The Nature of Christian Experience (1984)
Exposition of Ephesians 2by Eric J. Alexander
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About Eric Alexander (as of 1984).
"By nature people are not just lost and needing redirection to God. They are not just confused and needing to be intellectually sorted out. Nor are they just unhappy and needing to be cheered, or weak and needing to be strengthened. Neither reformation of manners nor indoctrination of mind nor even inspiration of spirit will go to the root of the human problem, because the root of the human problem is that by nature people are dead and need nothing less than a resurrection into life."
What happens to people when they become Christians? What is the nature of the experience of those who are the objects of God's gracious work? In chapter two of Ephesians Paul answers this question in two ways.
Ephesians 2 is divided into two parts. Verses 1-10 describe our resurrection in Christ. Verses 11-22 describe our reconciliation through Christ. So resurrection and reconciliation are the two words that dominate Paul's exposition of the nature of Christian experience. Or if we use the phrases that we find in the two halves of the chapter, we are "made alive with Christ" (v. 5) and we are "brought near through the blood of Christ" (v.13).
Our Resurrection in Christ
Paul begins with a description of our natural state. "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins." Ronald Knox's translation is even more vivid: "He found you dead." This is indeed what the apostle is saying. When he is describing the nature of Christian experience, Paul begins with our unregenerate state and says, "This is how God found us." He came in Jesus Christ to seek and to save, and when he found us, we were dead in transgressions and sins.
Now that is every person's condition by nature. And it is vital for the sake of our evangelism, our prayer, our relation to the lost, for us to grasp the real condition of people before the grace of God touches them. By nature people are not just lost and needing redirection to God. They are not just confused and needing to be intellectually sorted out. Nor are they just unhappy and needing to be cheered, or weak and needing to be strengthened. Neither reformation of manners nor indoctrination of mind nor even inspiration of spirit will go to the root of the human problem, because the root of the human problem is that by nature people are dead and need nothing less than a resurrection into life.
This is why only God can save them. We may convince them intellectually, we may stir and move them emotionally, but by ourselves we will never regenerate them spiritually. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. We need to ask God to drive this truth into our hearts. It should be the foundation of all our thinking about serving God.
It is important to clarify what it means for someone to be spiritually dead. Undoubtedly, we can identify many evidences of spiritual death in contemporary society. Francis Schaeffer has contributed an enormous amount to our thinking in this area. For example, in his book Death in the City, he sees evidence of a cultural and philosophical death in the modern world. He describes the despair among literary and artistic people and the hopelessness of those involved in the drug culture. All of these things are symptoms of spiritual death.
But I think that it's important for us not to overemphasize these particular symptoms of spiritual death. The happy, well-adjusted pagans in suburbia are just as dead as those who experience all the anguish of the modern world, because they too are without God and without Christ.
Likewise, respectable religious people who are unregenerate are spiritually dead, because they are without God and without Christ. So it is to every unregenerate person that Paul addresses these words in verse 2, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins." He emphasizes it with the words "all of us" (v. 3) and with the statement, "Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath" (v. 3).
What then is this spiritual death, this universal condition which affects people from every environment, every nation, every culture and race?
I think the essence of it can best be seen by looking at its opposite, which is spiritual life, or eternal life. Jesus defines eternal life for us clearly in his great high priestly prayer in John 17. "This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (v. 3). Therefore, the mark of those who have eternal life or spiritual life is that they know God. The mark of those who do not possess spiritual life, who are spiritually dead, is that they do not know God. That is the essence of spiritual death. It is the condition Jesus describes further on in his prayer in John 17 when he cries to God, "O righteous Father, the world has not known thee" (v. 25 RSV).
That is a verse that affects me profoundly whenever I read it. Somebody has said that these words are the greatest heart-rending cry that ever escaped the lips of the Lord, Jesus. "O righteous Father, the world has not known thee." And one of the things that really troubles me is that I can face the world around me in all its respectability and be unmoved by its true condition. I can walk up and down the streets of Glasgow and see people who appear to be perfectly well-integrated. Many of them are quite happy. Most of them are extremely well off. But they do not know God, and my burden is that I can walk along the streets without a pang. We are wracked with pain when we see emaciated bodies in famine-stricken Ethiopia - and rightly so. God deliver us from hardness in that sphere too. But it troubles me that we seem to be more concerned about that than about people who are spiritually bankrupt, who do not know God and Jesus Christ. We need to develop a heart of compassion for those who are spiritually dead.
There are tears of nature, and there are tears of grace. The tears of nature are the tears that all people weep at sights that move the human heart. But the tears of grace are tears that only Christians weep because they're burdened about issues that matter only to them and to God. We need to weep with the compassion Jesus felt toward Jerusalem when he saw its people as sheep having no shepherd: That multitude had no shepherd, and Jesus wept over them. The turning point in our own day will come when we learn to weep the tears of grace.
But spiritual death is not just the absence of the knowledge of God. In Ephesians 2:1-3 Paul tells us that it is a positive reality in three ways. First, he tells us that this death is a judgment. "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins" (v.1). Now Lenski, the New Testament commentator, says this verse should be translated, "You are dead because of your trespasses and sins." In other words, the death is the result of judgment. By nature and practice, people are rebels against God's laws, and their spiritual death is the result of God's judgment. That is what happened in Genesis 3. When God gave man his law for living he said, "You may eat of every tree of the garden. It has all been created for you. But on the day that you eat of that particular tree, you shall die." And the judgment was that they were driven out of God's presence and became strangers to him. And there was a fiery sword put in the Garden of Eden to prevent them from drawing near. People might imagine that they didn't die immediately on that day. But the simple fact is, their separation from God was the real death. Physical death only put the cap on that. Physical death, if you like, was the sacrament of that spiritual death; it was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality.
But spiritual death is not only a judgment. It also involves a sinister and malignant control. Paul describes it for us in verses 2-3. "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts." Notice that Paul specifically tells us that this death involves being brought under bondage to the world, the flesh and the devil. The world: "You followed the ways of this world" (v. 2). The flesh: "All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature" (v. 3). The devil: "You followed ... the ruler of the kingdom of the air" (v. 2). So often people imagine that those who are not under bondage to Christ are free. But Paul says just the opposite, that spiritual death involves being enslaved to the world, the flesh and the devil. Many people are scarcely aware of the bondage they have to the world. J. B. Phillips describes them as those who are "drifting along the stream of the world's idea of living." In our day we badly need to establish what John Stott has called a Christian counterculture, a way of living that makes us refuse to be in bondage to the fashions of a godless world or to the majority culture.
There was an advertisement that appeared in Britain sometime ago which was very significant to me. It asked a question about a product it was advertising. (I shall not give them the benefit of advertising by telling you what it was.) The question that was asked was this. "Can three million American women be wrong?" Now that's a very interesting question. The answer to it is, of course, definitely! And considering the particular product, it is ninety-nine percent certain that they were wrong. But the idea, you see, was this: If three million American women have been conned by this, can you avoid being conned as well?
We need to be aware that the world makes its approach to us in all sorts of subliminal ways. This is what the apostle is saying. The mark of spiritual death in our society is that people are following the wrong things. They are "following the ways of this world" (v 2). They are following the desires and thoughts of the flesh (v. 3). They are following "the ruler of the kingdom of the air" (v. 2). The world, the devil and the flesh. When we follow these things, they enslave us.
In the second half of verse 3 Paul tells that spiritual death not only involves a solemn judgment and brings a sinister bondage; it also confers a dreadful status. Like the rest of humanity, we were by nature objects of wrath. That is the real horror of spiritual death and of being without Christ. The essence of what is serious about sin is not what it does to us - ghastly though that can be. Nor is it what it does to other people - though as a pastor of an urban church, I often have the wreckage of what sin does to other people washed up on my front door.
But that is not what makes sin really serious. The most serious thing of all about sin is what it does to God. It brings down his active, holy wrath on sinners. That's what makes it so serious to be outside of Christ. Those outside of Christ have no shelter from the wrath of our holy God. And that's where Paul says all of us were by nature.
This was our position by nature. No wonder Paul introduces what has happened to us when we became Christians with two great words which begin the Greek of verse 4: "But God." The NIV places "because of his great love for us" between the conjunction and the word God, but the Greek has simply "but God." We were both dead and without hope in a situation that was utterly filled with despair. But God has performed the miracle of his grace by doing that which no one else can do. He has raised us from this spiritual death into spiritual life.
Notice the four words in verses 4-5: "God made us alive." If you are a Christian, nothing less than this has happened to you. "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 ... and God raised us up with Christ." So it is not just that we have committed our lives to Christ, although we have if we are Christians. It is not just that we have received him into our hearts, although we have done this too if we are Christians. It is that God has resurrected us out of a spiritual grave into newness of life.
The real picture of what has happened to us is the picture of Lazarus in the grave. Remember that Jesus came to him and called down into the dark hopelessness of that place of death, and he said, "Lazarus, come forth!" And as they all stood with bated breath, Lazarus emerged out of the tomb and into, newness of life. And from the dark tomb of what we were by nature, God has called us and drawn us and brought us into new life in Jesus Christ.
That is why we glory in Christ Jesus. That is why we thrill at the knowledge that we are children of God. The New Testament ransacks the universe for comparisons that will be adequate to describe what has happened to us when we became God's children. And the only two possible comparisons are the creation of the universe at the beginning and the resurrection of Jesus on the third day. So Paul says the same God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts (2 Cor 4). And the same God who raised the Lord Jesus from the grave and broke its bondage over him has raised us in Jesus into newness of life.
We are resurrected people. When we celebrate the resurrection on the Lord's Day or on Easter, we are not just celebrating something that happened in history, although it did. We are not just celebrating something that happened to Jesus. Easter is something that happens to us when we are raised into newness of life in Jesus Christ. And the Lord's Day morning is a day for the Lord's people to truly rejoice. God has raised us and has re-created us in Christ Jesus. We need our minds expanded to grasp the glory of what his redeeming work in our lives really means.
God made us alive with Christ by raising us together with Christ (vv. 5-6). 'So we are not just spectators of Christ's resurrection, we are participants. And every spiritual blessing that God has for us is found in Christ. God unites us to Jesus as branches to a vine, as limbs to a body, so that all that he is and all that he has wrought in his death and resurrection and ascension become ours through him. That's why the real meaning of faith is that we believe into the Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture tells us that our union with Christ is a faith union. And when we believe, we believe into the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is also a spiritual union, because we are all baptized into the one body by the same Spirit. The Holy Spirit baptizes or unites us to the body of Christ when we are regenerated. Thus we share in the glory of Christ's resurrection. So Paul says we are no longer dead; we are made alive in Christ. We are, no longer under judgment, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. We are no longer in bondage; we are free in Christ. We are no longer under God's wrath, because in Christ we are under his smile. Indeed, Paul describes our position in verse 6 as seated in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. That is the sphere in which we have access to him, and enter into some foretaste of his glory.
Now the next question is why has God done all this? The perfect answer is found in the word which occurs twice in verses 7 and 8. It's simply the word grace. The apostle says that God has done this "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. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." That is God's motive in salvation. His motive is to be found in nothing outside of himself.
This is what Paul emphasizes again in verses 8-10. Salvation is neither a reward for any form of human merit nor the result of any form of human effort. It is the gift of God. It is the creation of God, and we are his workmanship. Self-display and self-boasting are totally foreign to Christian salvation and to the world of the heavenly places. There will be display in heaven. But it will be a display of God's glory and grace. There will be boasting in heaven, but it will be boasting of the exploits of God and of the Lamb, who alone are worthy.
Our Reconciliation through Christ
In verses 11-22 Paul describes the second major category of Christian experience. We who have been made alive in Christ have also been brought near in Christ. Once again Paul urges us to remember what our condition was before the grace of God touched us. In verse 12 he writes, "Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world." There are some things Scripture commands us to forget and never remember. But there is one thing we are to remember and never forget - what we were before God's grace reached us.
In verses 12-13 Paul emphasizes such words as separate, excluded, foreigners and faraway. He identifies the second element in the plight of humanity as our alienation from God, from Christ, from God's people and God's promises. This is a dreadful catalog of exclusion and alienation from everything that brings hope.
Paul is really tracing our spiritual biography in three stages. Stage one: We were separated from Christ, alienated from God and his people and without hope in the world (v.12). Stage two: By the death of Jesus on the cross, he has reconciled us to God and to each other. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ" (v. 13). Stage three is the result of this: "You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household" (v. 19). These three stages are marked out in the NIV with the three phrases at that time(v. 12), but now (v. 13) and consequently (v. 19). To stage one we could give the title "Alienation," to stage two the title "Reconciliation," and to stage three the title "Habitation."
1. Alienation. Alienation is a problem that many have identified as modern. Indeed, it has become quite an "in" word in intellectual circles. It's a psychological problem because people are alienated from themselves. It's a sociological problem because people are alienated from each other. It's an ecological problem because people are alienated from their environment. It's an economic problem because workers are alienated from the decision-making processes. Rousseau described it politically. The younger Marx described it sociologically. The secular existentialists described it philosophically. Alienation has become a common feature of modem thinking.
But here Paul tells us what we desperately need to see, that the ultimate, fundamental alienation is neither sociological nor psychological nor economic; it is theological. It is the alienation of people from God. "You were separate from Christ ... and without God in the world." That's the real alienation from which every other form of alienation is derived.
The separation of which Paul speaks has two dimensions. It's a spiritual alienation of all people - both Jews and Gentiles - from God because of sin. But it is also a human alienation of Jews and Gentiles from each other. These two separations were symbolized in the temple to which Paul refers in verse 21. (He speaks of God building a holy temple in the Lord, and we are joined as stones in it.)
There were two significant barriers in the temple. There was a great dividing wall of hostility which separated the Jews from the court of the Gentiles (v.14). There was a notice there threatening the death penalty to any Gentile who breached it. But there was another great dividing barrier in the temple, a great veil which separated not Jews from Gentiles, but all people from God and from the holy place where he dwelt. That was the permanent symbol of our alienation from God.
Let me say a word about the alienation of Jews and Gentiles from each other, because it is less familiar to us today. These two groups experienced a fierce, interpersonal hostility. Of course the distinction between Jews and Gentiles was one that God himself had made, because he chose the Jews as a nation, and he made them a separate, privileged people to whom he gave his covenant, his promises and the Messiah himself. But the hostility between Jews and Gentiles was not God's idea. Indeed, God favored the Jewish nation, not that they might monopolize his gifts, but that they might be missionaries to the world. So in Genesis 12:3 God's initial promise to Abraham is "in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Isaiah 49:6 reiterates that promise as the Lord says, "I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."
Sadly; the Jews became obsessed with privilege and ignored responsibility. The Gentiles were rejected and were regarded as inferior because they did not have the outward symbols. According to verse 11 the Gentiles were called the "uncircumcised" by the Jews, who called themselves "the circumcision." So the Gentiles remained, in William Hendrickson's striking paraphrase of verse 12, "Christless, stateless, friendless, hopeless, and godless."
The Jewish tragedy is the sad picture of a people who refused God's call to be missionaries. Is this not a great danger for us? We can look at teaching like this and forget that there can be a tragedy in our generation if we refuse to take the burden of the world on our hearts.
2. Reconciliation. Verse 13 states, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were faraway have been brought near through the blood of Christ." The blood of Jesus Christ reconciles both Jewish and Gentile sinners to God and unites them together in Christ. Verse 14 goes on to say, "He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations." That is, Christ has dealt with the law's curse, he has borne its penalty. "His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility" (vv. 1516). This whole concept of reconciliation means that banished sinners can only have access to a holy God through the blood of Christ, who in his death bears the ultimate results of our alienation from God against sin and brings us reconciliation.
We need to go to the Old Testament to understand the meaning of reconciliation. Leviticus 16 describes what happened on the Day of Atonement. Two animals were taken for sacrifice, not just one. The High Priest first took a lamb, and laid his hands on it. Symbolically he laid all the sin and guilt of the people on that lamb, then sacrificed it as a sin offering to God. The lamb's blood was shed as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin: The other animal was not slain. The priest also laid his hands on it, but he didn't kill it. Symbolically he transferred the guilt of the people to this animal, commonly called the scapegoat, and then the animal was led out into the wilderness. It was taken to a place of utter isolation, a place that was outside the camp, a place representing the garbage heap of their national life. There it was let loose in the barren wilderness.
Our Lord Jesus fulfilled both of these pictures and types. He is the Lamb of God who was slain, whose blood was shed, the Lamb without blemish and spot. But he is also the one who suffered outside the camp, who was taken into the far, distant place of alienation from God and all humanity, from the depths of which he cried to his Father, "My God, my God, why have you' forsaken me?" The cross teaches us the meaning of alienation. Our Lord Jesus tasted all its ghastly bitterness, the reality of being cast out from the presence of God and of bearing the wrath of God on his soul. God's beloved Son became the object of his wrath, so that we who were the objects of his wrath might become the children of his love. That's what God has done in Jesus Christ. It's breathtaking! He is our peace. He has destroyed the barrier by entering into it.
Christ also makes peace between Jew and Gentile by bringing them both to the cross. "He himself is our peace," Paul writes, "who has made the two one" (v. 14). His purpose is to create a new society and a new humanity, which is the Christian church, the body of Christ. That is what Jesus was beginning to do. That is what his death on the cross was inaugurating. It is in his body alone that all hostilities are ultimately and radically dealt with. Today we hear so much about revolution, but there is no revolution radical enough to deal with our problems except the revolution of Jesus.
3. Habitation. Verses 19-22 describe God's new society, the church, in three ways. It is God's people: "You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people" (v. 19). It is God's household or family: "You are ... members of God's household" (v.19). And it is God's temple: "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (vv. 20-22). That is what God is doing in the world. He is creating the church to be a habitation, of God where his presence is known, where men and women will increase in the knowledge of him because there he will reveal himself, where people will become aware that the living God is among his people. God is building us into such a temple.
I was in Colorado Springs earlier this year, and the hotel I was staying in was being rebuilt. There was a lot of dust around and some inconvenience about not being able to go through some of the corridors. But they had a notice up which met me again and again as I was going through the hotel. It said this: "Please be patient with us. We are under reconstruction." As I was walking along the corridor the first morning, I thought, "Blessed be God. So am I." We are under reconstruction. The living God is building us into a new society and into a new temple for his glory. We need to say to one another, "Please be patient. I am under reconstruction." God is building us into a temple, a dwelling place, a habitation for himself and for his glory. And one day, by his grace (for he is supervising the work himself), he will complete it, and we shall be truly a habitation for God. This is what God is doing in the world today. He is creating a new society, and we, who have been resurrected and reconciled, are part of it for the glory and praise of his great name. Amen.
[in 1984] Eric Alexander [was] minister of St. George's-Tron Parish Church in Glasgow, Scotland, an urban church with a large student ministry. Former president of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) in Great Britain, he served as the chairman of the Scottish Council of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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