But God

Ordinary Means · An Ephesians Study · No. 4

Last time I promised you two words. Here they are — but first, the wall they break through.

Paul opens Ephesians 2 with one of the bleakest descriptions of the human condition in all of Scripture. Not struggling. Not wounded. Dead. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. The Greek word is nekros — the root of our word necrosis. Paul looks at a person apart from Christ and describes him in the language of the morgue. Whatever vitality he seems to have, whatever good he manages, at the level Paul is describing he is a corpse. And a corpse does not cooperate with the surgeon. A corpse is operated on.

It gets darker before it turns. We walked in step with three powers, Paul says — the world (the whole system of life organized as if God were not there, which we breathe in without noticing), the devil (the prince of the power of the air — not a metaphor but a real fallen will set against God), and the flesh (the self curved in on itself). And then the hardest line: we were by nature children of wrath. Not by accident. By nature. That is original sin stated plainly — not merely the wrong we have done, but the bent nature we were born with, standing under God's settled opposition to all that is against Him.

The Lutheran tradition has never softened this, and there is a reason. If we were only sick, good advice and effort might help us recover. If we are dead, we cannot be helped. We can only be raised. And no corpse raises itself. The Gospel is good news precisely because the news before it is so terrible.

And then — verse four. Two words in the Greek.

There is no more important but in all of Paul. Everything that came before — the death, the wrath, the bondage — is brought to a halt by these two words. Not but humanity figured it out. Not but the situation wasn't as bad as it looked. Not but we rose, by heroic effort, off our own deathbed. But God. The action that breaks the spell of death is His. The mercy that reaches into the morgue is His. The love that does not wait for us to become lovable is His. He loved us while we were dead — and that love, predating any change in us, is the love that raised us.

Watch what that mercy did. Paul stacks three past-tense verbs, each one joined to Christ: God made us alive with Him, raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places. Already. Done. Not a future you are waiting for — a standing you presently have. The Christian who feels weighed down, who wonders whether grace will ever feel as glorious as the doctrine sounds, is invited to remember where he actually is: seated with Christ. The fact that he does not always feel it does not unmake it. The fact that his days are still full of struggle does not unseat him. The seating is done, and it is in Christ Jesus — and as long as he is in Christ, he is seated.

Then Paul says it as plainly as he ever says anything:

The whole Reformation in forty words. By grace — God's free favor is the cause, with no human contribution mixed in. Through faith — and faith is not a work that earns but the open, empty hand of a beggar receiving bread. Even the hand is given; the dead man of verse one can no more generate faith than any other living act. All of it is gift. Not of works — because the works of a dead man are dead works; they cannot raise him, they are a symptom of the disease. So that no one may boast — the whole arrangement is built to leave human pride no foothold. Not the great theologian, not the lifelong member, not anyone. The boasting belongs to the Lord.

And then a line that looks, for a second, like it undoes all of that — until you see the order. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. "Workmanship" is poiema — we are God's poem. We are not saved by good works; we are saved for them, the way a tree is not kept alive by its fruit but bears fruit because it is alive. And those works were prepared beforehand — the same God who chose you in eternity also laid out the particular path you would walk: this marriage, these children, this work, these neighbors. That is the Lutheran doctrine of vocation in a single verse. The cosmic theology of chapter one and your ordinary Tuesday are one piece.

Next time Paul widens the lens from the rescued individual to the reconciled people: Gentiles once far off, brought near by the blood of Christ; the dividing wall torn down; two made one new man. Read Ephesians 2:11–22 before then.

Get the book here: [EPHESIANS]