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Sunday School Lesson
Great Love (Ephesians 2:1-10)
burned red hot by the tempta- tions of our adversary and ul- timately become the objects of God’s wrath—not a pretty pic- ture.
Great Love Raises Up | Ephesians 2:4-9
Verse 4 begins with one of the most contrasting phrases intheBible:But...God. There is our downward spiral into sin but God’s glorious res- urrection into life. The implied metaphor is that of resurrec- tion. God has made us alive and raised us up and seated us with Christ. What privileges are afforded for us who were dead in sin.
Paul was so excited to ex- plain how this love gets em- braced that he snuck in the phrase, It is by grace you have been saved. He got ahead of himself in verse 5 previous to verse 8. But dare we ever get over grace—God’s love for us that we do not deserve that is
expressed in Christ? We are so saved that we reign with Christ right now in the heavenly realms (spiritually). This rais- ing up of us to life fulfilled God’s purpose by placing us in the display case of God’s good- ness. When we were at our worst, God was at his best in showing up. We are the ex- pression of his grace expressed in his kindness.
Next comes the grand for- mula for how this resurrection takes place. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. God reaches down from heaven with his love, and we appropriate it by faith. This whole grace through faith sys- tem is not a result of some- thing we do but is something based on what he has done. That’s why it is called a gift of God. And this very fact keeps boasting at bay. Nonetheless there is a faith response to God on our part.
God’s Love Stretches Out | Ephesians 2:10
Once the rescue operation is complete, we are able to real- ize the reason why God went to all this trouble. He wanted to make us into his handiwork. This word only appears one other time in the New Testa- ment. It is in Romans 1:20 and there speaks about God making creation. This is also the word from which we get the English word “poem.”
God has planned for us to do good works. In fact, he planned for that to be the case before the foundation of the world. We were created in his image to have dominion over creation. We were re-created in Christ to serve creation. Stu- art Townsend sang, “How great the Father’s love for us . . . that he should give his only Son to make a wretch his treas- ure.” Great love, indeed!
Great Love Reaches Down | Ephesians 2:1-3
In this epistle Paul marked out the blessings believers have (Ephesians 1:3-14) and the empowerment that they have (vv. 15-22). Next Paul reminded the Ephesians of how their salvation took place. This wonderful redemptive drama began by God reaching down from Heaven and meet- ing humanity at the point of need. The rescue operation by Jesus had to start in the midst of our sinfulness.
The old adage of getting someone lost before getting them saved applies here. Paul
pictured our lost dilemma as being dead. The reason that we were dead was because we made a habit of choosing so poorly. Certainly the fallenness of everything around us (Gen- esis 3; Romans 3, 5) did not help us to choose better. But we continued in this down- ward spiral because we fol- lowed the ways of this world and the devil himself. The enemy and his minions are vividly described. He is the ruler of the kingdom of the air, and he inspires his work through the disobedient. We go from bad to worse by fol- lowing our lusts that have
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