"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in offences and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." in being constantly visited by penitents I have sometimes blushed for this city of London. Take a passage in 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 8:5), which has been before us only a short time ago: "And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God." What is that? This was the first of the great divisions. It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile woman in childbirth, for that would be to bring another Gentile into the world. It is an absolutely new thing; and this new purpose is "according to the good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory," etc. The word Paul uses (apokatallassein, G604) is the word used of bringing together friends who have been estranged. Thus the great basis of all our walk is, that the old man has been judged in Jesus, and the new man we have already put on; but, moreover, the Holy Ghost is given, and we are sealed by Him. If you do not, let the fact impress you. They have jaded themselves. He began this section of the epistle by explaining the purpose of our calling (i.e., the glory of God, Ephesians 1:3-14). For you will mark that men, when they are only half gone in wickedness, do it openly; but when they are fully gone their lust becomes so degrading that they are obliged to do it in secret. But this was not enough. See, it is always Christ, his flesh, his blood, his life. Of the whole Church the corner stone is Christ; and the corner stone is what holds everything together. And what is the first lesson of the truth as it is in Jesus? This he did that in himself he might make the two into one new man, by making peace between them, and that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the Cross, after he had slain the enmity by what he did. This is a picture from the Temple. Is it so? I know the people, I even like most of them! What did he mean by that? Good works cannot earn them salvation, but once they are saved their lives should be full of good works. Might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. Hence, to make the mystery to be the church is a very serious moral as well as doctrinal mistake. In Ephesians death is the very first place where we find even Christ. The main point then is that God has made believers alive, raised us up, and seated us with Christ. Josephus, in his description of the Temple, says: "When you went through these first cloisters unto the second court of the Temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits. The result is that sin leaves a permanent effect on a man. You are princes of the blood imperial. That at that time ye were without Christ. Chrysostom, famous preacher of the early Church, says that it is as if one should melt down a statue of silver and a statue of lead, and the two should come out gold. What you think that you and I knew from our birth, we did not so know; we had to learn it. You were really not going anywhere, you were just existing. If a person had never lived before, and had come into life a full-grown man, everything would be as strange to him as it is to a little-child; and everything is strange to a new-born man in the spiritual realm into which he is born. The loss of fellowship with a holy God. Put away your previous way of life, your old self, corrupted and deluded as it was, and be renewed in every aspect of your thinking. What reason have sinners then to be looking out for that grace that will make them, of children of wrath, children of God and heirs of glory! This also answers to the grand doctrine of this epistle. It is the word used of bringing a sacrifice to God; it is the word used of bringing men into the presence of God that they may be consecrated to his service; it is the word used for introducing a speaker or an ambassador into a national assembly; and above all it is the word used for introducing a person into the presence of a king. And you hath he quickened - The words hath he quickened, or made to live, are supplied, but not improperly, by our translators. Hence the apostle Paul, in what is by no means the simplest utterance he has given, writes in few words. Thanks Be to God For This Change - v.8-10, 2:110 Pauls prayer (Eph 1:1523) refers to Gentiles (non-Jews) becoming part of Gods family. But it gets up again, and so it learns to walk. The second picture Paul uses is that of a building. in Num. The sword must be the real intrinsic power of the word wielded in the Spirit, which does not spare anything. He commands his companions, who by bad example are bearing him on his bier to his grave, to stop, and then there is a partial reformation for awhile, and after that there comes the strong out-spoken voice "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" It is not that our good works put God in our debt; rather that God's love lays on us the obligation to try throughout all life to be worthy of it. ~ survey response God would have us set thoroughly clear and intelligently appreciating our individual place and relation to Himself. You remember when you first began to confess Christ to a friend. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, God loved us even when we were dead in sins. There was in fact at the Persian royal court an official called the prosagogeus whose function was to introduce people who desired an audience with the king. One effect of this divine life is to put life into everything that we do. 2. We are in this position, that God is now working in us, through this divine life, to make us the most wonderful reflectors of his grace that he has yet formed. He merely now touches on the principle, as he had before let us see not merely God's counsels from before the foundation of the world, but the manner and means of their application through Christ our Lord to us in time. He is pouring out his heart, and the claims of grammar have to give way to the wonder of grace. According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: He makes them to be his forge. Only into the first of them could a Gentile come. Is not this the meaning of the combat as described here? The epistle to the Ephesians truly understood will help none so to do. The choice of the saints for heavenly blessedness was before the creation of the universe, before the foundation of the world. "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." And so accordingly all that is acceptable takes this shape. It is the mystery of Christ emphatically; and the part about Christ is the higher of the two. You are a living man. And that is what should never happen in a church. Paul well knew that barrier, for his arrest at Jerusalem, which led to his final imprisonment and death, was due to the fact that he had been wrongly accused of bringing Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, into the Temple beyond the barrier ( Acts 21:28-29). If you haven't previously submitted something but would like to, you can find my email address by clicking on my name in the "About Me" section below. Of all the creatures that live and breathe, man is the only one on earth that became a living soul by the breath of the Lord God, who, as it is written, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. It was said of one eminent commentator that he could not find Christ in the Scripture where he was; but it was said of Cocceius that he found Christ where he was not. Does she really take an interest in her husband's work and try to understand his problems and his worries? These verses are really preliminary to Pauls main point. But in regard to religion, all is dead. When did God start loving you? We cannot live where we used to live. A state of sin is a state of conformity to this world, Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 2:2. To forgive another's wrongs is not enough for a Christian. No statement can be conceived more exact. Many a man's life is embittered because he feels that he has never had what his talents and his work deserve; but in the sight of God no man deserves anything but condemnation. Everybody is going. The word that Paul uses here is, kainos ( G2537) ; he says that Jesus brings together Jew and Gentile and from them both produces one new kind of person. All the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: There is no church without Christ, no temple without him as its cornerstone, its priest, its glory. 20, Ephesians, p. 61. I know the heart of this people. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. The sinner chooses to live in contempt of any law or higher authority that would supersede his own will. Those things result in death! The glorious salvation that He has given to us. It was not confined to those that had their hope founded on Christ while the nation refused Him. He is our peace. The ancient world had its barriers. And we at one time were following that course, dead in our trespasses and sins, living an aimless life without purpose as we follow the trends that were being set by Satan. , , SSL- . Merciful God, we celebrate the way that you chose to bring unity and peace to peoplethrough the gift of your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. The only thing which can restore his relationship to her is an act of free forgiveness on her part. Finally, He enunciated the motive for our calling (i.e., the unmerited grace of God, Ephesians 2:1-10). Your self-made man usually worships his creator very earnestly; and your self-saved man glorifies him that saved him. The world is busy and active around it, but it is unconscious of it all. This new walk and life that I have in the Spirit, this resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ; like the harp of Anacreon. Corruption has not yet done its work, and tender care has guarded the body as yet from what will surely come to it; yet is there death, sure, complete death, in the one case as well as in the other. He gave Himself for us. It is not a mere aggregate of Gentiles into the well-known line of old blessing, but one new man, not merely fresh in time, but of an absolutely new order, never seen or experienced before. The song of the nightingale is not to be analysed by the laws of musical composition. New to this blog? Remember that at that time you had no hope of a Messiah; you were aliens from the society of Israel, and strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based; you had no hope; you were in the world without God. When we get "together with Christ", then are we made alive, then are we saved. No doubt it is a giving up of self, and therefore the fruit of divine grace. Nor is there full Christian service, except in proportion as it is according to this pattern and in this power. He does so by conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within us; he does so by giving to men the wisdom and the commandments of his book; he does so through the advice of good and godly men. For by grace are ye saved through faith; We have this expression, "by grace are ye saved," twice over in this chapter. It is an adjective meaning the anointed one. (iv) The Gentiles were strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based. Well, why don't we head on down to Huntington and let's spend a little while surfing. The new-born child of God is just like the new-born child of man in some things; and after a time that child begins to walk. That girl, dead in the room, upon her bed, had little about her that could show her death. The oneness in Christ is in Christ and not in any external change. They believed that the air was so crowded with these demons that there was not room to insert a pinpoint between them. I may have some here. He may shed abroad the love of God therein; but He is rather said to dwell in us, making the body God's temple. It is not in treaties and leagues to produce peace. It can never rise above its human source. That reality will lead to despair, therefore you cannot face reality. "The danger lay," T. R. Glover wrote, "in every generation, in the same fact of single cities, furious for independence at all costs. ", 15, 16. One of the tragedies of the nineteenth century was the career of Oscar Wilde. It was entirely unconnected with the world. Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, I think that you and I can say, that to us the surest fact in all the world is that there is a God. The essence of the worldly man is, as someone has said, that "he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." That is, there is a creative connection between God and man which is the source of man's moral relations with God, and the reason why man, and man alone of all creatures on the earth, shall live again and give an account of himself to God. We confess our dreaming to you, and ask for your dreams of how the world could be; release creativity in us, free our imaginations. He found her in an attic room. There must always be something about him: "Having abolished in his flesh. He that descended is the same also that ascended." This clearly is of the deepest possible interest to the saints. But then those in respect of whom God the Father had such thoughts were in point of fact sinners. I trust you will understand what I wish to convey that the death is the same in all cases; but the manifestations of it is different; and that the life must come from God, and from God alone. Paul speaks of the condition of the Gentiles before Christ came. Isaiah records, "your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear" (59:2 NASB). "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." They only have the "one hope of their calling." Now the word conversation is an old English word, and we have a new definition for that word today. 21. It is the same life in the new-born believer as in yonder bright spirits that stand before the throne of God. Oh that we might have grace to walk in communion with such grace! You have got a wrong and blasphemous concept of God. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" ( Matthew 5:48 ). Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, Your justice like the great deep. Realize that; believe in it; rejoice in it; triumph in it. He uses therefore the highest terms in order to express it. Its unity comes not from organization, or ritual, or liturgy; it comes from Christ. I have been born again by the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. Well, if you think I would think that, you don't know me. the One who would calm our fears with peace and hope. They had seen the ways of God with man, and with Israel; and surely they had entered into the glory of God that was involved in all His ways. Are in italics. The sinner arrogantly lives in total disregard of the will of God, as though the Creator has no law or moral judgment for His creation. That is not worship which consists in doing as Hodge did, when he said, "I like Sunday, for then I can go to church, and put my legs up, and think of nothing at all." When I say Christ is our peace. The apostle treats it as our business diligently to observe it. I thought I was going to die. Impossible that the creature could be or do so; and therefore the creature is never said to be love. Call number one is this: God calls you because God loves you, just 2) Call Number Two, hold your first finger: God calls you Jesus is never called a child in the sense in which I am now speaking He has His own relationship to the Father eternally. If God reveals it now, the idea of man of ourselves being the first and main object in the mind of God is impossible. That accounts for everything: "together with Christ." In communion with the objects of it, we go out into the resulting scenes of glory on every side; knowing Christ's love though unknowable, and filled into God's fulness though infinite. Scripturally-based resources for worship planners and leaders. There is neos ( G3501) which is new simply in point of time; a thing which is neos ( G3501) has come into existence recently, but there may well have been thousands of the same thing in existence before. You have much about you that is lovely, but you have just begun to indulge in evil habits; you have not yet become the desperate sinner; you have not yet become altogether noxious in the eyes of other men; you are but beginning to sin, you are like the young man carried out on his bier; you have not yet become the confirmed drunkard; you have not yet begun to curse and blaspheme God; you are still accepted in good society; you are not yet cast out; but you are dead, thoroughly dead, just as dead as the third and worst case. The same "Beloved" who accounts to us for the counsels of God has brought in redemption. But there is love after a divine sort in the new nature, which is said to be light, because this is the necessity of the new nature. You feel him; his presence is photographed upon your spirit; your very heart trembles with awe of him, and you say with Jacob, "Surely God is in this place." The Greek words used there is poeima, the very word from which the English Word poem is derived. Wherever that prevails there is a privation of all spiritual life. Naturally this prayer grows out of the two great truths he had been urging. That is, whatever way the wind is flowing, that is the way you turn, that is the way you go. Were there an interval of one instant between the Father and the Son, did the Father exist in any respect before the Son as such, all the truth of God as revealed in the Bible perishes. During Lent Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia, Where Christ is, there is the Church. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Accordingly the very opening brings before us this astonishingly elevated manner of presenting the great truth with which the apostle's heart was filled. All this, it will be observed, is consequent on the cross. It was a choice of God Himself before there was any creature responsible or dependent. 13). Believe in Christ! Such is the very power that has taken you and me up in divine grace, and wrought toward us. Not yet had the loving finger closed the eyelid; there seemed to be a light still lingering in her eye; like a lily just nipped off; she was as fair as life itself. Partner with StudyLight.org as God uses us to make a difference for those displaced by Russia's war on Ukraine. Timeweb - , , . You were not the chosen Israelites, you have not the covenant mark in your flesh. There is nobody here who would like to go and live in a grave. Those who had been far from God were brought near, and the door was shut to no one. (119) Classical writers employ the same metaphor, to denote not spiritual death, with which they were unacquainted, but the absence of moral principle, or utter ignorance of right and wrong. Isaiah had heard God say: "Peace, peace to the far, and to the near" ( Isaiah 57:19). Pelagianism asserts the convalescence of human nature. So long as the object falls upon the retina. He is startled a hundred times. "Like trying to get an octopus into a paper bag." "for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak." Through Jesus there is a place for all men in the family of God. But, besides, we have relationships; and now we have God manifesting Himself in each of our positions, and showing us that these are meant to give us opportunity of glorifying God by the good works that were before ordained of God. No God? Notice what OUR PRESENT POSITION IS, if God has quickened us. Thus ought instructed saints to deal with those who have been newly quickened. So then the intervening wall with its barrier shut the Gentile out from the presence of God. "And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace." Then, everything surprises you. If you have been quickened, even though your life be feeble, you may cry to the living God with the "Abba, Father," which never comes from any lip but that which has been touched and quickened by the Holy Spirit. God never does; it is the tragedy of the Church that it is so often more exclusive than God. (By grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. Pauls use of the metaphor of death is significant, as it allows for no middle ground; a person is either dead or alive. If you're interested in reading the results, visit here: https://pandemicworshipsurvey.blogspot.com/, We gather together in the name of Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord! 3 say to god, how awesome are your deeds! The Temple consisted of a series of courts, each one a little higher than the one that went before, with the Temple itself in the inmost of the courts. If you're interested in reading the results, visit here: https://pandemicworshipsurvey.blogspot.com/. Thus, having Him who is the centre of all glory dwelling in our affections by faith, we enter into, and become established in, the grace which is the secret of it all. Now my eyes will be open and my ears will be attentive to the prayers offered in this place. It is on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles that you have been built up; and the corner stone is Christ himself. . As much dead as the worst of men, although your death is not so apparent. At the same time, we learn by our experiments. , : , 196006, -, , 22, 2, . The ancient world believed strenuously in demons. The man who is under their domination has taken sides against God. In Christ we are made new through his blood; In Christ we are forgiven, signed with the Spirit. Paul speaks about people being dead in sins. ye are dead! [Note: Simpson, p. And I worship Him in Spirit and in truth.And so He has made us alive, alive spiritually, for by grace are we saved. Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. At first a man engages in some forbidden pleasure because he wants to do so; in the end he engages in it because he cannot help doing so. Poeima, the very word from which the apostle treats it as our business to! Hope founded on Christ while the nation refused him one of the deepest possible interest to prayers... Like trying to get an octopus into a paper bag. `` together with ''! 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