Ephesians 2: 4-6
"QUICKENED . . . RAISED . . . SEATED"

INTRODUCTION:  Because the birth of a new child to Parker and Nicole is the reason I am preaching this morning, I want to talk about another kind of birth, what we call the New Birth.  The language and the imperative come from our Lord himself, who told Nicodemus, “You must be born again. . . . Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  The theological term for the new birth is the doctrine of regeneration, and that theology is explained in the first six verses of Ephesians chapter two, especially verses 4-6.  Nothing could be more dramatic than the contrast between the hopelessness of the human condition as described in the first verse of Ephesians chapter two and the hope that is offered in the phrase, "But God . . ." We were dead in our trespasses and sins, hopelessly bound to the circles of this world, enslaved to our own unruly and self-destructive passions, with no light at the end of the tunnel and no place to turn to for help. But into that darkness of death comes a message of hope from outside, a breath of fresh air causing us to lift up our heads and see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. "But . . . God!"  Where there was only spiritual death, God brings to birth a new life.  Today we want to examine specifically what God has done in Jesus Christ to rescue us from sin and death and futility. Even when we were dead in sin He made us alive (that’s the new birth), but there is more: He has also raised us up, and seated us in heaven with Christ.

THESIS:  Paul describes the salvation we receive when we receive Christ in terms of an analogy. Not just because Christ died and rose, but because He did it officially as our Representative, therefore God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically.  That is a key sentence and the thesis of this whole sermon, so let me repeat it:  Not just because Christ died and rose, but because He did it officially as our Representative, therefore God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically: death, burial, quickening, resurrection, ascension, seating in heaven.

In other words, He "made us alive . . .raised us with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ."  Regeneration, the New Birth, in other words, must be understood as a part of a complete matrix of divine acts that together add up to our salvation.  Being dead in sin before Christ, we first die to sin with Christ, that we may be made alive with Him, be raised with Him, and finally be seated with Him in the heavenly places. 

I. THE ELEMENTS OF THIS SALVATION

A. WE DIED WITH CHRIST. 

We started as dead in sin, and Christ, to redeem us, joined us in that state of death.  It is not of course that He ever sinned, but He joined us in the death that sin brings. On the Cross He bore in full the wrath of God against sin, when he cried out, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But Christ did for us what we could not have done for ourselves: He came through that experience of death to the other side. When He did, He left the load of our sin He had been carrying behind in the grave and was received again by His Father, received again not as a sinner but as the beloved Son in Whom the Father was well pleased.  The point is that this counts for us—all of it.  Why?  In the old and accurate language that Dr. Orme taught us so well over the years, God imputed our sins to Christ and His righteousness to us. The wages of sin is death, and Christ died that specific death for us. Therefore, "there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ" (Rom. 8:1). 
In other words, because Christ died our death as our Representative, God can count that death as ours when we put our faith in Christ. And therefore, while we are still until the Resurrection subject to physical death, that death for believers is no longer the spiritual death which is God’s judgment against sin.  Christ has already died that death for us.  Therefore, we are no longer subject to that death.  We are no more subject to the wrath of God, no more liable to be punished for those sins, no more rejected or disapproved by God than Christ was Himself when He rose from that death and was received back into heaven. This then is true Christianity: the realization that forgiveness, salvation, eternal life are not something you strive for by trying to be good but rather something God has done which we receive simply by faith. Because Christ died, we are accounted dead to sin, and need die that death no more. We died it with Him.  God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically.  And the first part of that is that we died with Him.

B. WE WERE MADE ALIVE WITH CHRIST.

Just as Christ died on the cross, we are accepted as having died to sin. And just as He was made alive again after the cross, we are also given new life in Him. From death to life!  Death is impotent, barren, immobile; life is active, powerful, energetic. And we who were morally and spiritually dead are now made alive in Christ (verse 5). This is called Regeneration, the New Birth.  Before you put your faith in Christ you were spiritually dead; now you are made spiritually alive again; a new spiritual life is “born” in you. What does this mean? It means that what you could not do before, being spiritually dead, you can now begin to do.  What can dead people do?  Not much.  They can rot.  That is about the end of it.  So anything of spiritual significance—to love God, trust in Christ, understand the Bible, resist the devil, and overcome both the world and your own sinful nature--what you could not do before, now in some measure you can do and will do as that new spiritual life works itself out in your experience.

Imagine that we were large enough to need a microphone for amplification here on the pulpit. If I had been here yesterday, I could have spoken into it and nothing would have happened. It would have been what is technically called a "dead mike." But today, it has been turned on.  Today it is “live.” It picks up the vibrations of my voice, magnifies them, and transfers them to the speakers. It is now alive. So you were once dead to God and spiritual things. He commanded you and there was no true spiritual obedience from the heart.  He spoke to you and you did not hear.  He loved you and there was no response.  But now in Christ you are alive to Him. His voice resonates in you and does not die there but is transferred with power to those around you.  You hear; you obey; you love. What a privilege this is! It is no wonder that the thought spurred Paul to the parenthetical exclamation at the end of verse 5, "by grace you have been saved." Calvin's comment on it is superb: "Paul always feels as if he has not sufficiently proclaimed the riches of divine grace. Certainly he who weighs the ingratitude of men will not complain that this parenthesis is superfluous."

Think of another analogy. Imagine a man who is totally colorblind. To him, the rainbow is just a shape, nothing more. He is dead to color. And then suppose that by some miracle his eyes are opened. He becomes alive for the first time in his life to the colors of the rainbow--alive for the first time to the delicate tints in his girlfriend's cheek as she blushes when he tells her that he loves her--alive for the first time to dogwoods and azaleas and mountain laurel and sunsets. Would he not be overflowing with color? Would he be able to keep quiet about it? He would probably not be able to talk of anything else.  He has come alive to color.

Well, if you are a Christian, you who were spiritually dead have been made alive to God. Open your eyes! He is infinitely good, powerful, just, wise, loving, kind, merciful, gracious, majestic, glorious. He is the One who created all the colors of the spectrum as just one small reflection of His own infinite beauty.  And so we cry out with Gerard Manley Hopkins,

Glory be to God for dappled things:

For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim,

Fresh firecoal chestnut falls, finches' wings,

For landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow, and plow,

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim, 

Whatever is new, original, spare, strange,

Whatever is fickle, freckled, who knows how,

With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim--

He fathers forth whose beauty is past change

Praise Him! 

C.  HE RAISED US WITH HIM.

Being raised with Christ might seem merely a synonym for quickening or regeneration, being made alive; but I think it is more than that. The phrase obviously looks forward to the future resurrection of our bodies; we are not just now made spiritually alive, but will then live that life through spiritual bodies no longer subject to decay and death. But there is yet more. Jesus was actually made alive again before the resurrection, i.e., before He emerged from the tomb. So quickening and resurrection are not exactly the same event, though obviously they are closely related. All right, then, what purpose did the resurrection serve? Surely one thing is that it made the quickening, the life, public and visible, for the sake of the disciples and the world.  The resurrection means that the new life that had come to Christ’s body was let out of the tomb and unleashed upon the world!

In the full sense, then, we will be raised with Him, physically when He returns.  But the verb here is in the past tense, something that has already happened.  In that sense then perhaps we are already raised with Him.  This new life we receive is not a private matter of the heart, but something that is to be public and visible and bring glory to God in the outward world.  We have been raised with Him! There is therefore ultimately no such thing as a closet Christian; it is a contradiction in terms. For if we confess Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raise Him from the dead, we shall be saved (Rom. 10:9-10). How does one recognize true saving faith that unites us to Christ so that what God did to Him physically is replicated in us spiritually? One way is that it is willing to be a public faith, bearing witness in baptism and personal testimony. That is part of what it means to be raised with him.

God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically.  This first part of that is that we died with Him.  The death that is the wages of sin we must die no more.  The second part of that is that we were made alive with Him.  We who were dead in our trespasses and sins are made alive to God.  And the third part is that we have been raised with Him, which we show by our physical resurrection in the future and our public Christian life here and now.  But there is more:

D. WE ARE SEATED WITH HIM in the heavenlies.

“Even when we were dead in our transgressions [God] 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.”  Physically, of course, we are still resident here. But spiritually, we have already been introduced into a new realm, made citizens of a new kingdom. We still resident in this world physically, but spiritually we are no longer a part of it.  How can we make such a concept practically meaningful?

One of the first things a person who has truly become a Christian becomes aware of is that he does not fit or belong in this fallen and corrupted system of human society any more. He has a new outlook, different priorities, new desires, new goals, new loyalties, new tastes, new commitments, new purposes. He just does not fit with those who still have the old ones any more. Why? Because he is now a citizen of a different country, the kingdom of heaven. He lives under its laws now. We, Christians in general and University Church in particular, are a colony, an outpost of that kingdom planted in an alien landscape. Our purpose is to invite others to become citizens of that kingdom as well. And though we are homesick for our new country, being physically still resident in this one, we already enjoy foretastes and earnests of what life there will be like. Why? Because in the person of Christ our Head we are already there; we have been seated there already with our savior Jesus Christ.

Do you understand?  Jesus is our Savior.  He is our Savior because He is our Representative.  He can stand in for us.  He is our Mediator.  He is the new Adam, the Head of the redeemed human race as Adam was the head of the old fallen one.  He is our Head and we are His Body.  He can stand in for us; He can act for us officially, just as our elected representatives cast our votes, as it were, in the Congress of the federal government.  Do you understand?  What Jesus did, he did for us.  What Jesus does, we have done.  He has died; we have died.  He has been made alive; we have been made alive.  He has been seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Father; we have been seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Father.  It is not just a fancy way of talking.  In Him, because of the specific nature of our relationship to Him, we are really there! 

We describe a person whose earthly life is coming to an end by saying he already has one foot in the grave.  We speak figuratively when we do so.  Well, the great need of the hour is for believers in Christ to understand who they are so that they can live by faith in the reality of what their Lord has done for them.  And so I speak not figuratively at all but quite literally when I say that if you are a child of God by faith in His Son Jesus Christ, you already have one foot in Heaven.  In one way we are like a sailor rescued from a sunken ship. He has already been rescued. He is now on the coastguard cutter, but he is not yet in port. But because he is off the wreck and on the cutter, he is already as good as there. In an even more real and certain sense than that, we are already seated in heaven. We are as good as there, and more: we actually are there in the person of our Head and Representative, Jesus Christ.

God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically.  This first part of that is that we died with Him.  The death that is the wages of sin we must die no more.  The second part of that is that we are made alive with Him.  The third part is that we have been raised with Him.  And the fourth is that we have been seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  You are in the presence of God the Father right now, enjoying His favor, hearing Him say “This is my beloved son (or daughter), in whom I am well pleased.”  Can you hear Him?  I tell you that this is what He is saying!  I am here to tell you that you are authorized by Scripture to hear it by faith.  Is that not what He is saying to Christ?  Well, He is our Representative, and we have been seated with Him in the heavenly places.

II. THE BASIS OF THIS SALVATION

This and nothing less, this and nothing else, is the salvation God offers sinful human beings in Jesus Christ.  I want us to be certain this morning that we understand both what it is and also, just as importantly, that we understand the basis of it.  We have died; we have been made alive; we have been raised; we have been seated—all with Christ.  What a summation of the great salvation that is ours in Christ!  Now, it is worth noticing that all of the verbs in this passage that give us that summation are past in tense and general in application. It is not that God will make us alive, raise us, and seat us, but that he has done so. It is not some fortunate or especially spiritual believers of whom this is true, but all of them. It is not set before us as something to which we aspire but as a present reality by which, in the light of which, in the power of which we should already be beginning to live by faith.

All human religion is about what man does to find favor with God. But Christianity is about what God has done to confer favor on man. This is an absolute and irreducible watershed. You have not received the Christian faith at all until you see and accept this. The blessings of salvation are not the attainment of a long life of penitence, service, and self-denial; they are an immense privilege conferred as a free gift on those who put their trust in Jesus Christ. Such people are already made alive, raised, and seated as surely as Jesus has been made alive, raised, and seated.  They are made alive, raised, and seated because Jesus has been made alive, raised, and seated.

Christ is the key.  Why is this not an arbitrary action on God’s part?  It is because of who Jesus is.  He is God Himself, God the Son, made man—and not made just any man, but made the Son of Man, the representative man.  He is the new Adam.  He is the pure lamb without spot or blemish who died for us on a very real Cross.  Because of these specific facts about Him, because of Who He is, He has the ability, the right, and the authority to act on God’s behalf and on ours.  Who He is makes it possible for Him to do what He has done, and for it to count, to be imputed, to be applied to us in the way that Scripture says it is.  And that is why we can say all the things we have been saying this morning.

God does something about us, to us, and in us spiritually that corresponds to what happened to Jesus physically.  This first part of that is that we died with Him.  The death that is the wages of sin we must die no more.  The second part of that is that we are made alive with Him.  The life that we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God, and so we live, alive to God and not dead to Him any longer.  The third part is that we have been raised with Him.  The future resurrection of our bodies is made sure and the present public nature of our new spiritual life is made possible.  And the fourth part is that we have been seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  We are already there enjoying God’s favor and his blessing, and that is why we are assured of enjoying it completely when Christ returns and why we can be granted the foretastes and firstfruits of it even here and now.  And all of this is a present reality by which, in the light of which, in the power of which we should already be beginning to live by faith.  The whole Christian life is the process of learning to do just that.

The problem of course is that we do not see this present reality, not all of it, not very clearly, not yet.  And we are so constituted that what we see easily controls us; the tyranny of sight affects the way we live.  Y’all look to me pretty much like the same bunch of ornery old sinners you have always been.  I’m sure I look the same to you.  If we walk by sight and not by faith, we will only reinforce that unfortunate lack of vision.  How then do we make the truths of the Gospel existentially real in our experience?  The answer is always messy in application, but it is really simple in concept: we walk by faith and not by sight.  We choose to believe in the reality of who we are in Christ so sufficiently that we choose to act on it—to live by faith and not by sight. 

CONCLUSION:  The key to all is Christ. This reality is not a mere legal fiction but resides itself as real in Christ because of Who He is and what He has done. Do you believe He died for you? Then you died with Him.  Choose to act as if you were dead to sin! Do you believe that in Him was light, and that light was the life of men?  Then you who were dead in your sins have been made alive in Christ.  Choose to feed that life and let if flourish!  Do you believe that God raised Him from the dead? Then you too have risen and will rise and reign with Him.  Choose to start letting Him reign in you already.  Do you believe that He ascended to the Father and was received as the One in whom the Father is well pleased?  Then you, in Christ, are not only just as present to the Father but also just as acceptable and pleasing to the Father as He is.  Choose to act in the confidence this truth brings.  (Do you see, by the way, how the denial of good works as the basis of salvation is the very thing that makes them possible as the fruit of salvation?  It is not about us; it is all about Him.) 

Can you do this?  Yes!  Not perfectly, but substantially.  Why?  Because these things really are already true of you if you belong to Christ.  They are true of you because they are true of Him.   We will some day experience the fullness of this reality that is already true of us.  And we will experience the reality of these things even now to the extent that we live daily by faith and trust in Him.  Do you?  May his Word work a greater measure of that faith in us today.  Amen.

Sermon by Rev. Don Williams, Ph.D.