The first paragraph of Ephesians chapter 2 is a marvellous summary of the Gospel. Every verse in it cries out for a sermon to itself, but what impresses me most about it is that it includes in its compass the whole range of the Christian life: not just the experience of being born again, but the ongoing life to which that experience leads. And it's the overall picture I'd like us to try and grasp.
The dominating thought that rules the whole statement is life - life from the dead. When you become a Christian, you come alive (which is why I've entitled the study "Man Alive!"). What brings you alive is that you wake up to God and His love. Until that happens, you're "dead" even while you live - that's the gist of verses 1-3.
Then verse 4 begins "But God ...": it's the most exciting "but" ever uttered! Dead and done for, we were ... "but God, Who is rich in mercy, out of the great love wherewith He loves us", brought us alive, lavished kindness on us, raised us to the most exalted status, and introduced us to a life rich in achievement.
He has given us new being, and well-being; He has given us worth and status, and with it ... motivation to achieve!
That's the thrust of it: do you see? ...
v.4 He has made us alive
v.6 He has raised us up to level ranking with His Son
v.7 He has covenanted with us to for ever sustain us with kindness
v.10 He has work for us to do.
1. He made us alive - that's "being", new
being: what the Bible calls "life".
2. He will forever be kind to us - that's "well-being": what the
Bible calls "peace".
3. He has given us status, worth - He ranks us with His own beloved
Son: the Bible calls it "sonship" or "standing".
4. He has plans for us - He has a worthwhile task for us to do to
give meaning to our life; He will lead us into a life rich in
achievement (works).
If you look at the little diagram, you'll see that these four blessings are represented by the four sides of the diagram's shape: inside the rectangle, labelled "being", "well-being", "worth" and "works" - outside the rectangle they are labelled "Acceptance", "Sustenance", "Status" and "Achievement".
"Acceptance" is the word to describe how God brings us alive; because He does it by lavishing grace upon us: He "receives" sinners, unworthy though they are, on the ground of the sacrifice Christ offered at the Cross; and the way we respond to His grace is with faith - simple, straightforward trust in His grace - again on the grounds of the sacrifice for sins which Christ offered on the Cross ... that's why the Cross overshadows that first column on the chart. The Cross is what opens up a "way in" for us to the enjoyment of the Father's love.
So at the top of the left column we've shown grace as God's "INPUT" to the relationship we enjoy with Him.
At the bottom, the arrow beside "Faith" indicates that faith is the means by which we receive that grace and all its benefits, so as to be able both to rest in it, and draw our resources from it.
As we do rest in it and draw upon the resources of grace which God supplies (His continuing input), so this new life we have received becomes more and more joyful. We have labelled it "Well-being." With it, our sense of our worth is established (for "what we are worth is what we are worth to God", remember, "and that is a marvellous great deal!"); and with that sense of worth is born the motivation to please Him to whom we owe so much ... and we've labelled the "Worth "and "Works" side of the diagram as "OUTPUT".
Have you got the hang of it? I'd like to have put Bible references against all the labels, but it would have cluttered the whole thing up too much.
Now what I want us to see - and I must say to you that when I was shown this, it was the most exciting experience of my whole Christian life till then (and it came by way of the training I did with Dr Frank Lake in His School of Clinical Theology ... I take no credit for it myself) - what I want us to see is that this understanding of the dynamics of our relationship with God shows that they're the same as the dynamics of all true relationships of any kind.
This is the way all right relationships go - whether it's our relationship with God, or with our mother, or with our wife, or with our best friend. The way we relate God is not 'strangely' different from the way we relate to others; it's different in degree, but not in kind. Being rightly related to God does no violence to our real nature as human beings. The way we relate rightly to God is all wrapped up in the same bundle with the way we relate rightly at all - to anyone. Becoming a Christian is the most natural thing in the world that could ever happen to us!
The whole insight arose in fact out of a study of John's Gospel by Dr Frank Lake.
He was studying psychiatry at the time, and was troubled by the fact that most psychiatric studies are concerned with abnormalities; how, out of a study of abnormality, do you derive a picture of what's normal?! Dr Lake took his question to Emil Brunner, a great theologian who was visiting India where Dr Lake was a missionary at the time, and Dr Brunner suggested that he should undertake an in-depth study of the Lord's relationship with the Father as John's Gospel reveals it. Jesus, after all, was the "proper man" (to use Luther's phrase). No man could be more 'normal' than He.
That's where this model began. It was clear that our blessed Lord enjoyed a relationship with His Father that rested first on total acceptance. "I know that Thou hearest me always", He said in the prayer that Mary and Martha heard Him pray at outside their brother's tomb (Jn 11.42). The "way in" to His Father was open to Him always. He had access to the Father at all times.
And He 'dwelt in the bosom of the Father' (Jn 1.18) - "I and my Father are one", He said (Jn 10.30). "The Father loves the Son and shows Him everything that He Himself is doing." (Jn 5.20) He spoke of it as "my joy".
He knew Who He was: "I know Who I am and Who sent me": "I am the Son of God", "I am the Bread of Life", "I am the Light of the world", " I am the Good Shepherd". His sense of His own worth is secure.
And it was His "meat and drink" to do His Father's will. "I do always those things that please my Father", He said (Jn 8.29).
Those were the dynamics of our Lord's relationship, as a man, with God.
But then Dr Lake made a surprising observation. He was at the time studying the origin of personality disorders in infancy and childhood, and it dawned on him that these same four phases properly belong to the relationship that an infant has with its mother in the foundation year of its life.
Has it ever occurred to you to ask how a newborn infant comes to acquire a specifically human personality? After all, what is a newborn infant but a mere organism? Why doesn't it grow to be just an animal? Because just as there is in a seed that which responds to the stimulus of moisture and chemicals in the earth and light and warmth from the sun so it grows to a fulfilment of its specific nature, so there is in the infant that which responds to the specifically human kind of the stimulus his mother feeds in. That input is physical, emotional, mental ... and spiritual. And so he develops along the lines of the model.
It's what happens, too, when two people fall in love!
And it's what happens when we become Christians.
We discover that God accepts us "just as we are" ... and sustains us in His love ... and confers the status of sonship on us. That's what motivates us to "good works which He has foreordained that we should walk in them." (Eph 1.10)
Salvation is by grace through faith, you see.
What we all try to do is to enter the cycle the wrong way round: by works, we seek to achieve status and worth, and so work our way round finally to acceptance. But it's back-to-front. Salvation is not by works - it is by grace through faith alone ... which leads to works!
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