Ephesians 5

Chapter 5. Resurrected and Seated in the HeavenliesBut because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)In perfecting any great product of human invention, the first thing is to secure a perfect pattern, a model, a sample, an actual specimen, after which all other copies may be made. The inventor often spends nearly a lifetime in revising, remodeling or modifying his pattern; and when at last it is complete, and the model is placed in the patent office, it is a comparatively easy matter to reproduce that pattern in millions of copies. This illustration is scarcely worthy of its transcendent object; but if we may rise from the earthly to the heavenly by such an imperfect steppingstone, it is true in a much higher sense that God has been spending the eternal ages in preparing and revealing His divine pattern for redeemed humanity. Pathetically the ancient prophet represents Him as saying, “I looked for a man among them… but I found none” (Ezekiel 22:30). Vainly did God scan the highest types of mere humanity only to have an Adam, a Noah, an Abraham, a Moses, a David, a Solomon, an Elijah completely break down under the final test, and often prove weak in the strongest place. At last, however, there stood on the banks of the Jordan a Man on whom the Father looked with complacent gaze, and exclaimed: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). At last He found a Man who met His expectation and fulfilled the standard of true humanity. Since that time God’s one business with the human race has been to make men after that heavenly pattern. Christ is the one great Type, and every saint is but a copy of the divine Original. But it was not merely in His earthly life that Christ was the ideal Man. Much more it was in His death, resurrection, ascension and heavenly life that He was designed to be our Prototype and Head for He represents humanity after it has passed through the crisis of death and come into a resurrection, an ascension, a supernatural, incorruptible and eternal life. It is not the Man of Nazareth or of Bethany merely that is our Pattern and our Head. It is the Man upon the throne, seated at the Father’s side, “head over everything for the church, which is his body” (Ephesians 1:22-23), and bringing redeemed humanity up to His own level. This is the sublime conception of the passage before us in connection with the former context. There we were taught that the power, the grace and the glory which God has for us are according to what “he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:20). This passage goes a step further, reaching down to us on our low plane of helpless ruin, and lifting us up to share all the glory of that transcendent vision. As He is so are we to be. You have seen Him on the throne, now ascend and sit with Him there. For “God… made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:5). And this is not nearly all. It is not as a hope, an ambition, an ideal, a pursuit that this high object is presented, but it is recognized as something that is already ours. The tenses are all perfect. He “made us alive with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). He “raised us up” (Ephesians 2:6) with Him. He has “seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). It is all counted as something already ours as certainly as the purpose of God, as certainly as the reckoning of faith. Here we come face to face with that extraordinary principle which underlies all God’s operations, the principle of faith—a faith that counts the things that are not as though they already were; that reckons upon the future as though it were already past; and that feels and acts in the light of God’s promises as if they had already become accomplished performances. This is God’s principle of action, and in accordance with it Jesus Christ was counted “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). We are recognized and dealt with by God as though all His eternal purposes for us had already been fulfilled. God discounts His own notes, and turns into actual currency the facts which to human reason would seem to be only probabilities and promises. And so He requires us to meet Him and take Him at His Word, and to reckon upon things as real long before they come to pass. Hence we take our forgiveness and salvation in the exercise of immediate faith. We take the answers to our prayers by believing that we receive the things we ask, and then we have them. And here we are called to take the place which is to be ours after centuries have passed, and to look upon things as though we were already seated upon our millennial thrones and enjoying the glories and felicities of the ages to come. Let us examine this extraordinary picture a little more in detail. Our Former State We were not born into these high dignities, but have been translated out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of degradation and misery into glory and blessing, out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

1. Of the World Our former state is first described as “when you followed the ways of this world” (Ephesians 2:2). We belonged to the present age. We were under the influence of natural things. We followed the trend of the age, the opinions, tendencies, ideas of the world. That is where the worldling is today. He belongs to the realm of pure naturalism; and he has no part, and can have none, in the kingdom of God and the destinies and glories of the coming age.
2. Of the Devil We were under the power of “the prince of this world” (John 16:11), here described as the “ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:2). We were born of Satan, his offspring spiritually, and his willing, helpless subjects. Many do not like to hear this, but it is the plain teaching of the Scriptures that the natural man is at once the offspring and slave of Satan. The regions around us and above us are teeming with innumerable beings, spiritual creatures, once perhaps clothed in material forms, making countless ranks of hierarchies and principalities, and all under the absolute dominion of one mighty mind who is only less than God, and who is even called in the Scriptures “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). We never know the power of this spiritual tyranny until we resist it and attempt to overthrow it. The natural man is absolutely led by demon powers. It is their policy to make their control as agreeable as possible, and make us feel the terror of their might only when they are in danger of losing us as their prey. There is no doubt that in these last days especially, the forces of the demon world are concentrating their strength for the last terrific conflict of the ages, and that just before the Lord’s return we shall know more fully the meaning of the last picture of this epistle, the conflict with the principalities and powers.
3. Socially Corrupted We were living like the people around us, the children of disobedience, among whom we all had our own conduct in times past. We were going with the great crowd that tread the broad way. We were under the influence of sinful associations, unholy companionships, entangling affections, and a thousand social cords were pulling us downward to the dark abyss.
4. Slaves to Our Nature We were the slaves of ourselves, following the bend of our evil natures, “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (Ephesians 2:3). The two classes of lust are here described: the one more coarse and sensual, the desires of the flesh; the other more refined and aesthetic, the desires of the mind. But they are both equally selfish and ungodly, and they both belong to the natural life. For this realm of the present age is not all a cesspool of nauseous corruption; it is a beautiful realm, bright with color and action, and includes in its brilliant attraction all that is most beautiful, illustrious and delightful in human history and life.
5. Dead in Sin Back of all the glamour and glitter is the hideous spectacle of a reeking corpse and a moldering grave. “Dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1) is the fearful word that calls up all that is darkest, saddest and most terrible in human thought and speech, and turns the vision of beauty, pleasure and fame into a charnel house and a putrefying corpse. Human nature is as helpless and as offensive as an open sepulcher and a reeking tomb. Decorate it as you please with the fairest flowers, the most splendid monuments; under all are corruption and the worm—death in all its terrors and all its helplessness. Man is dead, and the transgressions and sins which are added to the picture are but the ghastly ulcers that mark the fatal wound.
6. Objects of Wrath One more verse completes the picture and gives the climax of horrors. It is the relation of our fallen nature to God, “like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). It is a fearful word. It tells us we are naturally born into a state of wrath. There is something in God’s nature and holiness which inevitably must consume and destroy the sinful soul as naturally as the flame of a lamp scorches and destroys the fluttering moth that falls into its fiery beam. That flaming wrath is suspended for a season through the mediation of Christ. But when at last the day of grace is ended, and God appears in His true relation to sin and sinful men, so awful will be the sight, that earth’s inhabitants, even her kings, her captains and her great ones will cry in despairing anguish for the rocks to fall on them to hide them from the very face of Him who sits upon the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. This is the natural state of human nature. This is the pit from whence we were dug and the rock from whence we were hewn. In this age of maudlin sentiment and milk-and-water moral conceptions, it is well to understand what God thinks of sin and sinful men. Resurrected and Raised But from this state the infinite grace of God has lifted us, and the process is here described by three great words:
7. Regeneration We were “quickened” (Ephesians 2:5)—that is, made alive. It is a touch of the new creation in the human soul. It is the experience of regeneration. It is the beginning not of reformation or outward improvement, but of that strange and mighty experience that we call life. What a difference between a dead man and a live one. It takes half a dozen pallbearers to carry a dead man, but a live man can carry himself and somebody else besides. God wants to put life in us, and thus we rise in divine strength, and stand and move in the divine order by the principle within. Let a touch of life pass over nature, and in one day it accomplishes more than all the gardeners in the country could do in a year in decorating and enrobing the landscape with beauty and bloom. The first step in the new life is the quickening of the Holy Spirit and the new creation which it brings in the soul. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
8. Resurrection This is more than regeneration. Regeneration imparts life, but resurrection lifts us quite out of the realm of death and sets us free from all the shackles of the tomb. There seems to be no doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ was “quickened” into life before He rose from the grave, and silently in the sealed tomb He had time to roll up and put away the napkin that was wrapped around His brow, and the body shroud of His brief entombment. After this He came forth by power of the resurrection, passing through the sealed stone, even before it was removed, and standing in all the beauty and buoyancy of that Easter morning in the garden where He met the first witnesses of His triumph. And so we are not only to receive a touch of the new life, but we are to break from the fetters of the old life and rise to all the freedom and fullness of the very life of Christ, our risen Lord.
9. Ascension He “raised us up with Christ and seated us” (Ephesians 2:6) with Him in the heavenlies. This is much more than resurrection. It is ascension. It is taking the place of accomplished victory and conceded right, and sitting down in an attitude of complete repose, from henceforth expecting with Him until all our enemies be made our footstool. It is not even the effect of struggling to rise, but it is the rest of one who has ascended and is living in the realization of accomplished victory. It is a beautiful sight to see the morning lark beating its wings and pinioning its way up through the air, until far out of sight it warbles out its little song, and then drops down again to its resting place in the meadow. But it is a much more beautiful sight to see that summer bird with outstretched wing lying like a stately ship on the bosom of the air, every fiber of its being in full activity, and yet, in perfect repose, a spectacle of majestic rest and strength. It is not trying to ascend; it has ascended, and it is calmly reposing on the bosom of the element where it dwells at home among the chariot clouds and blue firmament. The first is the picture of the soul that is beating heavenward, the other, of the soul that has entered into rest. It is throne life. It is dwelling with Christ on high, your head in the heavens even while your feet still walk the paths of the lower world of sense and time. This is our high privilege, to live as if time were past, as if the millennial morning had come, and we were sitting upon our throne and realizing the felicities and glories of the ages to come. The Source of This Wondrous Grace What is the secret of this mighty transformation? The answer is given in a wondrous climax of praise to divine love.
10. “But God” The first touch of the light upon the picture is a bold and brief one. Two little words describe it, “But… God” (Ephesians 2:4). He is the one and the only explanation of it. The former picture is a very dark one. It tells of the tremendous force of the present age, the prince of the powers of the air, the example of innumerable wicked men, the dreadful trend of our own heart, the ghastly picture of even death itself, and the more terrific vision of God’s holy wrath for sin. The situation would seem to be an impossible one, the problem too hard for solution, and yet, over against this dark and awful cloud, like a spanning rainbow, these two little words explain and solve it all: “but God.” The problem was not too hard for Him. His infinite resources spanned the cleft and wrought a remedy. So, beloved, you may take those same two words, and write them over against every dark cloud, every difficult problem, every impossible situation of your life. It may be too hard for you. It may be too hard for others. It may be too hard to bear, “but God” is equal to it. He is the remedy for it. He is waiting now to turn it into a background on which He will write the eternal records of His grace.
11. His Mercy The next touch is the word “mercy.” It is one of the attributes of God and one of the phases of God’s love. It is the phase of love which deals with the unworthy, the wicked, the most undeserving. It tells of a love that can pardon, welcome and bless where no other could tolerate or endure. Oh, if there is one who is reading these lines who is past all human hope and even your own self-respect, who feels that you deserve nothing but judgment and ruin, look up, beloved, to Him who is “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4); and act like Manasseh, of whom it is said that when he “humbled himself… and… prayed,” God was “moved by his entreaty” (2 Chronicles 33:12-13); or, like Paul, to say, “I am the worst [of sinners]. But… I was shown mercy” (1 Timothy 1:15-16).
12. His Grace Next we have the word “grace,” but it is strengthened by two attributes, “the incomparable riches of his grace” (Ephesians 2:7, italics added). Grace, like mercy, is a special phase of divine love. It is love to the helpless, to those who can make no return, and to those who cannot even help themselves. It is the priest going outside the camp to the leper who has not strength enough to go in. It is mercy meeting man not halfway, but all the way. It is the father seeing the son a great way off and running to welcome him home. Are you wicked? Have you lost power even to choose the right? Do you feel unable to believe or trust or lift a finger to save yourself? Beloved, you are the very one whom the grace of God is waiting to lift from the depths of helplessness to the heights of heaven.
13. His Love Next, we have the word “love,” the sweetest word of human language or heavenly speech. It is a hard word to define. If you would ask what it means, look at the mother’s sacrifice; look at the prophet’s blood; look at the hero’s sufferings; look at the dying Redeemer; look at John 3:16 : “God so loved the world.” It is an outstretching impulse which has no explanation, no reason but its own deep fountain of fullness. It is something that you or I will never fully understand, even though we may know it and receive it. Could I with ink the ocean fill, Were the whole sky of parchment made, Were every blade of grass a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain that ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though spread from sky to sky. Here it is heightened by the adjective, “his great love,” and the additional statement, “because of his great love for us… even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4-5). He did not wait until we were deserving, nor even until we wanted to be loved or saved, but when we were worthless, indifferent, ungrateful, there was something in His heart that loved us with a love that was great enough to give heaven’s richest gift, and take a race of guilty rebels to His bosom and His throne.
14. His Kindness One more word remains, “his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). This is a very sweet expression. It is founded on the word kin, and it suggests the idea that God treats us as His kindred. In order to do this, He makes us His kindred first by giving us His own nature, making us His children; then by taking human nature into His own person through the incarnate Son of God; and then by wedding us to the Lord Jesus Christ and making us the Bride of the Lamb. Every tie of kinship that God can create, He has used to bind our sinful race to His heart. He treats us as His children, as His beloved, as His friends. This covers all the 10,000 bounties and blessings of His Fatherly care, the things that fill the overflowing cup of daily mercies and leads us oft to say: When all Thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys— Transported with the view, I’m lost In wonder, love, and praise.
15. His Gift All this inheritance of grace and glory comes to us as a gift; for “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). It is thus that we have received it. This is the priceless, immeasurable gift that the infinite mercy, grace, love and kindness of God is offering now to some heart who reads these lines. Beloved, will you accept the gift of God, and give Him in return your gratitude, your love, yourself? All the wealth of the universe could not buy it, but you can have it freely. A poor woman came up one day to the gardener of Windsor Castle, and tried to buy a cluster of splendid grapes from the royal greenhouse for her dying child. The gardener rudely refused her, and asked her if she did not know better than to think that the queen would sell her grapes. At that moment the gentle queen who had overheard the request and the answer, stepped forward, and, turning to the poor woman, said: “John is right, my good woman; the queen never sells her grapes, but just take your apron and hold it out. And now, John, give her as much as she can take away; for the queen freely gives what she could not sell.” Today a kinder heart and a nobler Sovereign is saying to us, “You cannot buy My mercy, but you can have as much as you will take away.” The Purpose of God’s Grace Two purposes are here unfolded, an ultimate and an immediate purpose.
16. To Show His Grace The ultimate purpose is this: “That in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). God’s object is some day to make us patterns to the future generations of the universe even as now He has made Jesus Christ the Pattern to us. God is preparing a mighty rehearsal for the inhabitants of this great universe, and some day each of us will have a little part in that mighty chorus and that glorious scene, as innumerable angels and created beings from many a distant star, perhaps, will gather to learn the history of redemption. Then you and I will tell them of the exceeding riches of His grace in the story of our life, and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Let us begin to tell it now, and let us take so much that we will have more to tell.
17. To Do Good Works The immediate purpose of His grace is, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). The object of all this marvelous grace is that we should exhibit here the fruits of it as well as in the ages to come. The outcome of such a salvation must be intensely practical and lead to works of righteousness and lives of heavenly beauty. But even this is not our working but His grace; for while we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works,” these works are “prepared… for us to do.” They are not our works, but His in us. They are supplied to us through the Holy Spirit’s energy and the indwelling life of Christ. “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (John 1:16), and we go forth and live out what He lives in us. This is the climax of grace, that it not only bestows upon us God’s part, but it enables us in return to perform our part also. Our very faith and love, our sacrifice and service are only richer gifts of His own grace of which we can but say, as David of old in the hour of his highest consecration, “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chronicles 29:14). “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28).