Day 9 — The Starting Point: Who Jesus Is, and What He Has Done
Today’s Passage: Ephesians 2:1-10
Today is not a story. It is a letter. A man named Paul wrote it from prison to a group of people in the city of Ephesus, on the coast of what is now Turkey, a few decades after the events of the last several days. Most of them had believed this message only recently. He is not arguing them into anything. He is reminding them how they got where they are.
In the original Greek, the first seven verses are one long sentence. It opens by describing the people he is writing to, keeps describing them, and does not say what actually happened to them until several lines in. The sentence holds its breath.
Read it slowly, and watch one thing as you go: who is doing the acting in each line.
As you read, hold this: Rescue comes as a gift, not as a wage.
Context A city that worked hard at religion
Ephesus was one of the most religious cities in the ancient world. Its temple to the goddess Artemis was counted among the seven wonders, ringed with priests and traders who made a living from it, and the city was thick with shrines, festivals, magic scrolls and fees. Religion there was a transaction everybody understood: you bring something, you get something, and the more you bring the better your odds. These readers were also not Jewish. They had no share in Israel’s history or promises, so they were outsiders to the one God as well as customers of all the others. When this letter tells them there is nothing at all to bring, it is saying it to people whose whole city ran on bringing things.
Ephesians 2:1-3 (BSB)
¹ And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, ² in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
Start with the word dead, because everything depends on it. It is not a strong word chosen for effect, the way we might say someone looks half dead after a long week. A man in deep water who can still catch a rope is in trouble. A man who has already drowned is in another category. He will not meet the lifeguard halfway, and he will not improve with encouragement or better habits or a firmer decision. Whatever happens to him now, he will not be part of doing it. That is the condition this letter says a person is in before God touches them.
The rest of the description is ordinary, which is what makes it uncomfortable. They walked, the Bible’s plain word for how you go about a normal day. They conformed to the ways of this world, which is to say they did what everyone around them did and thought what everyone around them thought. Nothing dramatic. The letter also says something most people today would not think to say: there is a real enemy behind the going-along, a will opposed to God and not merely an idea. And notice who Paul includes. Not you people, but “All of us also.” He is a religious expert writing from a prison cell, and he puts himself in the same sentence. Day 3 said the verdict runs the whole width of the human race. This is that verdict said from the inside.
Ephesians 2:4-7 (BSB)
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 our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
There is the turn, and it is one word wide. But.
Everything on the far side of it has a new subject. God loved. God, being rich in mercy, made alive. God raised. God seated. Three things are done to these people and not one of them is done by them, because by the terms of verse 1 they were not in a position to do anything. And look at the timing in verse 5: made alive “even when we were dead.” Not after they had cleaned up enough to be worth it. Not once they had shown promise. While they were still exactly what verses 1 to 3 described.
Paul cannot even get to the end of his sentence. Halfway through he breaks in with “It is by grace you have been saved!” then goes back and finishes the thought. Verse 7 says why God did it, and the answer is not what most people expect. It was so that in the ages to come He might put the riches of His kindness on display. The rescued are not the point of the exhibit. They are the evidence in it. What is on show forever is what God is like.
Word study "grace" — charis (Ephesians 2:5)
Greek: χάρις (charis), pronounced KHAR-ees. Strong’s G5485. In everyday Greek this was the word for a favour done freely, with no thought of return, and it sits in the same family as the word for joy. It never meant a reward, a wage, or a discount for good behaviour. If you had earned it, it was not charis. That is why the word is used here and nowhere near a price list.
Ephesians 2:8-9 (BSB)
⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.
This is the sentence that has to be heard exactly as it stands. Saved by grace, through faith, and the whole of it a gift. Then, in case anyone should try to slip something back in, the shut door: “not from yourselves,” “not by works.”
Take that at full strength. Not by being good enough first. Not by being born into the right family. Not by attending anything, joining anything, or being baptised. Not by giving money. Not by saying words correctly, because a person can recite a prayer perfectly and mean nothing whatever by it. There is nothing to bring. Not a small thing, not a token, not the good intention of bringing something later.
Even faith is not a contribution. Faith is not a quality strong people have more of. It is the empty hand that takes what is held out. And verse 9 gives the reason works are excluded, which is worth sitting with: so that no one can boast. Not because effort is worthless, but because a rescue you helped with is a rescue you can take credit for, and God has arranged this so that no rescued person can.
Ephesians 2:10 (BSB)
¹⁰ For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.
Here good works come back, and the order is the whole difference.
Verse 9 says works do not save. Verse 10 says a saved person is made for them. Those are not in tension unless you scramble the sequence. God does the making, and what He makes is a person who then lives a certain way. Good works are not the fee paid at the door. They are the life that follows being brought in, and even they were prepared ahead of time by the one who did the rescuing.
A surgeon does not operate because the patient got up and walked in. The patient walks because the surgeon operated. Turn that around and you have lost everything: you are back to earning, back to keeping score, back to wondering each night whether you did enough. Whatever else this is, it is not a religion of bringing things.
Study notes Wages, or a gift
"Now the wages of the worker are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness." Romans 4:4-5 (BSB)
The difference is between a payslip and a present. A wage is owed to you; you can demand it, and thanking someone for it would be strange. A gift is not owed at all. God deals with people the second way, and the detail that makes it hard to believe is who receives it: the ungodly, who has nothing coming.
Today’s Decision
Read verses 4 to 10 again, slowly, out loud if you can be alone for two minutes. Every time a verb appears, stop and ask who is doing it. Loved, made alive, raised, seated, gave, prepared. Nothing more than that today. Just get clear on who is acting in this passage, and who is not.