Ephesians 2:1-10

“God loves you as you are, but he loves you too much to allow you to stay as you are.” So spoke one of the leading characters in last summer’s widely viewed film, JUNEBUG. This familiar insight from an unexpected source flies in the face of a maudlin sentimentality which is widespread in our time. God’s holy love is not resigned to our remaining dismal clumps of narcissism and spiritual dysfunction. God’s purpose is life transformation by his glorious grace through the finished work of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Nothing less is the religion of the New Testament. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Christian can exult: I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I shall be; but praise to God, I am not what I was. Substantial spiritual healing from the disease of sin and selfishness is the birthright of every true believer in Christ. How well I remember as a child paging through issues of HOUSE AND GARDEN magazine and considering the before and after pictures of various structures. Many times unimpressive and ramshackle buildings looked forlorn and depressing. They were run-down and bleak. But then an architect proposed a total renovation. The new house emerged in such striking contrast. “We are God’s workmanship!” the Apostle Paul exclaims in our text today. No one needs to languish in despair! God proposes drastic change!

I. BEFORE — THE HUMAN TRAGEDY (2:1-3)

As in his epistle to the Romans, Paul begins with our hapless plight and predicament as lost sinners. We are “dead in transgressions and sins” (1). The metaphor of death does not mean that the sinner is incapable of any response or responsibility. Even unconverted people can be expected to obey the speed law and pay their taxes in a timely manner. But ours is a disability so drastic as to render us totally unable to save ourselves or to contribute any positive virtue as meritorious. Repentance and faith are beyond us other than through the prevenient work of the Holy Spirit in relationship to the quickening Word of God (Romans 10:17). We are not simply ill — we are dead! We are sinners by nature and by choice and modern listeners may not be inclined to accept this divine diagnosis. The fact is that as P.T. Forsyth used to say — we need to hear the bad news before we can really appreciate the good news. Paul shares the biography of every one of us humans as he traces our servile bondage to the ways of this world, the wiles of Satan who is “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4) and the waywardness of our own sinful natures (2-3). God’s intelligent design has been battered and deeply bruised through our sinful rebellion against him. So grim and so gory is human life and experience that even many social scientists are arguing that it is not enough to blame bad child rearing or social pressure or DNA — they are admitting it is time to use the “E” word — we are evil. In Erick Larson’s bestselling study, THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, he describes the valiant effort of Daniel Burnham and his associates to build the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It was an extraordinary projection. But there is the constant undercurrent of evil in the city — the murderous Dr. H.H. Holmes perpetrator of mass murders and madness. With all of the uplift in human experience, there is a relentless downward pull of our depravity. Even our noblest altruism is tinged with pride — and we are “objects of (God’s) wrath” (3).