Ephesians 2:1-10
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Sermon Transcript:
Invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, which the young people were just directing us to. I know many of you are using this journal. If you’re not, we just got a whole new order this week and you want to pick one up, you’re welcome to there in the, at the, Nook this morning, and in it, you will find an outline right to the right, which is what they just followed in depicting the book as we’re trying to help everybody think their way through the book of Ephesians as we’re going through this study together.
I’m going to read Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, which is what we’ll be reflecting on this morning.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 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, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Let’s pray together.
Lord, we come with the thoughts of the psal we’ve just sang. There’s nothing better than you reminded of the psalmist who said, Lord, apart from you, I have no good thing that you’re the one that makes all the things in our lives able to be good. And Lord, this passage just reminds us of the incredible grace that you express to enable our lives to be changed and transformed.
Lord, I pray you teach us this morning. I pray that all of us here in Mount Laurel, all of us here in Collingswood, all that are watching online this morning. Lord, You would dissipate the distractions and enable us to just hear Your Word. In Jesus name, Amen. Modern world history divides itself into two periods.
Historically, it’s known as B. C. and A. D. Recently, non religious folks have tended to call this the, what we call B. C. would be B. C. E., before the Common Era, and then C. E. would be the Common Era. But, Whatever you call the letters, it’s still centering on the entrance of Jesus Christ into the world. And all history is divided before and after.
We are looking at a passage this morning in which Paul is talking to people about their before Christ time, B. C., and their after Christ time, the anti domini, the year of our Lord, the coming of our Lord. That it is after that and, and he’s talking about the distinction between those two seasons of life.
The context of this is Paul, of course, is the guy that had started the church in Ephesus. He had stayed there three years, longer than he stayed anywhere else. And during his time that was there, God used him and others to do an amazing work. They birthed new congregations. They saw the power of Christ not only in Ephesus.
impact this metropolis of Ephesus, but also the whole area surrounding them. So it was not only a city that was influenced, but it was entire region, the whole area was known as Asia. He wants what was started to flourish and grow now in his absence. And he sends him this, this very significant letter in the New Testament, the book of Ephesians.
And as he does so, he is writing about the life that Jesus gives people. In chapter one, we saw how God views the whole plan of deliverance, of salvation from an eternal perspective. And in the verses before this, leading up to the prayer at the end of chapter one, what he’s talked about is the work of each member of the triunity of God involved.
God the Father is the one that has designed the whole plan of rescue for humankind. It is God the Son that accomplished that plan. He’s the one that took on flesh, that became human, that came to earth, that suffered and died as the A Savior for sinners on the cross and rose from the dead. And God, the Spirit, is the one that applies that in the lives of people.
He does so, verse 13 and 14 remind us in chapter 1, by entering their lives, taking up resident within them and changing them from the inside out. In chapter 2, Paul starts to explain what this new life looks like from the human side. He tells the story of one’s pre Christ, B. C. life situation and then contrast it with the change that Christ makes in the A.
D. season of life in verse 4 through 10. I’d like to look at those two seasons of life that he presents here. First, verses 1 through 3. Our B. C. life. And as you look at that, you find that he uses a number of phrases and he gives four characteristics of this life. First of all, he says it is a season in which you were disconnected from God.
You were dead in trespasses and sins. I’ve done this before, but I think it’s important to understand when Paul talks about death, what, what he means by, by death, because death here is a significant theological concept. All kinds of death actually could be translated by the term separation. If I died on the platform this morning, what has happened is my material part has stayed, but my immaterial has separated.
My soul spirit is gone. I’d give up the ghost, as they used to say, or the spirit has left him, whatever. His soul’s departed. It’s all true. The immaterial physical death is the separation of one’s material from immaterial part. Now, in our, our lives, We have this material part. It’s called the soul and the spirit.
It’s actually there’s two actually elements, two orientations, if you will. Both terms are used throughout the scripture. The soul is talking about the horizontal orientation of life. It’s why the word psuche is used. Psuche is actually the word we get psychology from. It is the study of the soul. It is our soulish life.
It is our soulish orientation, how we relate to others. How we relate to ourselves, how we work through things within ourselves. It is the soul ish life, the horizontal dimension of our life. But humans are not only created horizontally, we are given a spirit. This is the vertical dimension. And in this vertical dimension, it is our relationship with God, our creator to the creatures.
That God has created us with the capacity of relating to him, of knowing him, of doing life with him. And Paul is saying here, he’s now speaking about this secondary sense of death, not physical death. But what is known in the Bible constantly as spiritual death. He says, there is a separation in your relationship to God.
There is a, there is a disconnect in the, in the vertical relationship between your spirit and God as spirit. It is a, it has happened, he says, for the whole human race. It happened when forefathers representing us turned away from God originally, and in that sense, we participated in it. Romans chapter 5 verse 12, it says this, Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin.
In this way, death came to all men because all sinned. In Genesis 3, talking specifically about Adam, it says the day you ate of the free, you will surely die. Well, actually, he didn’t die physically. He continued to live. So he was talking about there’s going to be a change in the vertical dimension of life.
There is going to be separation, and it is a separation that manifests itself in the life of all people. And Paul is referencing that here. He says there’s Disconnection with God as you live in your sins and trespasses. Now, historically, there’s been different views of human, even among theologians, of what it means that we’re, you know, how are we relating to God?
Why are there problems in our relationship with God? And back in the fourth century, there are a couple of famous theologians. One is the most famous in the church, a guy named St. Augustine. But There was a guy named Pelagius who came along and he had the definition and explanation of what was going on with humans.
And he says, basically, people are fine. They’re fine. There’s no real issues, particularly when a child is born, we don’t get a bad nature. We just get bad models. And if we get the right models in our lives, because we’re born neutral, sin will only be a problem to us if we choose it from our models and, and what we see.
We can, will to do good lives in ourselves. Augustine was horrified by this view for him. It made no sense. It in no way explained the horrific problems among humans he saw in the world, but also completely negated the need of Jesus work on the cross. Pelagius was eventually barred from and branded a hurricane.
But his view of human nature was people are fine. There came along a few people after them and they were sort of wanting to balance, well we hear what Pelagius is trying to say and we certainly hear what Augustine’s trying to say. And they took what is known as a semi Pelagian view or a quasi Pelagian view.
And their view was this, that they acknowledged, and they, my terms would be that people are sick. people will, are spiritually ill, they’re sick. They definitely believe that. The idea that people were inclined to sin. They saw it in people’s lives. Their natures were obviously impacted by sin. But though they’re sick, there’s a spark of spiritual life in them that enables them to embrace Christ and find his salvation.
This actually is the perspective of a significant portion of evangelical Christians today. The perspective, it is not what Augustine believed, and I would suggest to you it is not what Ephesians 2 is saying. Ephesians 2 is taking this Augustinian perspective that says this. People are not fine spiritually.
People are not just sick. spiritually. And if you just, you know, just throw them, you know, they’re sort of, or they’re drowning in the water, throw them a life preserver. What they are is dead. That they are incapable of saving themselves or even grasping. That Augustine was saying, we’re not just drowning and need a life preserver, we’re dead.
The vertical dimension in our lives is disconnected, and there is no relationship with God. And the result is, what he’s going to show us in verse 2 and 3, that we’re in a state of separation and disconnection with God, proven every day by the choices we tend to make, or in our talking, our acting, what we pursue.
There is a disconnection with God, and Paul says you’re spiritually dead, you’re separated. The second thing he highlights in this is that we are unresponsive then to God. There’s a disease that I heard about a number of years ago, I actually did some studying, I was really fascinated by it, I’m sure some of you here are Myasthenia Gravis.
It basically is from three words. Moose, which is the word for muscle. Thinia, which means weakness. And Gravis, we mean serious. It’s a serious muscle weakness. That’s the disease. Basically, the signals come from the brain. It says, pick up that pen or lift that, that weight and the signal goes through the nervous system.
It goes all the way down to the muscle group, but the muscle group has a disconnection and it is not able to be a receptor for the nerve impulse. So the muscle does not operate and the, the danger of myasthenia gravis is muscles will atrophy because they’re not appropriately getting the impulse. This is exactly what happens.
Paul is saying in Ephesians two, he says, when we’re dead, when we’re separated from God, we don’t get the impulses. He may be sending the messages. Maybe you’ve done life with people and they keep talking about this relationship with God, that God speaks to them, that that they have this vital walk with God and they go to the Bible and God just talks and you say, It doesn’t happen to me.
I, I don’t understand this. I, I, I hear the same thing. I mean, I’ll listen to a sermon and think, Oh, that was cool. Great illustration. whatever. I don’t really sense. That there is the, the, the messaging, the reality, God, I believe in God, but do I know him? Well, no, he’s God. And I mean, I’m just me, but God says, I am imminently knowable.
There’s a disconnect that results. There is an unresponsiveness that results from this. God tends to feel distant, impersonal, maybe not even real. We make all of our choices without any sense of what God is really saying to us. Personally, again, I’m just presenting here the bad news in verses one through three of what Paul is saying this is the state of all of us ultimately in our lives before what happens in verse four.
Disconnection, unresponsiveness. Number three, under the sinful and under the influence of evil. He lists three spheres of evil in our lives in verse two and three. Number one, he says, you’re, you’re under the influence of an evil world. You’re following the ways of this world. And we might respond, I mean, is that so bad that I’m following the ways of the world?
I mean, I’m not E. T. I’m not a space alien. I’m I’m a world ling. This is my place. These are my people. Why is it wrong to follow the ways of the world? Well, the world that he’s talking about here is the sense of the perspective of life that is natural to people that are disconnected from God, which is our initial way of entering life and living life apart from what he’s going to talk about.
Paul is saying that you live your life with an orientation that is normal and universal for people in that spiritual condition. The general inhabitant of the world is in this spiritually dead condition. What happens in that state is you seek to find your fulfillment in something other than God. Makes sense, right?
Because, you know. There’s a disconnection with God. You may know about him. You may believe he exists. You may have been taught. You may have been taught. for years. Truth about him. But actually, your life orientation is not influenced by God because there’s disconnection there. The world elevates then other things to God like status and offers them to us.
It appeals to us with very off various offerings to bring fulfillment and meaning to your life. It could be thousands of things, a new car, a new nicer home, a new relationship through eHarmony, a new baby, a new body through the local fitness center, a future for your child, a new church, a new job. One or many of these are pursued, hoping they will bring real fulfillment and meaning.
But ultimately, Paul’s saying to us here, it’s a false promise. Because what it is offering is a substitute for the real article. And the real article is God himself. That when disconnected from God, when we’re basically dead men walking, these are the best we can come up with to try to provide what God has designed to be offering through himself.
In this dead state, we are not only influenced by the world around us, and its offerings to us, and its pursuits, but there is an unseen power at work. Number, verse two, it says there’s an evil master. that influences. There’s a ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient.
He says there’s an organizing. Now this is, you know, you may be out there here in Mount Laurel or Collingswood, you may be online and you say, wait a minute, you’re not going to go there. I mean, you’re not going to be saying, There’s a real devil, and he’s doing real stuff. I mean, come on, Mark. I mean, sometimes you seem to have a degree of intellectual, competency.
I do believe in a literal devil. I believe there is the only, it is the only explanation for the astonishing evil that is in the world. There is a power behind the power. There is an influencer behind the evil that we see. There is an organizing force. And the Bible says this force is actually a person.
And when we are still spiritually dead, we do not intentionally serve Satan. Most of us are not sacrificing animals on Halloween, or Wicca, or witchcraft participants, which would be more, at least to some degree, for many involved in that, intentionally, pursuing that supernatural world. But we participate in a world system that is energized and influenced by Him, aiming to keep us from connection with God.
It’s described, I think, in a, in an interesting way in one of the Sherlock Holmes book. It’s called The Final Problem, if you’ve ever read Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes is talking to his sidekick, Dr. Watson, and he’s describing this thing that was going on in the world of crime. And here’s how he describes it.
As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London as well as I do. For years past, I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malfactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law and throws its shields over the wrongdoer.
Again and again, in cases of the most varying sorts, forgery cases, robberies, murders, I have felt the presence of this force. And I have deduced its actions in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.
Watson, he is the Napoleon of crime. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly of all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He is a brain of the first order. He sits motionless like a spider in the center of its web. But that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows very well every quiver.
of each of them. He does little himself, he only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done? A paper to be abstracted? We will say a house to be rifled? A man to be removed? The word is passed to the professor. The matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught.
In that case, money is found for his bail or his defense. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught. Never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced Watson and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing. That is a perspective in a history, different situation, but basically context of this is what is going on.
behind evil in our world. But then he tells, and he says, man, you were living in, that was influencing ways you didn’t even know. Just by imbibing the cultural perspective and outlook. And then third, it also, you were influenced by your own evil nature. He says this in verse three, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature.
It’s our very nature to pursue the false offerings of happiness the world offers in which Satan promotes. These God’s substitutes appeal to us. I mean, why would they not? They do not satisfy, but they are seemingly satisfying. They certainly satisfy for a time, some of them a lengthy period of time, but ultimately they are not that which brings ultimate meaning and satisfaction to our lives.
They don’t satisfy because we were all created with a God shaped vacuum. As Augustine said it, God, our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. We sense there should be more to life. We sense life without God, it’s not how it ought to be. And the consequences of spiritual death are even more reaching, far reaching.
And I was just going to touch the last one. The fourth thing that is said in these verses about our B. C. state is this. We are under the sentence of God. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Wrath here is talking about God’s eternal judgment and eternal separation from him. So here’s the scenario.
He says, B. C. Here’s what we’ve got three primary things. You’re disconnected from God. You’re trying to milk the world for a contentment that only God can give and you’re facing an ominous future eternity because of your choices. That’s where we’re left at the end of verses one through three. And he’s saying, this is where you all are.
This is where everybody lives in their lives and would live forever, except for two words that may be the most precious words in the entire Bible. They start verse four, but God, God saw that state. And he who is rich in mercy, it goes on to say the things that he does as he offers now this A. D. Life. And he talks about things that he provides.
First of all, he provides connection to himself in verse five. He makes you alive with Christ. Spiritual death. is our disconnection. There is no relationship. We know about God, but we don’t know God intimately, personally, as a father, as a friend. We’re told in first Peter 3 18, it says, For Christ died for sins, one for all the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.
He says it this way in John chapter 14 verse six, Jesus talking, I am the way. I’m the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me. I’m the one that has come to bring connection, reconnection to God that’s been lost because of sin. Secondly, he says, we have a whole new orientation on earth.
He says in verse 6, You’ve been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places. When we are spiritually made new, we find ourselves responsive to God, we can get the signals. We go to the Bible and in our own spirits we sense God speaking to us. Sometimes in life experiences we just sense God is leading, directing, speaking.
God makes himself known and the beauty is we’re no longer on the, on the other side of the glass looking in. I get it. I get it now. It’s nothing I did, nothing I deserve, nothing I merited. It’s that God brought me into a relationship with him. He’s connecting me again. He’s bringing in the place of death and separation.
He’s bringing life and connection and did it all through Christ. Becoming a Christian does not mean that something is added to your life like a supplement. Becoming a Christian
is a complete change. It’s not a new file you download into your computer. It’s an entire new operating system for the hard drive. There is utter transformation inside when God himself comes into your life. So last part of my sermon, I want to talk about what are the marks of being spiritually alive. And I’d like to share four.
I’m going to try them quick. Number one, there are some practical things, and now I’m going broader than this passage just to speak. Okay, what does it mean that we’re alive? Okay, we get that, that sense that now we’re, we’re connected with God, there’s a relationship with God. But what are some practical evidences of that?
Well, number one, there is a different view of the scripture. The moral person, a person that’s read the Bible, is familiar with the Bible, May admire the Bible, may applaud the Bible. And I say this quite honestly, this may be many of us that are in church all the time. But the person that is genuinely alive in Christ doesn’t just laud the Bible, appreciate it, maybe even believe it.
He or she feeds on it. There’s a hunger for that all of a sudden you’re realizing God It’s speaking to me that I hear him get it. This this is this is not just Paul writing to a bunch of Ephesians 2000 years ago. As I read this text, I sense God is saying, Mark, this is this is about tomorrow. This is about how you’re going to live with your, your, your family today.
I’m speaking into you. This is my answer to you as you’re struggling with these questions. There’s just a hunger to hear the scriptures. You want to be, you want to be fed. You know, when you’re hungry and your wife says, Hey, Saturday morning, let’s go out to breakfast. You don’t say, Hey, I did breakfast Tuesday.
I’m good. You’re hungry again. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a desire. You’re hungry to hear the truth of the Bible. Why? Because there’s connection. It’s, it’s not just words. It’s, as God describes in New Testament, it’s living words. Secondly, when you’re spiritually alive, there’s a different view of failure.
I love this one. All other religions and philosophies say pull yourself together, get a grip. That is what salvation is to a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, and I’m not disparaging them, I’m just trying to draw the distinction. Christians know we are failures. We embrace failure. Every other religion says you can’t reach perfection as a means of reaching God, but you must be very high up in the class rank to make it.
Good must certainly significantly, overwhelmingly away the bad to earn this relationship with God. It’s all about you. Biblical Christianity pushes the standards, quite frankly, even higher. It says a perfect God has said only those that have achieved sinlessness, perfection, can enter into relationship with him forever and can do life with him in the world to come.
The difference in biblical Christianity is this, you get accepted on someone else’s perfection. Jesus did that for you. Because you utterly fail. We utterly fall short. This compelling reality in the spiritually alive, in the compelling reality, in the spiritually alive individual is this, the mercy of God.
It is the but God, in verse 4, that God provided a way that, that a dead, separated, Judgment deserving person like me could enter relationship with him, could share his life, his glory, his heaven eternally. It’s all mercy. He doesn’t say, okay, you’ve been a failure now. If you want to get in straight now, get it right.
I mean, go to church, read the Bible, do this. No, he says, No, my standard has only been met by one who came in your place, lived righteously. He bore the punishment for your failures. Paul has already shown what’s true of our lives, dead, disconnected, controlled by desires and cravings which don’t satisfy souls in a feeding frenzy for worth, fulfillment and rest.
operating in a world system that is ultimately empowered against God. But believers know that our misery prompted God’s mercy. And it is our only hope. A number of years ago, there was a guy named Lee Outwater. Lee Outwater was the, he was called the Happy Hatchet Man, the Darth Vader of the Republican Party.
He perfected the art of reputation destroying rumors. This is by his own acknowledgement. He did, Reputation Destroying Things of Michael Dukakis. And when Lee Atwater got cancer and he was forced to look at his own life, his life was transformed by the gospel, the message of Christ. And he began to try to make things right.
From his deathbed, he wrote letters. He had been writing them prior to that time. He wrote to Michael Dukakis and asked his forgiveness. Ted Bundy was a man who apologized at his deathbed in prison after murdering at least 30 women. In both cases, the world says this, who does this guy think he is trying to get forgiveness?
The world has nothing to say to sleazeballs, to ax murderers, to degenerates, to failures. It cannot believe there’s mercy for failures. But when you come alive, when you embrace Christ for your sins. You realize this, that God looks at your sins and does not see that yours needs salvation any less than those guys do.
You see yourself as failure. I didn’t measure up. I’ll never measure up. I see the sins of every known sin in my own heart if I’m honest about it. And I realize I embrace failure. I embrace the fact that I stand as a recipient of mercy. Spiritual live person lives in the glory and the freedom of that reality of God.
The third thing, and I’m just gonna touch here for time. There’s different views of God. Spiritually renewed person is drawn to God. They sense His presence, His guidance in their lives. They see real answers to their prayers. They trace His hand in the circumstances of their lives. They hear Him speak through His word.
They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re finding answers to life by a God that is living within them and speaking into them. And it’s all of grace. It’s all of mercy. But there’s this whole new sense that God is not a heavenly policeman. I got to measure up to. God is my father. God is my friend. Christ is my brother, as he describes himself in the book of Hebrews.
And then there’s a different view of living with God. The spiritually alive person finds their motivation to live with God is one of joy, not ultimately of obligation. I’d just like to read an excerpt from a book that I deeply enjoy. It’s called Hope Has Its Reasons by Becky Pippert. And then I’m going to wrap up.
Here’s what she said. I was living in Israel. I took the bus to go home from downtown Jerusalem, but I inadvertently got off at the wrong stop and was promptly lost, lost. Not an unusual state of affairs for me. I began peering around at street signs to discover where I was. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me saying, slightly halting English, Can I help you?
I turned around and, to my astonishment, saw an Orthodox, Hasidic Jew. He was a vision in black, dressed in the attire of typical of the Orthodox community of his 18th century Polish predecessors, a long black cloak, over black trousers, a long white fringe hanging from his belt, bearded with ear locks that came down to his chest, pale skin reflecting the Hasidic male’s devotion to the intense daily indoor study of Torah.
It is hard to convey to Western Gentiles how extraordinary it is for a Hasidic man from the ultra Orthodox neighborhood to speak to a woman, particularly a Western woman. I probably could not conceal the amazement on my face and he said, sometimes we are permitted to help people in distress. Where do you need to go?
To my further astonishment, he accompanied me on the street and told me his name and that he lived in ultra orthodox community in Jerusalem, although he was raised in Chicago. His accent indicated that he spoke more Yiddish and Hebrew than English. I tried to establish some common ground, but found that our worlds were so dramatically different that small talk was impossible.
I decided to try a different tact. We do share something in common, I said. What is that, he asked. We’re both religious. That’s wonderful, he shouted in reply and immediately began a discourse on one of the tractates from the Mishnah, Jewish writing. Then he noticed that I had paused and he said, Are you Jewish?
No, I’m a follower of Jesus, I answered. He said, Are you serious about your faith? I assured him I was. This is fascinating, he said. I have never talked with a religious Christian before. There is much that I would like to ask you, but it is so difficult. If anyone in my community saw me holding a long conversation with you, it could be very awkward.
I have to be so careful. Yet, when will I have this opportunity again? Well, I don’t expect you to understand. You, Goyim, that’s named for Gentiles, wouldn’t understand our ways. But would it interest you to have a religious dialogue? He asked nervously. I would love to talk to you, I answered, sensing how sincere he was.
But I could also see his discomfort as he constantly peered over his shoulder to see if we were being watched I took a deep breath and I said I would be honored to have you as a guest in my home He hesitated glanced around and said in a cloak and dagger manner. Let us go quickly So off we went to my apartment, my ultra Orthodox friend, with his earlocks flying in the breeze, and me.
Once we were seated in my living room, he began to pepper me with questions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. His questions were theologically astute and probing. There were two things that interest him the most. First, he wanted to know what happened to human nature as a result of being in relationship with God through Christ.
I explained that when we come to put our faith in God, he gives us his spirit, who transforms us day by day and enables us to live as new people with a new power. What is the essence of this new nature, he asked. So I quickly went over the list of the fruit of the spirit from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
And I started to go on. And he said, wait! Say those words again. So I recited them again. Say them again, he asked. I did. What beautiful, beautiful words, he said. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Imagine it. All of these qualities come into your heart as a result of being in relationship with God.
Just think to receive the very nature of God as a gift. No more beating down the evil inclinations with negatives, but rather fighting evil with positives with the very attributes of God himself. Ah, what a precious gift you have inherited, Becky. Do not take it lightly. He was doubly right. They are a precious gift and we do often take them lightly.
I went on. Please don’t think I’m suggesting that all of these qualities are mastered by us overnight. Living the resurrection isn’t magic. We don’t turn to God in faith and suddenly plug into all these qualities. They’re cultivated over time through obedience and through God’s grace. Of course, I know it can’t happen quickly, he mused.
We’re still human beings who by nature are self centered and self absorbed. But what hope it must give to have God’s power working in you, to enable you to forgo the old ways and live the new way. Becky said, I could not remember when I have heard a simpler or more eloquent explanation. of the meaning of Christian conversion than from this orthodox Jewish friend sitting in my living room.
What also interested him was how I sensed the presence of God in my life. Then I told him a story of how God had helped me through a recent time of crisis and fear by giving me just the right word from scripture. I had awakened one morning feeling overwhelmed in a time of crisis, sorry, overwhelmed by fear, but then I had, I read the appointed Bible verses for that day in my devotional.
Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1, 9. Suddenly he clapped his hands together, stood up, and to my amazement shouted, That’s it! That’s it! That is what it is all about! My daughter, you have it! Only God could have given you those words at just that time.
It was an indescribably joyful moment. The only sad note in our conversation was the ending, Becky said, because he told me that we could never meet again. He instructed me that if I should see him on the street, I was not to acknowledge him, for it would endanger his stance in the community. But he said this to me, imparting, We have begun a friendship of faith, Becky.
I will not forget what we have talked about. Not ever. And he left, leaving me far richer for the experience. To be spiritually alive is to live with God in a personal, vital relationship. It’s what A. D. world is in Christ.