Rabbi Schneider - No Longer Living Autonomously
So let's dig in right now. Ephesians 2:1. Paul is speaking to the church. He's speaking to you and I. Paul is speaking to believers. Paul is speaking to those that are born again. Paul just got telling us in Chapter 1 that God saved us and forgave us through the blood of Jesus, and then He sealed us by the Holy Spirit. So Paul is talking to believers, not unbelievers here. Listen to what he says, verse one, chapter two. "And you," speaking to us, the church, "were dead". Get that word. D-E-A-D. "...you were dead," spiritually dead, "in your trespasses and sins". D-E-A-D in your trespasses and sins.
I remember shortly after the Lord saved me, I had a vision of the night, and it was horrendous. I saw myself laying on this hospital gurney, and I was outside of a hospital room, in the hospital, laying on that gurney. I was as dead as dead could be, but somehow I was still alive. It was so horrendous. It was like there was such a stench, a spiritual stench to it. I mean, I think the Lord was telling me that's the state I was in before He saved me. I didn't see myself as dead. I mean, I looked in the mirror, I looked okay. But spiritually we stank.
Paul said, "You were dead..." This is not just a metaphor, beloved. He's not making just an illustrative point. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. He said, "In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world". That's how dangerous it is to be conformed to this world. Paul said, that's the way that you lived before you were born again. That's the way you lived before God saved you. You lived according to the course of this world. But isn't it a nightmare that too many of God's people are calling themselves Christians, but they're still living according to the course of this world? "...in which you formerly walked," He said, "according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience".
I repeat myself a lot, but it's because I want some of these things to really sink in. It's easy just to keep talking and things don't sink in. So listen to this again. He said that we used to be dead, absolutely dead. And in that state, he said, we were living according to the course of this world, according to the natural, according to the way the world is being controlled. And then he went on to say, he connected that to "according to the prince of the power of the air..."
So the course of this world is according to the prince of the power of the air. The world is not just natural. What's going on in the world? I mean, we see it today, right, more than ever. Disinformation. Right? All this disinformation, it's all the devil. He's a liar from the beginning. He wants to break down every godly structure. He wants to break down every godly frame of reference. He wants to break down every godly foundation. He's strategic. He's wanting to tear it apart. The world's being controlled by the powers of darkness. And the Lord is allowing a really severe breaking right now, because He's getting ready to return.
So listen again. "You and I formerly walked before we knew the Lord, were born by God's Spirit, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit..." The same spirit that was controlling us. Paul says, "...of the spirit that is now working, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the air that is now working in the sons of disobedience". So you don't measure what the world's doing and take your cues, because what the world's doing is they're controlled by the power of darkness. And the way that they're acting reflects those people that are walking in disobedience.
So Paul said, we used to live in that realm. And that spirit of the world, the spirit of the air that's controlling the sons of disobedience, it used to control you, so you can't get your mindset and perspective anymore by looking at the world. He said, "Among them," these ones that are controlled by the powers of the air, the sons of disobedience, he calls them, "among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were..." Listen to this. This is a mind-blowing statement. Paul says, "You and I were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest".
I want you to consider this. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, Paul said. We were spiritually dead, okay? We were being controlled by the course of this world, the tide, the influence that is governing the thoughts of the world, the mindset of the world, the behavior of the world. We are being controlled by that. And he said, and these that are being controlled by that, it's happening to them because the one that's controlling the course of this world is the power of the air. The Scriptures calls him Satan, the god of this world that is now controlling the sons of disobedience. So before we go on, I want you to hear me once again. "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them..."
Among these sons of disobedience, these ones in the world, they have completely different values. "Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind..." Remember Eve looked at the tree, and Satan said to her, "Hey, if you eat from that tree, it's going to make you wise". It was a lust in her mind that she had. "I want to be wise". So people's ambition, their quest for false knowledge that puffeth up it's all due to the course of the world that's being controlled by the powers of darkness. Paul said, "You used to live that way. You used to live that way, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind..."
I want to pause before I say this next line. Paul continues and he says, "...and we were by nature, by nature," Paul said, "children of wrath, even as the rest". There was nothing different about you and I than everybody else. God did not save us because He saw something better in us than the others. We, just like everybody that doesn't know God, beloved, those that are living in rebellion against God, those that are even boisterous and loud and rebellious about it, those that are antagonistic towards God, Paul said, we were just like them. We were dead in our trespasses, Paul said, and we were living in the lust of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by our very nature children of wrath.
What does that mean? That we were not living enlightened lives. That we were not living for God's glory. We were living for ourselves. And we were being fully deceived by the world and the power of the enemy that's at work in the world. Do you see what God saved you from? When you were dead, God saved you. Let's continue on. Paul says this exact same thing. "We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest". But get the next line, beloved ones. "But God..." That's the next line. You were dead, you were dead in your sin, you were a sinner, you were living in lust, but God... You were by nature a child of wrath but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved you, He made you alive with Christ.
You see what I'm saying? You didn't have anything to do with it. Listen, did Lazarus have anything that he contributed to his resurrection? Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, right? What did Lazarus contribute to his being raised from the dead? Not a thing. He was dead. He was dead, dead, dead. He couldn't think, he couldn't will, he was dead in that tomb. But Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth!" and bam, that dead man came to life. That's what God did for you. We were dead in our transgressions and sin, by nature we were hostile towards God, because we were living autonomously from Him.
That's what it means to be a child of wrath, to live autonomously from God, to not live as though He's the center of everything, that He's the center of our lives, the center of our praise. He's living for ourselves rather than Him. That's what it means to be a child of wrath, because it's totally out of reality, right? I mean, God's the Creator. Everything was created by Him and through Him and for Him. All the world was created to praise Him and give Him glory. But you and I, we were living for ourselves. We woke up in the morning. We said to ourselves, what can I do that'll be fun today, right? We called our friends, we did this, we did that. We were living autonomously from God. We were by nature children of wrath.
But listen again, verse number four, "But God, but God being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions..." Get it again. "...but God, because of His great love, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you've been saved)". You get what I'm talking about, my friend? You didn't do anything to contribute to your salvation, God chose you. Yes, you had to exercise faith, but Paul's gonna go on to say right here, even the faith you have is the gift of God. It's a gift that you've been given. You didn't do anything to contribute to it. Yes, we work on our salvation in fear and trembling every day we pick up our cross, deny ourself and follow Him, we're active participants, but your salvation is a sovereign act and gift of God.
So listen to it again. "We were dead, but God..." Listen, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)". Now listen to the next verse. "...and we were raised up with Him, you've been saved, and raised up and seated with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in all the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus". It was a merciful, a merciful, a merciful act of God to stoop down to save you and I when we were living alienated from Him, dead in our transgressions and sins, by nature children of wrath. But He broke that curse off us and He saved us by grace. You've been saved in Jesus. And not only did He save us, but He exalted us.
The Scripture says here He raised us up with Him, He raised us up in Messiah and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This tells you, beloved, who you are. You've been exalted in Christ Jesus. You are a winner. You're a victor, young man. You're a victor, precious sister. We've been raised up with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places.
Listen, if you're walking around, and if you're walking around looking at the ground because you've got low self-esteem, you know what you gotta do? You gotta break that. You gotta force yourself to look up. If you can't look people in the eye because you're too afraid, you know what? You've got to look people in the eye. You've got to tell yourself, I'm loved, I'm chosen, I'm saved, and here's the key, and I have been raised up.
That's what Paul just got telling us, that we've been raised up and have been seated with Christ in heavenly places. "You've been raised up and seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He, the Father in Yeshua, might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus".
You've been raised up, seated with Christ in the heavenly places, so that in the ages to come, listen now, in all... this is your future. Get this. In all the ages to come, in all your future, you know what's gonna happen? God is gonna continue to show you and I His grace and His kindness. That's your future. No matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, you've been chosen in Christ, and the rest of your life God will be showing you His kindness.
Listen again. I mean, we've got to break fear off us. We're afraid of the future. What's going to happen tomorrow? Here's what's going to happen tomorrow. "...that in the ages to come the Lord's gonna show you the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward you and I in Christ Jesus". That's your future. That's why David said, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life". So we need to tell ourselves the truth. We need to look up and tell ourselves the truth. We need to participate with God by seizing His Word. God's told us, see, I'm preaching myself happy. I hope you're getting happy that our future is bright, our future is fantastic. That in all the ages to come, God's gonna show His kindness towards us.
Now listen to the next sentence. "For by grace, you have been saved through faith". This gets back to what I was saying a few minutes ago. "For by grace, you've been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works". So get what's going on here. Paul is saying that by grace... what's grace? It's undeserved favor. It's God's empowerment in our life to be who He's called us to be, to walk in what He's called us to walk in. He says, "By grace you've been saved, through faith..." okay?
The way that God saved us was by grace through faith. In other words, what connects us to God? Faith. But then Paul... and so a lot of people, they look at faith as a work, though. A lot of people, they look at faith as a work. Oh, I must believe, I must believe, I must believe, I must believe, as if faith is a work. But notice what Paul said. He says, "For by grace you've been saved, through faith, and that is not of yourselves".
The faith, beloved ones, it's not of yourselves. It was given to you as a gift. Even your faith is a gift. Because of God's grace on your life, he supernaturally, by the Spirit, imparted faith to you. So listen one more time before we go on. "For by grace you've been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast".
God did this thing. He created us the first time and He's the One that saved us and is recreating us. God is at work in your life, both to will and do for your good pleasure. The book of Titus tells us we've been saved, not by deeds of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. We're going to close today with this verse, the next verse in the text. Paul says, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus..."
We're new creations. We didn't do it, God did it. He made us a new creation. Even as you didn't create yourself the first time, you're not the one that recreated yourself. The Bible says we're born not by the will of man, nor by the will of the flesh, but by the will of God. You are supernaturally born again. "...we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in".
So, my friends, this is an awesome thing. We've got a brand-new life. We've got a brand-new future. It's a brand-new day. Our future is God. We've been called into light. We have exciting things ahead. God's going to use us in the world to bring His light to other people. And you and I, as we continue to follow Him by His grace, we're going to keep on being transformed, we're going to go from one degree of glory to another degree of glory. We're going to keep getting stronger internally. As we get stronger internally, we're going to have more joy. As we continue to follow God, we're going to get further rooted in His peace, and His peace within us will crush Satan's head under our feet. Jesus said, My peace I give to you, not as the world gives. My peace I give to you. Shalom, beloved ones.