You Are Not on Earth But in Heaven

Ephesians 2:5

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Take a Bible please and turn to Ephesians chapter 2. We’re beginning to move into one of those
verses that is so profound that it is almost beyond our ability to explain it to each other. Would
you look first of all at verse 1 of Ephesians 2. “And you he made alive, when you were dead through
the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,”

Its may be good for us to look at these verses and see another possible interpretation, because that
interpretation highlights the reality and the truth of the correct interpretation. The correct
interpretation I believe is the one that we’ve shared together, but it is possible to interpret that
differently. It is possible to say that Paul was looking at these Ephesians and saying “You
remember when you became Christians? You remember when you first heard the gospel? God made you
alive at that moment. Even when you were dead in your trespasses, he made you alive right then.”

And I would say that for many years that was how I interpreted it: that what Paul was saying was,
“God made you alive. You were non-Christians, you were just Gentiles, you didn’t know God, you
didn’t know Christ, and then you heard the gospel preached and you believed it, and you were at that
moment made alive.” And you can see that you could interpret the comment that he makes about
himself and the other Jews in the same way in verse 4, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the
great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ.”

So you could interpret it as, “I was a Jew, and then I heard the gospel preached to me on that day
on the road to Damascus when I saw Christ alive that moment God spoke to me. He made me alive even
when I was dead in my trespasses.” And it’s that kind of interpretation that has led many of us
into the kind of agony that we experienced when we thought, “Did I see him on the road to Damascus,
or did I not see him on the road to Damascus? Did I hear the gospel or did I not hear the gospel?”
Or more often, “Have I really believed? Have I really had faith? Have I really repented? Because
if I haven’t I’m still dead in my trespasses.”

And so it brings up the whole issue of God’s act or our personal experience. Or you might say,
“God’s action and our faith,” and of course I think many of us have been so general in our
definition of the gospel that somebody has said to us, “You’re saved by faith, you know.” And we’ve
said, “Oh yeah, we know we’re saved by faith.” In spite of the fact that of course the verse goes
by grace are you saved through faith and you’re saved by grace, and not by faith. Yet we get used
to the phrase and we say, “Yes, yes I’m saved by my faith” and that so easily drifts into “if you
had enough faith you’d be saved. You have to be sure you have faith otherwise you aren’t saved.”
Now of course it’s a wrong interpretation of this passage, this whole passage is talking about what
God did to us before the world was, before there was any world, before there was any gospel preached
to the Gentiles, before Jesus ever appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. Back then, before the
foundation of the world, God crucified us with his son, the lamb that was slain from before the
foundation of the world. He made us alive in his son, and he raised us up with his son.

You get a hint of that in today’s verse which we won’t really be able to do anything but touch
briefly, but you find it there and in verse 4 you’ll get the continuity, “But God, who is rich in

mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),” and up to that point you might
argue, “Oh yeah, well that was he made us alive in time when we heard the gospel. That was when we
were made alive.” Yes, but suddenly he goes on and at the same time he didn’t only make us alive
together with Christ, he raised us up with him.

Wait a minute, raised us up, no here I am, I’m still here in the U.S. “And raised us up with him,
and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ,” no, no I’m still on the road to
Damascus, no I’m still in the U.S., I’m still here in London. In other words, it’s plain that Paul
is talking about what God has done in eternity, and some of it we have experienced here on earth but
the second part we certainly haven’t. And yet he’s talking about it all as one action, “but God who
is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) and raised us up with
him and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

So what Paul is saying is “When Christ, the lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the
world was slain, we judged that if one has died for all, then all died and you all died then. And
God then raised you up with his son, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places and by faith
you see that reality and you live in it.”

But you’re in that position whether you know it or not; God has put you in that position. And you
remember I tried to bring it home to you in what is the most startling way I can think of, but I can
see more and more how we have to avoid blaming the Germans, or blaming the Protestants or the
Catholics, but I’ve tried to put it as startling as I could by saying that whoever you take, whether
you take Stalin or Nero or Hitler; those men were crucified with Christ. And it is their
opportunity to know that just as it is our opportunity. And depending on whether they know it or
not, they either live in the joy of it, or they live in the misery and disaster that lies apart from
Jesus.

But it’s good I think to see that, and it would be good to mention again to you the verses that put
that so clearly. First of all there’s Revelation 13:8 which you remember is “the lamb slain from
before the foundation of the world” and then quite an important one that goes along with that is the
verse in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one
has died for all; therefore all have died.” So, “the lamb slain from before the foundation of the
world,” and “if one has died for all then all have died,” and they died from before the foundation
of the world. And that is of course in turn what makes sense of Ephesians 1:4-5. Because it’s
impossible otherwise to make sense of those verses unless you see it in this wholeness. We’ll start
at verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless,” and all that occurred before the
foundation of the world.

And then of course it comes again in 1 Peter 1:18: “You know that you were ransomed from the futile
ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the
precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the
foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake. Through him
you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and
hope are in God.”

But you see that “he was destined before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest at the
end of the times for your sake”, so Peter is saying, “This all happened before the foundation of the
world but the crucifixion took place here in your time so that you could see what God had done.”
And then of course the one that we know best in Colossians is probably the best statement of the
reality. Colossians 1:15-20. It’s the piece that speaks of Jesus’ own nature. “He is the image of
the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and
on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all
things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold
together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the
dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making
peace by the blood of his cross.”

And of course that’s the whole truth that we’ve talked about when we’ve said that God took his son
and inside his son he made each one of us. His son has held us within himself, and when we needed
to be changed and transformed, his son bore that death and we were raised up in his son and now
exist only in Jesus and the old thing that was crucified in him has gone, and we are the new
creation that is now in him.

But I thought that it might be good for you to have those verses and its important loved ones, to be
clear about the distinctions you see in these first verses. And I thought it was important to bring
it up now because it seems to me this present verse that we’re about to try to explain to one
another makes it clear, this verse in Ephesians 2:6, “And raised us up with him, and made us sit
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” would be easy for any of them to say, “Wait a
minute Paul, we’re not raised up we’re right down here.” And then Paul would answer, “You were
raised up when Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world and was raised; you were
raised up with him in glory. And that’s why when God looks upon you he sees his son, he see’s us as
part of his son.”

So maybe you’d think thoroughly through it because the other way throws you back into what was a
good emphasis that came through Wesley’s preaching and through the revival and it’s been a good
emphasis that we’ve had ourselves on personal experience. It’s very important to make it clear to
everybody that you can experience this here and now. But it begins to be used by Satan if you make
your personal experience of salvation — the cause of your salvation.

The cause of our salvation is just one person, God. He has in his son Jesus taken all the agony and
all the pain in his son and has treated us as if we had never sinned, treated us as if we had never
fallen. He treats us as being pure and holy inside his own son. We can say, “Oh you stupid God,”
we can say what we like, but that is him; he is a dear, gracious Father to us.

Let’s pray. Dear Father, we know of no human king who would take the rebels and set them on his
throne beside him. We know of no human king who would put up with those rebels as they continue to
plot against him, and try to over throw him. And yet Lord we see that that is what you have done
again and again throughout the Old Testament with the Israelites. And what you have done and
continue to do ever since, and that you look upon each one of us as part of your dear son. You have
raised us up with him and made us sit with you in the heavenly places, and that’s where we are now.
And in your eyes, that is the only reality we have, it is the only existence we poses because all
the old ended in Christ and in his death.

So we see that we are a new humanity, a new human race, a new creation that you have made in Jesus.
And we see, Lord that our salvation does not depend on our feelings or even on our faith, but on
your gracious act, on your gracious attitude towards us, on your commitment to forgive us until
seventy times seven. So Father, we would thank you this morning for that. We would cast away from
ourselves all the shadows, all the little doubts and uncertainties, all the self righteousness that
we continue to try to use to justify ourselves before you or prove that we are good, or that we are
saved, and we would simply come before you and say, “Lord we are saved because of what you have done
for us and to us in your son Jesus and we thank you Lord for your kindly grace to us.”