lets it.

But if we walk by means of the Spirit, it doesn't say that if we walk by means of the Spirit we won't have the lust of the flesh. He says here that if we walk by means of the Spirit we will fulfill controlled by our thinking, like in 2 Corinthians 10, 15-6, it says we have anything that opposes God in knowledge, that we have the proper knowledge that puts it into captivity. In other words, we capture that thought in the mind, which is your trespass area, the mind, the result of the mind, the mind ending, which is incredible. But you can carry it out, if you carry it out, it's going to be sin.

You won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. It doesn't say we won't have it. Yeah, because once again, just like we were saying, your sin nature is always there with you. Right, 24-7. Which is why at Holy Hills we're not perfectionists, right? We don't believe that you're going to be perfected as you walk around in this, because you'll continue to have that.

Moving forward, because we're in our last five minutes of class, or very nearly in our last five minutes of class. I just wanted to take this time to point out, and I couldn't decide whether to put this at the beginning or the end, I think one of the reasons that Paul started this section, and I think it's really important to us, is after giving us this great, glorious explanation of our position in Christ, and after praying, like, hey, I'm kind of praying that you get it, which is kind of cool, I think Paul wants to remind everybody, hey, by the way, in case you forgot that this isn't something that you did yourself, this isn't something that you did yourself. When you look at non-believers and see them absolutely just stuck in their horrible mind frames and their horrible hatreds and their sins and all these things, don't you dare for one moment think that you were that much better than them. Boy, that guy's really lost, right? Even if I wasn't a Christian, I wouldn't be caught in that. What in the world does that mean? Right? I mean, which one of us, at one point, I think it was, I think it's in Matthew? It says, Jesus knew what was in a man. Jesus knew what was in a man, that lust, greed, adulteries, all these things are within all of us in our flesh.

There's just the difference between those of us who don't have the courage to do it and those of us who just think it all our lives, right? Outside of Christ. So I feel like, I think as I've studied this and studied this, I'm fairly convinced that Paul's saying, hey, step off your high horse. When you're talking to non-believers, don't get caught up in all the things that they do that you don't do, or they do that you would never do. But realize that, hey, when it comes down to it, you're just a poor, helpless beggar who found a place to get the bread of life. When you go share the gospel with a non-believer, you're just saying, hey, there's bread over here. There's life over here. I just feel like we'd be remiss to not mention the reality that this should be a humbling passage for us. We realize that we're not any better off. I mean, we're not any better at our core. We're simply in Christ. That's it.

Ephesians 2, 4 and 5. April, do you have it open? But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. Awesome. Obviously we've got this conjunction, but it should be a day, not an Allah, so it's a change of direction, not a stark, not this but that. So he's changing directions towards God, and God is the new subject, if you like. And he describes God first as being rich in mercy. So we've seen this richness applied to God before.

In Ephesians 1.7, we have got the riches of God's grace.

In 1.18, we have the riches of His glorious inheritance.

In 2.4, rich in mercy.

In 2.7, riches of His grace.

In 3.8, the unsearchable riches of Christ. And in 3.16, the glorious riches. That's just in this letter. So I think what Paul might be getting at is that God has sufficient resources. God is rich, not poor. I mean, I think that's a fair summation of what's going on here. In this case, it's rich in mercy.

So this word mercy was the word translated from the Hebrew word chesed, meaning loyal love. And in the New Testament Greek, this word means undeserved kindness. So this word is to open our eyes to God's kindness towards us as sinners when we didn't deserve it.

This is all Is that five minutes or is that, we're done? Okay, five minutes, awesome. Sorry, this is all teaching about God's great character. He does not give us what we deserve, death, rather he lets us enjoy the riches of his grace and mercy. Cool. And then his great love for us as we draw very close to the end of our time together. His great love towards us. We use this word love in a lot of ways, right? I love pickles. I love ice cream. I love this.

This word is, or the Greek word obviously is agape. So what's this love that he has for us characterized by? What is it? How have we heard agape love described? God so loved the world. We define it often as unconditional love. But I think, you know, one of the things that Byrne has done is he's explained this as a love that is not based on the value of the object loved, but it's just based out of the lover. And as you've put in your notes here too, it's a love that desires the best and the good for the object loved. A lot of people, or actually I've heard one person, object to unconditional love because he says that means that if this person is going around drunk or doing drugs or being immoral in one or multiple ways, you know, that we should still love them.

Well, yeah, it does. It means you can still love them. It doesn't mean that you love what they're doing and that you approve of what they're doing or that... Or continue their co-dependency. Exactly. But that you desire the best for them. So that love would actually desire for them to step away from those things by means of the Spirit. So now... Absolutely.

I had an interesting conversation with some people the other day on the concept of the world. Everybody proved to be in heaven. He loved the world. Everybody's going to be there. Wouldn't be my interpretation. That was what they said. We were talking about various things. They brought up that. God loved the world. Well, and as C.S. Lewis put it, for the person who doesn't want to be with God, to bring them into heaven, where we spend all our time worshiping God, would be hell. He loves too much, even for that.

Well, we are certainly out of time, of all things. So we'll have to leave that somewhat unresolved. Nevertheless, a fantastic couple of verses. We didn't really get to my grace, but we've been saved. But that's OK, because next week, Paul expands upon that completely.

So let's go to the Lord. Heavenly Father, we praise you for this wonderful day. Lord, for your wonderful word. Lord, as we continue to seek after what it is your word means, and seek after what it is to behold your Son, Lord. Seek after your life lived out in us. We praise you as you transform us from glory to glory. You are the author and perfecter of our faith. We praise you. We praise you and thank you for this time, for this place as we continue to move towards the unity of the faith. In Jesus' name, Amen.