Do you know who you really are?
A powerful man went into a restaurant and got into a row with the owner.
He got on to his high horse and shouted 'Do you know who I am?'
Quick as a flash the proprietor called for silence in the restaurant.
'Excuse me everyone, would someone please tell his man who he is.
He's asking to be told.'
Well, do we know who we are? Who are we?
It was early on in the violence in Northern Ireland
A British government minister met Rev Ian Paisley
and tried to get theological with him:
'After all,' he argued 'are we not all children of God'
'No' came the gruff reply
'We are not all children of God but we are all children of wrath.'
Well, who was right?
Our natural instinct might side with the English politician
we want everybody to know God's love and to love each other
but according to Ephesians 2 and the rest of the Bible
Ian Paisley had an important point
that by nature we do not know God, we are lost
and it is futile to try to achieve peace and harmony
unless we are first reconciled to God.
But there is more to be said.
Ephesians 2 is saying we are lost, we are under God's just wrath
BUT we can be saved
and there is nothing that we can do to achieve that. God in his grace does it
and it is received by faith
And the rest of c 2 makes clear that this salvation this generous grace of God
means we cannot be complacent or indifferent to other people.
If we are reconciled to God through Christ
then we are to seek reconciliation with others
knowing grace, we are to show grace
The English politician was not totally wrong
There is such a thing as 'common grace'
Every human being is a creature of God
and is sometimes described as a child of God
in the sense that God kindly and generously showers so much upon us
of ordinary everyday good and beautiful things
we should be positive and thankful for such blessings wherever we meet them
but we all need saving grace
undeserved generous favour from God lavished continually upon us
(Stott) : Grace is love of a special sort ...
love which stoops and sacrifices and serves,
love which is kind to the unkind,
and generous to the ungrateful and undeserving.
Grace is God's free and unmerited favour,
loving the unlovable, seeking the fugitive, rescuing the hopeless
and lifting the beggar from the dunghill to make him sit among the princes
(Ps 113:7-8)
That's the kind of grace we need, grace for the disgraceful.
It is not a word never used by Jesus himself in the Gospels
but implied in almost everything that he said and did
The taxgatherer in temple finding mercy as a sinner
The labourers in vineyard getting a day's wages for one hour's work
The down and outs invited to a great supper
The father running to welcome his long lost prodigal son;
when Jesus looks up into the tree and singles out Zaccheus the cheat,
when he calls Matthew or any of the disciples to follow him,
when he releases the woman taken in adultery,
when he tells a criminal on the cross.
'Today you will be with me in Paradise'
and most of all when he dies on the cross
and that dying thief beside him acknowledges 'we suffer justly, but he unjustly'
That is saving grace
generous free welcome and acceptance
for guilty undeserving people like you and me
people who really do deserve God's just wrath against our sin.
Because we are not by nature children of God
we do not naturally have free access into the family fellowship
of our loving heavenly Father
we are lost, in the dark, spiritually lifeless
You may say, I don't feel dead, I enjoy life,
I think I live a good life
How can I be dead?
If you don't know God in a living personal way then you are dead.
As John Stott says
'a life without God (however physically fit and mentally alert the person may be) is a living death and those who live it are dead even while they are living'.
Eugene Peterson expresses Paul's thought like this
'You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living,
tell you how to live.
You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief
and then exhaled disobedience
We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it,
all of us in the same boat'
The human situation is that we follow the crowd
we are spiritually deceived
We desire and think the same things as everyone else
God is not first, we have no real life without him.
and we have no right to expect anything else than the wrath of God
the tragedy of our physical death
to be followed by the appalling prospect of being eternally separated from God.
But, thankfully there is a 'but' in v 4
Al that has been said about our dead state is true but it is not the whole truth.
There is another truth to be set alongside it:
the resurrection was not only for Jesus
but for all who identify with Jesus.
Out of his great love, out of his rich generous mercy
it is the Christian's experience that he has been made alive with Christ
and made to sit with Christ in the heavenly places
not because we deserve it, not because we have a right to it
but because that is what God's saving grace is like
life instead of death, forgiveness instead of sin, hope instead of despair
peace instead of anger, love instead of alienation
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions
--it is by grace you have been saved.
Or to put it another way, NOT DRIVEN BUT DRAWN.
People under God's wrath, in the state of death described in vv 1-3
are surely driven people, controlled by the views of others
controlled by the devil:
if we try to be good religious people we are nagged by the worry that
we can never be fully sure that we have done enough;
if we give up religion and just go in for having a good time
still there will be a sense that there might be something more
our pleasure is momentary and addictive
and we being driven along by a binding desire to get more.
But those who know the saving grace of Jesus Christ
are not driven but drawn, drawn to him by his love who died for us and is risen
drawn by the gracious love that says 'come' when we know we are not worthy
drawn by the liberation of no longer having to do things to please God
but actually wanting to
drawn by the joy and fulfilment of worshipping a risen Saviour
in whose right hand there are pleasures for ever more
and filled with awe and wonder that anything good in us is not of us but of him
that we are God's workmanship, God's artistry
Do you know who you really are?
A child of God set free by Jesus Christ?
Are you driven by the old dead regime are drawn by a gracious Lord?
One way to be sure is to say 'Thank you'
'By grace are you saved through faith'
not of wroks , lest anyone should boast it is the gift of God'
Faith is simply our willingness to accept God's gift.
It is not some special super spiritual feeling that we must work up
Faith can be described here as simply, sincerely saying 'Thank You' to Jesus
When someone gives you a gift
you open your hands and receive it
and you say 'thank you'
What would you think of someone who said:
'I'd like to thank me for the way in which I have received this gift.
I really do deserve it.'
It is nothing to do with us, it is all to do with what God has done
and everything that is good in us is only a sign of his workmanship
Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian
who after suffering in a Nazi concentration camp
had a great ministry afterwards sharing the reconciliation that Jesus Christ gives
She has a wise insight into being 'God's workmanship'
and avoiding the trap of boasting about our own faith and goodness"
'People thank me so much and it used to worry me
because I didn't want to get a big head.
So I began to collect those compliments like flowers.
'Thank you,' I'd say. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'
Then at the end of the day I'd kneel down and I'd say,
'Here You are Jesus, they're all Yours.'"
(-- Jill Briscoe)
Lord,
show us who we really are
If we are driven along in spiritual death, call us, draw us to ne life in Christ
If we have already trusted Jesus let us trust him more.
Show us how rich we are and of what wonderful workmanship
people raised up with Christ
and seated with him in the heavenly places
people to whom God will show the incomparable riches of his grace
expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.'
Help us to confront those recurring thoughts of guilt and shame,
'I've sinned, I cannot be forgiven.'
thoughts of failure: 'I've messed up, I've let him down, I'm useless.
How dare we think such things if this is who we truly are
people saved by grace through faith
with such amazing wealth of generosity and kindness stored up for us
and already in some degree ours as we are raised up with Christ.
And help us to confront any sense of pride and boasting
that we have achieved something for God
that we are to be congratulated for having faith
Let us always and only say thank you for Jesus Christ
and every compliment offered us
let us give that to Jesus working wonderfully in us.
And if we have grasped with our minds even something of your grace today
let us be gracious in our lives and our relationships
Grace mercy and peace be yours
from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ
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