Trinity 11
Eph
2:1-10
8/16/26
If you look into the data regarding
our national government’s debt, you aren’t going to find anything good. Today
the United State government’s debt is 40 trillion dollars. That is about
$117,000 per citizen of the United States
It’s a frightening figure. And what
is worse is the fact that it is growing rapidly. The debt grows by three
billion dollars each day just on the interest the federal government is paying.
In the early 1980’s the debt reached one trillion dollars for the first time in
the nation’s history. By 2000 it had grown to 5.7 trillion. A mere twenty years
later it had ballooned to 27 trillion. And in the last six years since 2020 it
exploded to 40 trillion dollars.
There does not seem to be any
answer. Cutting the budget and the size of the government itself is unpopular
because many people do not want the hardships it would entail. Increasing
income through more taxes may bring in additional money, but the government
just turns around and finds more ways to spend it. Politicians keep kicking the can down the
road and ignoring the problem. I am no economist but you have to think that
this can’t go on forever. A day of reckoning will arrive, and not going to be pretty.
In the same way, if you look into
what Scripture has to say about the spiritual nature of man since the Fall, you
aren’t going to find anything good either. Now to be sure, things in the
beginning were very good. God said “Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness.” And so God created man in his own image. He created him to be
like God. Man knew God as he wants to be known. He lived perfectly according to
God’s will.
But the devil tempted Eve by saying
that God was holding out on them. The father of lies told her that they
could be God if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil –
the one tree of which God had told Adam they were not to eat or they would die.
Adam ignored God’s command and abandoned his role of headship as he listened to
Eve and ate as well.
By their action sin entered into the world. This sin perverted all
that God had made to be very good. It brought death. God told Adam that now he
would “return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are
dust, and to dust you shall return.” And this reflected the fact that a
profound change had occurred in man. He had lost the image of God in every way
that mattered.
In our Old Testament lesson from Genesis chapter four we see how
sin and death immediately manifested themselves in Adam and Eve’s children as
Cain kills Abel. Then chapter five provides us with the book of the generations
of Adam as Scripture begins to describe the line through which God would
provide the Savior. And there we hear a striking statement of the profound
change that has occurred as Moses tells us that Adam “fathered a son in his
own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”
From the moment of the Fall, you don’t find Scripture saying
anything good about man’s spiritual abilities. David confesses his sinfulness
as he says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my
mother conceive me.” He confesses that he has been sinful since the beginning.
Jesus told Nicodemus, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” He said that sinful fallen nature
brings forth more sinful fallen nature. And Paul told the Corinthians, “The
natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they
are spiritually discerned.” He said that as born, a person cannot understand
and accept the things of the Spirit.
That same bleak assessment of man’s spiritual abilities is what we
find in our epistle lesson today. Paul
begins by saying, “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 in the sons of
disobedience.” The apostle says that the Ephesians were spiritually dead and
under the power of the devil. As those controlled by the devil they were sons
of disobedience.
Now we might be inclined to think that Paul is only saying this
because they were Gentile unbelievers. But he immediately discounts this by
including himself along with all people in this same category. He goes on
to refer to the sons of disobedience as he adds, “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.”
Paul says that all people are dead in their trespasses and sins.
All people are sons of disobedience and under the power of the devil. All
people are by nature children of wrath – those who will receive God’s
eternal judgment. There are no exceptions here for age or anything else. It is
yet another example of the recurring truth found in Scripture. It is the truth
summarized earlier in the Rite of Holy Baptism when it said, “The Word of God
also teaches us that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the
power of the devil until Christ claims us as his own.”
You will be hard pressed to find a more brutal and ugly description
of the spiritual condition in which we are conceived and born. And that fact
makes the apostle’s next statement all the more incredible as he says:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with
which he loved us, even when we were dead in 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.”
Paul has been clear that there was absolutely nothing loveable
about us. But he tells us that God is rich in mercy. He describes the great love with which he
loves us. And for the first of three times in our text he says that God saved
us by grace – by his unmerited loving favor. He describes a God who loves the
unlovable. He is the One who acts to save those who do not deserve it in any
way because that is simply his gracious character.
God acted to save us by sending his Son in order to provide the
answer to sin and all that it had done to us. The incarnate Son of God, Jesus
Christ, was in our world to receive the judgment against our sin by his death
on the cross. Paul says in the previous chapter, “In him we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
But what God did in Christ was not only about forgiveness. God had
told Adam that sin would bring death. Jesus Christ came as the second Adam who
passed through death in order to defeat it forever. God raised Jesus on the
third day as the beginning of resurrection life that will be ours. Paul told
the Corinthians, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also
the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive.”
Paul says that when we were dead in our trespasses, God made
us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and seated us with
him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In his letter to the Colossians
that was written around the same time as Ephesians and shares much language in
common with it we learn how this happened. There Paul writes, “In him
also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands,
by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
having
been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the
dead.”
Through the waters of baptism you
were buried with Christ – you shared in his saving death. Baptized into Christ, you have been united
with Christ. You now live in Christ, and so Paul says that you have been made
alive with Christ. You have been raised in Christ. He can even say in our text
that you have been seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of
Christ, and so baptism into Christ takes place through the work of the Spirit.
Life in Christ is new life worked by the Spirit. Jesus said that to receive the
kingdom of God a person must be born again, and then he added, “Truly, truly, I
say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter
the kingdom of God.” Paul told Titus that baptism is “the washing of
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
That is what God has done to you.
That is what God did to Leo, Rex, and Ara this morning. In saying this we are
not denying that the Spirit had already called them to saving faith through the
Word. But our God is the Gospel God who surrounds us with his gifts. Through
baptism the Spirit works regeneration that deepens faith. Through baptism we
receive blessings that Scripture only ascribes to baptism. And Jesus has told
us a disciple is made through baptism and teaching.
Baptism is an objective act by God – the application of water to
our bodies with the Word. It is a onetime event that defines our whole life as
Christians. God has given us his promise about what he did in baptism and he
calls us to believe and trust in what he did through this gift.
God’s gift of baptism is something that is done to you. You can’t
baptize yourself. And this fact underscores that salvation is God’s gift. Paul
emphasizes this in our text when he says, “For by grace you have been
saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Here, as in
Romans chapter four, Paul defines faith as the opposite of doing. Faith
is simply trust in God’s promise. It is the open hand that receives what God
gives.
We are saved by grace alone. We are saved by faith alone. But since
faith is the creation of the Spirit it can never remain alone. The apostle goes
on to say at the end of our text, “For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
In baptism you have been born again of water and the Spirit. You
have received regeneration. Paul told the Corinthians, “if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the
new has come.” The apostle says in our text that we are what God has made. The
Spirit who has made us a new creation now prompts and leads us to live out our
faith. God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works.
God has made you for good works, and he has placed you where you
are to do good works. He has placed you in callings in life – in vocations. He
has made you a husband or wife; a father or mother; a son or daughter; an
employer or employee. You don’t have to go looking around to find where you are
to serve. God has already put you there, and believe me, there is plenty to do.
These are not actions that the world will acknowledge and praise.
They look mundane. But God has placed you there as the instrument through which
he cares for your family, friends, and neighbors.
So spouses, support and encourage one another. Do that thing which
isn’t your job, but will make the other’s life easier. Fulfill the sexual needs
of one another because that is the responsibility in marriage that God has
given to both of you.
Parents, you probably don’t need to be told to put your children
ahead of yourself. But recognize that the most important thing you will do is
to teach your children the Christian faith. Games and tournaments won in sports
will soon drift away into meaninglessness.
But the spiritual welfare of your children is eternal. So bring your
family every Sunday to the Divine Service and establish that as the pattern
that your children think is normal. Read Scripture and pray with your family in
devotions – you’ll find a pattern for that in the bulletin and on the church
website every week.
Kids obey your parents. Do what they tell you. Don’t make them ask
twice. Better yet, don’t make them ask at all. Do those things at home that you
know are your jobs. Do things the way they are supposed to be done. And look
for ways to do things that help your parents.
Employers treat those who work for you in ways that are fair and
honest. Show towards them the same thing you would want to receive if you were
the employee. And employees, recognize that you are the means by which God
provides for those around you. He is
working through you. So do a good job. Be helpful. As Paul told the Colossians,
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”
In our text today Paul describes how we were unlovable – we were
under the power of the devil and by nature children of wrath. But God who is
rich in mercy loved us in Christ. By his death he redeemed us from sin, and by
his resurrection he has given us life. Baptized into Christ, through the work
of the Spirit we now live in Christ. We have been saved by grace through faith
apart from any works. But in Christ God has made us new creation for the
purpose of doing good works where God has placed us to serve.
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