Calvary Road Baptist Church
“TROPHIES OF GRACE”
Ephesians 2.4-7
Ephesians 2.4-7:
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Take note of the fact that right in the middle of the passage we have just read is a parenthetical statement written by Paul, a summary of what he has written. “By grace ye are saved.” That’s an incredible statement when you consider and ponder it, that completely flies in the face of everything Americans have believed in and stood for in the last 150 years of our country’s history. How so? Well, is not the stated philosophy of this country for every man to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and to be self-sufficient? Sure it is. But Paul’s statement indicates that the real problem of man, at least the ultimate problem of man, is a problem that no man can solve. Man cannot deliver himself but must be delivered. Man cannot save himself but must be saved. And Paul informs his readers that they are saved by grace.
But what is grace? Grace is such a misunderstood term in the Bible. Some people, who make gross assumptions when they consider the Bible and who refuse to actually study the Bible, think that grace is always and in every case unmerited or undeserved favor. But that is not what the basic and underlying meaning of the concept of grace is. Grace, really and truly and essentially, refers to someone’s favor. And that’s all it means. If you will use a good concordance and look up every reference in Scripture in which the word grace is used you will find something that will likely startle and amaze you. You will find that most of the time this thing we call grace, this favor in which someone is held by another, is purchased. You heard me correctly. Grace is usually procured, is usually traded for money or friendship.
The Bible supports this notion in many passages. Proverbs teaches us that he that giveth gifts hath many friends. And is not a friend someone who favors you? So favor, grace, is recognized in the Bible as something that is purchased. It’s something you get in return for giving up something that you have, such as money or time or charm.
What happens when you are in desperate need of someone’s favor, and there’s only one problem; you have nothing commendable or praiseworthy or valuable to trade in return for that favor? You have nothing with which to procure that person’s grace. Ah. Then, my friend, you are in deep trouble. This is exactly the situation sinners find themselves in with respect to God. Being dead in trespasses and sins, we find ourselves both hopeless and helpless, without anything of value to trade to God in return for His good graces and friendship. It is in this context and this context alone that we find grace taking on new meaning in the Bible.
Consider. God is holy and without need. There is nothing the All-Sufficient One needs. Then, there is the sinner. Without a thing in the world that he might trade to God for anything, he simply bides his time waiting for the end of life and the judgment of God. What he needs is God’s favor, the grace of God, that he might be delivered from sin, that he might be saved. But who is there who will purchase God’s favor for the sinner? Who is there who will trade something valuable for grace? There is only One, the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary’s cross and shed His blood, He purchased God’s favor for you. But for the shed blood, there is no favor with God, no grace.
God loved us, according to verse 4, “even when we were dead in sins,” verse 5. God doesn’t just love you now that you are saved if you’re saved. He loved you when you were lost. It was God’s love for you that motivated Him to quicken us together with Christ, to make us alive together with His Son, Jesus. And it’s all of this together, the mercy of God, the motivating love of God, and giving to spiritually dead sinners spiritual life in Christ, which Paul describes as the grace of God which saved us.
Now, look at that word “saved.” Most of the time in the Bible the word “saved” is found in a form of the verb that points to the past or the future. For example:
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
In Romans 10.13, we see the future tense of the verb. But here in Ephesians 2.5, we see what is called the perfect tense of the verb. Here’s what is interesting about the Greek perfect tense of a verb. The perfect tense means that something happened in the past, but the effects of what happened in the past continue to the present. In other words, Paul is telling the Ephesians that they were saved in the past, but the effects of being saved in the past are continuing unabated into the present. So much for losing your salvation. Amen?
And what about the future? Well, because of what the Lord Jesus has done saved people have been raised up together, and we, in some way difficult for me to fully understand, sit together with Christ in heaven. God has done this for us so that in the ceaseless ages of eternity future He might display us as trophies of His matchless grace, verse 7:
“That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
Some twenty-five years ago I was a guest on a local television show. Some of you may remember that show because you were in the audience. You had the opportunity to see me surrounded by very wicked people. Some of them were dressed nicely and seemed to have pleasant personalities, but they were all people who have been given over to a reprobate mind by God to do those things which are not convenient.
Most people have no difficulty imagining that God has a problem with those guilty of the sins listed in First Corinthians 6.9-10 or Galatians 5.19-20. But do you realize that the ultimate destiny of those guilty of the sins listed in those two passages is the same as the destiny of the most religious and upright citizen who is not saved?
That’s right. Sin’s destruction of every man and every woman is complete. But God’s Word shows to us three truths that explain how we, examples of sin’s destruction, are become trophies of God’s grace:
First, THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR PROBLEM
Let me say something about truth. Most people don’t want truth. Most people don’t like truth. What most people want, instead of truth, is their own version of reality so they can continue their existence based upon illusion. That’s why Paul wrote,
“Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”
Galatians 4.16.
But my Lord Jesus told us that the truth sets men free. Amen? And He declared to God the Father that “Thy word is truth.” So, we’re going to strive to stick to the truth today, okay?
The truth is, you have a problem. Your problem is death. Every man and woman who was ever born of woman was born spiritually dead. Dead in sins, Ephesians 2.5 declares. That being true, what is the source of this problem of yours? What is it that causes spiritual death? What is it that causes separation from God? What is it that destines a person’s eternal soul to the lake of fire? It is sin. Romans 6.23 establishes for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear that the wages of sin is death. Not sins, mind you, but sin. That is, the very nature that you and I were born with, the moral contamination and spiritual defilement that is called sin, damns the soul. What if you are a morally repugnant person, someone who is vile and terribly wicked? Then your sin damns your soul. But what if you are a morally superior person, upright in every conceivable way? Then your sin damns your soul. For, you see, it isn’t the quantity of sins that produces spiritual death, it’s the quality of sin. And every human being who has ever lived, both you and me included, possesses sin. We differ in our expressions of sin, some more and some less. But your sin is the same. And in each of you, sin produces spiritual death.
So, the source of your spiritual death is sin. But what are the symptoms of your problem? If you have sin, which produces death, what are the evident symptoms of that problem? That’s an easy one. Just as the nature that is within a dog causes it to produce the symptoms of a dog-like nature such as barking, so the nature of sin, which each of us has, produces the symptoms of a sinful nature called sins. And we all commit sins, do we not? Sure we do. As I mentioned, we vary greatly in the kinds of sins we commit and in the wickedness of the sins we commit and in the frequency of the sins we commit. But there is one constant in the otherwise variable lives that sinful people live. Every one of us commits sins. Perhaps you only steal paper clips from the office. Perhaps you are a Heroin addict. Perhaps you sneak cigarettes from time to time. Perhaps you overeat. Maybe you have sex with someone you are not married to. Perhaps you only glance a little too long at picture ads that pop up on social media. But don’t we all, each and every one of us, commit sins? Some try and minimize their sinfulness by rationalizing that their sins aren’t really that bad. But it’s a little like the woman who said she would sleep with a man for a million dollars but became irate when asked if she would sleep with him for $10. “What do you think I am?” she asked. “We’ve already established that,” the man said, “All we’re trying to do now is agree on your price.” It’s a false argument to claim that your sins are small, compared to someone else’s sins being big sins. The fact that you commit sins at all establishes your sinfulness. And your sinfulness establishes that you are spiritually dead. That, my friend, is the truth about your problem. And the problem is one so very serious that neither you, nor I, nor any mere human born of woman, can solve that problem.
Second, THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR PROVISION
Romans 5.6 establishes that when we were yet without strength, in due time, at the appointed time, Christ died for the ungodly. Romans 5.8 declares that God commended His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Add on top of those two verses Titus 3.5,
“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us,”
and clearly you have established in God’s Word that salvation is the result of something done for us. It is not the result of anything that we have played an active part in. How?
God made provision for our salvation. God’s provision for our salvation is Jesus Christ. And what did the Lord Jesus Christ do as our provision? He identified with our problem. And how did the Lord Jesus Christ identify with our problem? Consider. You have a problem. Correct? It’s spiritual death and it’s caused by sin. So what did Jesus Christ do? He became sin for us, He Who knew no sin. But He not only identified with us by becoming sin for us, He also identified with us by suffering God’s wrath instead of us. First Peter 3.18 explains:
“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”
The Lord Jesus so completely identified with us as sinners, yet being without sin Himself, that He even went to the cross and suffered a sinner’s death and punishment. He actually suffered the pent up rage of a holy God’s wrath on our behalf. And as His precious blood poured out from His body nailed to that cross, He cried out, “It is finished!” He did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He satisfied the Father’s righteous demands that sin be paid for by a perfect and sinless Substitute. Because He died and shed His blood in our place, He is declared in the Bible to be the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
So, the Lord Jesus identified with our problem in the extreme. And He did this so we could identify with His solution. Though the Lord Jesus died and shed His blood on Calvary’s cross, there is need to apply the benefit of His provision to each sinner’s eternal soul. For, unless benefit of Christ’s offering for sin is applied to your soul it does you no good whatsoever, and you go to Hell an unsaved person. But when a sinner hears the preaching of the cross, when a sinner hears the old, old story of Jesus and His love, when that grizzled sinner’s heart is touched and softened under the preaching of the Gospel and is drawn by the Holy Spirit to Christ, when that sinful man or woman realizes the horror of sin and separation from God, and when the lost soul is touched by the love of God to save, that sinner can by faith identify with the Jesus Who identified with him. Christ identified with you while you were yet a sinner. And here He is, a tender and loving Savior, the Son of the living God, come to earth to set you free from sin by saving your wretched soul, pouring out His precious blood to wash your sins away. He has now gone back to heaven to await your response. Through the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Who died, was buried, and Who rose again from the dead on the third day, He extends to you the open arms of invitation to come and be saved. “What must I do to be saved?” the Philippian jailer cried out one dark and lonely night. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” was the answer that came back from God’s men. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and He will save you.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE FINAL POINT OF TODAY’S MESSAGE. THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR PROMISE
God said that if you trust Jesus Christ, He will save you. But what is it to be saved, really? There is much to learn about salvation. But time restricts me to mention salvation as it relates to three periods of time:
First, salvation from the penalty of sin. The penalty of sin is ultimately Hell. And what sends people to Hell is sin. But what happens to the person who trusts Jesus Christ? Let me mention two things about salvation that remove from the saved person the penalty of sin: First, when you are saved by trusting Jesus, God remembers your sins and iniquities no more. Imagine. God remembering your sins no more. But that’s what He said happens when a sinner is saved, according to Hebrews 8.12 and 9.27. Second, the blood of Christ continues to wash away your sins as you commit them. Christians are not sinless. No one is without sin this side of heaven. But First John 1.7 clearly promises that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth away all sin. So, there you have it. Saved people are saved from the penalty of sin. How? God forgives all past sins and iniquities and the blood of Jesus Christ continually cleanses away sins that you presently commit and will commit in the future. So, since it’s sin that sends people to Hell and since a Christian’s sin is dealt with by the blood of Christ, the Christian is saved from the penalty of sin.
Second, salvation from the power of sins. A Christian is bound for heaven. But between the time you are saved and the time you arrive in heaven, you have to live here amidst the temptations and enticements of this world. And, guess what? You commit sins. No one does not commit sins. Realize that God has provided for you salvation from the power of sin in your daily life. That’s right. Most people who are convicted of sin and who think about being saved worry about sinning greatly after they are saved. But God has already addressed that problem. By various means at the Christian’s disposal, the child of God can gain and demonstrate repeated victory over sin in your life each and every day. That’s what Paul was alluding to in Ephesians 2.6, when he made reference to being raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenlies. “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ.” Saved from the power of sin.
Finally, salvation from the presence of sin. Look again at Ephesians 2.7:
“That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
God has to save us from the presence of sin. Want to know why? Because He has already committed Himself to making us the trophies of grace in heaven that will forever demonstrate the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ. If God doesn’t save us from the presence of sin someday how can He keep this commitment to display through us His matchless grace? He can’t do this in any other way than by making salvation, all three parts of it, a single package. Our promise, then, we who trust Christ, is that God will do what He has committed to do. Trust the Savior and God will save you. He said He would. And that salvation includes #1, salvation from the penalty of sin. You will never go to Hell. #2, salvation from the power of sin in your daily life. You can demonstrate the victory you have in Christ each and every day. And #3, salvation from the presence of sin when you die and go to heaven or when King Jesus comes to get you in the Rapture, whichever comes first. When all is said and done, Christian, you who trust Christ, you will be a trophy of God’s grace. You will be a public, perfect, and profound example of the grace of Almighty God to save worthless and wicked sinners who repent of their sins and who trust the Savior, Jesus Christ.
You’re not that now, friend. Right now, according to God’s Word, if you have not trusted Christ, you are dead in trespasses and sins. Your life is purposeless and aimless.
But God’s grace is sufficient to transform you from an example of the destructive power of sin into a superb illustration of the glory of God’s grace.
Trust Jesus Christ to save you, and that’s what God will do for you and to you.
Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Please contact him by clicking on the link below. Please do not change the subject within your email message. Thank you.
Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church