If you have your Bibles, we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 2 this morning.

Considering something Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

And Paul writes, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,

following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,

the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. Like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved. Saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I mentioned a couple of months ago, when Jessica was in, in China,

I had the bright idea that I should get a dog and not tell her. And I thought this is going to be a great surprise, you know, and she texted me the bank statement. What is this bank statement from the animal shelter? And so I got in a lot of trouble. I’m still getting out of trouble on that one. But the day that we got that dog, we went to the store. My younger sister was with me, and we’re at the store, and we’re just getting some basic things you need, you know, for a dog.

And these people in this aisle come up to us,

and they’re like, you too? Like, you should get a dog. We just got a dog. I mean, they looked a mess. A mess. They were in pajamas, like, you know, morning hair. And they went on and on to me and my sister about the right kind of food they’re giving their dog and the best kind of toys on the market and all the right medicines. And they’re saying, we’re just not getting any sleep right now, but y’all hang in there. Y’all make it through. We’re doing our best. And I’m thinking, like, is it a dog or a baby? Like, what are you taking care of that you’re putting this much energy in? And Elena and I, we had to slowly, like, step backwards. And we’re like, all right. And so we were, like, out of the aisle. And like, are they gone yet? Are they gone? Because, like, we had to go get our stuff, but they just would not stop talking about this dog. And we thought, oh, my gosh. Like, I’ve never seen someone. Like, y’all should get involved in foster care. Like, if you’re going to love something that much, it should be like a real person, like a baby. Thank you. Not a dog. And it’s a reminder that people can find their identity.

People can find their purpose in a great variety of things. That reminded me of that C.S. Lewis quote, the woman who makes a dog the center of her life loses both her human dignity and the proper pleasure of dog keeping. So things that are second tier in life, we often make first tier. But it’s not dogs. It’s not dogs. It’s not dogs. Sometimes, if you’re a dog person, it’s good to be a dog person, but there’s a level there. Sometimes it’s another person.

Sometimes it’s a job.

Sometimes our identity is in objects and what we can get and what we can accrue. Sometimes it’s money. Sometimes our identity is in things we hate, like what people think about us and we constantly live under the burden of what do people think about me. So we all are wired by God to have identity. To have a sense of purpose, a sense of satisfaction, a very real sense of meaning in something. You can’t get out of that knowing there’s identity less.

And Paul’s writing the Ephesians largely to talk about his identity. Largely to talk about their identity. Ephesians is kind of like one big blabbermouth from Paul about how great he thinks his identity is, how great he thinks their identity is, and he doesn’t want them to forget, just how great their identity in Christ is. And Paul knows, friends, but we need to remember time and time again. We need a vivid reminder often of what that identity is.

What God did, what Christ did to give us such a precious identity. So I want us to look again here in chapter 2, 1-10 and see how Paul basically just brags in 10 verses, about the greatness of this identity he has in Christ. And I pray this morning you and I are awakened to the joy of what it means to have the very same identity.

He says in verse 1, “…and you were dead

in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived, in the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” So Paul’s words are here vivid. He’s very loud. These are extravagant words. He’s very amplified. He’s very brash. He’s using very stark terms in what he’s talking about. That’s Paul’s description. And he’s not doing it because he just loves drama, like Paul’s just trying to be a drama queen. He’s doing it because he wants them to remember, hey, this is how bad things were for you. This is really what it means to be a human in this universe. There’s one universe, this one. There’s one world, this one. There’s one humanity, ours. This was your plight. Don’t forget how low we were. And so what he does really in this passage, he breaks up in two things. He describes in very extravagant terms the kingdom of man,

and then secondly, the kingdom of God. And if you’ve been with us as we’ve been going through Matthew, you know the kingdom of God is the spiritual rule and reign of God in our hearts, minds, and lives. So he starts with the kingdom, the kingdom of man. And as he described it there in verses 1-3, he says, this is a picture of humanity minus God. It’s a state of utter spiritual poverty and spiritual dullness. Remember we’ve said because of what happened in the garden, man lost his spiritual ability and desire to know God, to love God, to like what God is like. Rather, our spirits, because they’re broken, they’re bent because of sin, that means we live lives in our body that are displeasing to God. We have bad, bad spirits that lead us to do bad things. So this is man’s kingdom. We live opposite to how God desires us to live. And worst of all, we’re powerless to change that. But he goes on to say, it’s not like you’re just against God. Paul’s very, again, explicit. He says, you are under the prince of the power of the air. The spirit that was at work in you once still is at work in the sons of disobedience in the world. So that is Paul saying, if you’re not in Christ, if you’re not a Christian, you are under the influence of Satan. You are under the influence of demonic forces. You are in darkness. And I think when we hear that, we’re like, that’s a little too stark. That’s too much. I know not everybody’s a Christian, but there are good people out there. So let’s not call them under Satan. That’s harsh. It’s not harsh if you grab really what Paul is talking about here. Sometimes we like to say, oh, he or she, that’s good people. Oh, she’s a good person. Three things on that. One, we all have spiritual debts we cannot pay.

We spiritually sinned against God and there’s nothing in our body we could do to ever pay for that spiritual debt. So regardless of how much good you ever tried to do, it would never atone or make up for your spiritual deficit. That’s one. Two, while you may think someone is good, the Scriptures say the human heart above all things is deceitful. In other words, so often we don’t realize our own motives for why we do what we do. A lot of times, though someone seems to do a good thing, it’s because they feel guilty, they’ve been given more money and a higher and better station in life, so they’re doing it because they feel bad. That’s not the right reason to do good. Sometimes people do good because they’re attaining to a higher ideal version of themselves. Sometimes people do good because they want people around them to say, hey, that’s a good person. None of these are good reasons for doing good. They’re all wrong reasons for doing the right things. Still yet, they’re not right reasons. They’re wrong motives, meaning when you’re outside of Christ, you really can’t do good. Jesus said, don’t call anybody good. Only call God good. The prophet Isaiah said, none are righteous, no, not one. And here’s the third thought on being under Satan. Satan is not trying to get everyone to paint their fingernails black and put on an eyeliner and wear black clothes only and wear a pentagram on your chest. That’s not what he’s trying to do. If holiness and righteousness is one straight line, Satan just wants it to be bent out just a little, almost like an unnoticed, he’s not trying to get your life to be a zigzag.

So in fact, he would rather you think you’re not worshiping him all the while you’re not worshiping Jesus, which is enough for him.

So we must conclude, biblically, no one’s good, not one. And Paul says, you’re all guilty of this. If you’re in the church, this is who you are. If you’re not in the church, this is who you are. We’re under the wrath of God for this. God’s punitive judgment, His legal action must be taken against every soul who’s been this way. God has to do that because He’s just. He must judge us according to His truth. And if God doesn’t have ups and downs, rights and wrongs, blacks and whites, friends, in the world, the universe is just a big moving circle of what God feels in the moment. But God’s not feeling in the moment. God is unchangeable. And His truth is unchanging. So we all have to be judged to that unchanging standard.

And so we can’t help ourselves out of this plight. Paul’s being punchy because what Paul has to say is punchy. It’s bleak because it’s bleak. It’s discouraging because it’s discouraging. Depressing is depressing. Hopeless is hopeless. It’s that bad. We just need to grab that and not try to wiggle out of it.

But it doesn’t stop with 1-3.

It goes on to 4-7. But God, being rich, rich in mercy and because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So Paul doesn’t get any less amplified or extravagant in verse 4. 4-7. The change is, it’s the good stuff. 1-3 was the bad stuff. Paul’s still as much overblown in his rhetoric, but this time it’s stuff to smile about. It’s stuff to rejoice about. It’s stuff to grab and hold on to. If things were that bad in 1-3, I don’t need a loophole. I don’t need a band-aid. I need some kind of out of the blue, I didn’t see that coming kind of solution. If having my identity, a person is so wrong, if having my identity and myself is wrong in stuff, in things, in whatever you can find your identity in, Paul, I need you to give me something so much better for my identity to be and to deal with this problem I’m under because of the wrath of God and the sin of my life. And it is better.

Paul says that God of His own volition, of His own free will, He does something to us. God does something for us.

What God does is He raises us to new life with Jesus.

God’s inexhaustible love and mercy hasn’t left us in 1-3. God has done something to make us 4-7 kind of people. And here’s what Jesus did, and I want you to hold on to it. Jesus, God, made Jesus’ death and resurrection our death and resurrection. And that sounds really squirrely, but it’s what the Bible says. And I want you to see how Paul says it in Romans 6, verse 4. He says, We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him, that’s Jesus, in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. So that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we die with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. But the problem with that is I don’t ever remember, do you? Getting up on a cross and dying?

I don’t ever remember this. I don’t remember suffering. I don’t remember being spat on. I don’t remember being punched in the face. I don’t remember my beard being ripped out, which would really hurt. I don’t remember any of this, but the Bible says it’s my death. But I see only Jesus did this. Only Jesus was buried. Only Jesus was raised to new life. So how does what Jesus did of His own have anything to do with you and I?

That’s really the question here. It’s the crux.

Here’s how. The Scriptures tell us that when we would just place faith in Jesus, if we would believe in and believe Jesus that He is the Son of God, that He was God’s perfect sacrifice to take away our sin, if I would look at Jesus on the cross and see in Jesus hanging on the cross all of my sins, you look at Jesus on the cross, you see all of your sins, and then you believe that Jesus died with all your sins. The law says when someone dies with sin, they’re no longer responsible for that sin. It’s gone. It’s dead. So Jesus carried all my sin and your sin. He died. So when He came back to life, where’s the sin? We died to it. Where’s death? He died to death. He was raised back to life. Jesus did that. The Bible says if I would believe in Jesus and trust Him that He really did that for me, God would look on my life. He would look at Chad. He would look at Chase. He would look at me. He would look at Haley. He would look at Jordan. He would look at Alicia. And He would say, I don’t see that life. I don’t identify you with the life you live. I don’t identify you with from birth till adult. I don’t see any of that. What I see when I look at you, I identify you with the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I can only see Jesus when I look at you. I can only identify you with Christ’s life. And friends, if God is only willing to then identify you with Jesus, you know what that means? It means you have a new identity. And your identity then is only Jesus. The Father sees us in His Son Jesus. He has put us to Jesus. The Bible says the Spirit unites us to Jesus’ Spirit. We become one with Christ.

We have a share in His life.

We become new things. We become new creations. Jesus didn’t do a good thing for us. Jesus literally gave Himself to us that we would be joined, and united with Him. It’s a great mystery. What we once loved, we hate. And what we once hated, we now love. The beauty of God, which was His holiness that we found repulsive, now in Christ we find it to be only beautiful. We see in God because of Christ what I desire to have, and what I desire to look like. The Apostle Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live,

but it’s Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live, I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. So friends, you see, did Paul die on a cross? No.

But yes. Did you die on a cross? No. But the Scriptures say if you believe and trust in Jesus, yes, you have. God attributes the victory of Christ to you. Because of Jesus, we live in a new reality with a new identity. And in that new reality, Christ is Lord. And our identity is that of with Christ, reigning over sin, reigning over death, sharing in His joy, sharing in His righteousness, sharing in His power, knowing the blessings of real, eternal life. Because of Jesus, friends, we can love God again with our hearts and our minds and our souls. It’s not that we could do it. Only Jesus could do it. So, God gave us Jesus. See how that works? Amen. I’m never aspiring to be like Christ. I’m always aspiring to have more of Christ produced in me. I think sometimes our theology, it’s not inaccurate. It’s narrow. Think about Jesus did a good thing for me. Like, thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for me. I appreciate that. I’ll remember you forever. Jesus didn’t give us salvation. Jesus gave Him Himself. He gave Himself to us. Christ is my life. So, if any theology, if any pastor, if any religion could say you can be saved outside, external from Christ, friends, that’s a lie. The Bible only teaches salvation comes through being united with Jesus.

Friends, we are joined in mind and action with Christ.

And I think at that point, it’s like, can I explain that any better? No. I can’t even begin to explain it. It’s a great mystery. But just because it’s a great mystery doesn’t mean I don’t want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. That’s what Paul says. He says, I want to know Christ. And I want to know the power of His resurrection.

See how he says it in Philippians 3, verse 8. He says, Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found, here it is, in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and may share His sufferings becoming like Him in His death that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection

from the dead. Friends, we have life. There is only life in Jesus. You don’t have life by agreeing to the truths of Scripture. You don’t have life by being a religious person. You have life when you surrender to and are justified and united with Christ in His crucifixion, in His death, and in His resurrection.

And if it’s not enough,

Paul says, you already have a heavenly home with Him. It’s coming. It’s going to be better. It’s going to be better. You know what it’s like? It’s like those little old ladies at Costco.

They stand, they get those samples out, you know, like take some today and you try it. It’s like a little piece of prime rib and it’s so good. And then you go, you go around to buy it and you’re like, oh, I don’t have prime rib money. That’s right. And so you don’t take it home. But Jesus is saying, hey, right now, you’re sealed with My Spirit. I already see you as in Christ. It’s already true you have citizenship in Heaven. It’s already true that I’m preparing a home for you. It’s already true that I’m readying Heaven for you that you can know Christ fuller and realer and just have life abundant in Jesus. Right now, the smallest taste of Jesus and the Spirit, boy, that’s satisfying. But as satisfying as it is now, it’s going to be so much better. Someday. Friends, this is Paul’s good news. This is Paul’s boast. This is what Paul lives for. This is what the Ephesians have to live for. This is what we must live for. Christ is the only way.

Don’t you think if it’s true, we would truly be a different people than the rest of the world? If Jesus was truly living inside of us?

I wish it weren’t so, but parenthood is often a place where the Lord convicts me of my non-Jesus-like behavior.

And one thing in particular the Lord’s been really convicting me of lately is gentleness.

So often,

I’m not gentle with my children. And children need to be disciplined and there’s a time to be serious. But I don’t need to be so harsh all the time and do this, don’t do that, and have such a short temper. Christ is, is gentle. Christ is the shepherd that leads us by the still waters. Christ is the shepherd that holds His sheep close to His chest. Christ is the one that on the cross said, Father, forgive them, they know that will do. Jesus is gentle. Jesus is the full embodiment of the fruits of the Spirit. If Christ is so to me, should I not be seeing that Christ produced in me that I would be so with my children? And that’s one facet, friends, of where, if we’re truly in Christ, we’ll be convicted to look like Christ. A number of ways that we could talk about that, but you must consider time and time again, do you often live like your union with Christ never happened? Which is a fancy way of saying, stop being influenced by the world. Stop being influenced by your own sinful flesh. Stop living as if Jesus didn’t bleed and die on the cross. Jesus died and was raised to new life and trusting in Him, it doesn’t just give you some ticket out of hell and into heaven, it gives you the power and authority in Christ to live like Christ, like Christ right now. It’s authority, it’s power that we often willingly give up because we don’t take the time to remember this Christ, bask in this Christ, live in the power of this Christ, and He offers it freely. It reminds me of Charles Spurgeon saying, God offers us a feast on the table and we run out the door and just grab a roll. And Jesus is saying, sit down and have a feast with me, and know me, and be full of me, be satisfied. Jesus is not trying to keep us from full life. We oftentimes do it to ourselves.

And I will forever be the ringing bell of the great dangers of living in the deep south. And I’ve said this before, it’s very dangerous to live where we live. You live in a place where there’s a church on every corner, there’s a variety of church types, you find exactly what you like, you find exactly what you want, find a church where they kind of let you be you in your space, and it stops being about Jesus being produced in you, and it looks more like, like your preference is being forced on Jesus’ church.

It’s not what the church exists for. The church exists to make us, help us grow up in Jesus.

Do you know Jesus? I’m not asking you if you’ve agreed to the doctrines of the Christian faith, but is the Spirit of Christ living within you now? Have you been raised with, have you been united with the very person of Jesus? That’s what matters. That’s what matters.

In verse 8 of chapter 2, Paul goes on to say,

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of work, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should,

so that no one may boast. So Paul is very quick to remind us, your life in Jesus, your salvation, you didn’t do that. God did that. It’s attributable to God alone. The process of salvation from the grace of God that willed it, even to the gift of faith to believe, we can only say thank you to God. I can never look at myself in the mirror and say, good job, you did that. I didn’t do that. Jesus did that. My boast then, Paul says, is just this. My boast is in Jesus. Who Jesus is. What Jesus did. This new identity that’s been crafted in Christ. It is something to say thank you to Jesus for Him doing. I’m His workmanship. Created in Him. But friends, having a new identity in Jesus then, doesn’t mean I simply say I’m something different. It means that it works itself out in my life, that I would very much so have a very different lifestyle. If I’m truly united with Jesus, it means I’ll be prompted, I’ll be prompted to live different. I’ll be prompted to do good. I’m no longer, I’m in my own little self-centered kingdom. Life’s all about me and my identity and how I can live for the moment, like we talked about last week. And man, I love this stuff or this person. It’s all about me and what I want. I’m under the influence of the enemy. That’s all gone now. My life’s been reordered. It’s been rearranged to look like Jesus, to please God. And when my life looks like Jesus, to please God, you know what that looks like? It looks like loving people. It looks like sacrificing myself completely for the betterment and sake of those around me. So grace is not the fruit. It’s the root. Grace is the root of my salvation, but the works produce from it a certain fruit, a genuine test of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We can’t work to get God’s grace, but if we have truly experienced the grace of God freely, there will be proof and there will be a testimony in how we do good in our lives around us. James says, this is a very popular verse in James 1.27, he says, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. So if you’re a Christian, you don’t have an excuse for either an extreme over passivity, nor is there, an excuse for this overactive life. You cannot have an extreme passive life where you’re a Christian, it’s bound up in doctrines and what I believe people say, very silly things like, my faith is private. That’s a very silly thing to say. Your faith is not private, nor is it overactive where your faith is based on. Your faith is only worth as much good as you can do for God. That’s not the case at all. Jesus has resurrected our whole person so that I both believe right and in believing right, I do right. It’s the difference between knowing the truth and loving the truth. You can know the truth until you’re blue in the face, but knowing things doesn’t change you. What changes you, Jesus says, is loving things. So if I love the truth, or I love the person of Jesus, that’s what’s going to lead me to do right for the right reasons. And this goes back to motives. So the motive for doing good to others can only be, well, because I’m rooted in Christ, I’ve experienced Christ’s love, I want other people to know Christ’s love and hear the gospel, that’s the only good reason. So I need to love Christ, I need to love my union for that to work itself out properly in how I do good. We are reflections of God’s grace to the world around us. And when you look at the life of Jesus, does Jesus do good? Jesus does a lot of good. Jesus spends a lot of His ministry helping people. Just say it in the simplest terms, whatever you want to call it, mercy ministry, helping people, charity. Jesus does a lot of charity, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t the end. It was always a means. It was to the end of proclaiming what? The kingdom. Repent for the kingdom of God. Jesus wanted this message to really be the hallmark of His ministry. And for us living in a secular culture that values charity, we live in a culture that values

philanthropic work, it’s important to remember Christ has not called us as the church to give people their best life now.

Not at all. Christ has called us to tell people about the best life they can have in Jesus. And so often, doing good, sincerely helping people, loving people, it’s a huge doorway into saying that, speaking the gospel into their life. We’re extensions of Christ.

It’s what God prepared us for. Philip Graham Ryken says this, God wants us to show active compassion through service because this is one of the surest signs that we have been saved by grace. How we treat the poor and needy indicates where we need to be. We stand with God Himself. If we don’t care to have a relationship with God, we won’t care very much about the needs of the poor. However, if we love God, then we will prove it by loving the least and the lost for Jesus’ sake. Indeed, showing mercy is such an essential mark of being a Christian that Jesus can and will use it as a test of genuine faith. The Bible is sufficient to bring salvation. However, when the word of truth is accompanied by a work of mercy, the powerful living demonstration of Christ’s love has the effect of turning up the volume on the gospel.

So, in laziness, we can say, I don’t want to help people. I believe the right things. No, friends, because we believe the right things, our lives are animated by the Spirit to go and be the hands and feet of Jesus to the world. And it’s not me only. It’s just me. It’s my thing. It’s not my thing. It’s our thing. The Bible very much so says, do good to the house, household of faith first. So, inside the church, we’re supposed to be loving one another. We’re supposed to be helping one another. We’re supposed to be showing mercy. So, when we go out as a community into the world, it’s not, hey, look at that one person. It’s look at that whole family, a weird, messed up people, loving one another, caring about one another. That gospel message they preach, it must be so authentic. It must be so real. So, that’s Christ-centered community on the mission of proclaiming the gospel with our words, and then the actions of the gospel and how we love people well. That’s what that is.

You remember that show? I don’t know if they run it still anymore. Happy Trees with Bob Ross. You remember that show? I love that show. Because this guy, you know, he’s got that soothing voice and he’s just talking. And he starts to make what looks like a mess on this canvas. But by the end of it, you’re like, how did you come up with that? It’s so beautiful. It’s like a masterpiece. And he just does this episode after episode. And it’s great. Or, you know, like those Thomas Kinkade pangs, like $10,000, you know, just to like look at one. It’s crazy. And it’s beautiful. But I think about the difference between canvas art like that and a guitar. A guitar,

it’s shaped the way that it’s shaped. You use a certain wood for a certain reason. It is beautiful, but it’s beautiful on purpose. It has a function. All of its beauty makes a sound.

And in the same way, friends, God hasn’t made us like art to hang on the wall for people to look at. He’s made us more, more like guitars so people can hear the sound and see the gospel in action. That’s what He’s done.

It is good. And I’m actually going to use you. We were driving this morning to church. I picked Chase up.

And he was like, man, yesterday, Miss Sookie, she’s just a little later in his neighborhood. I don’t think she has a lot, but she was just saying how her AC didn’t work. And so after a while, he was resting like, man, I should go help her. So he goes over there and the windows are open. And, you know, she’s just trying to survive the hot day. And can I come in? Yeah. And so eventually he goes in and he’s up in her attic and something very simple she never would have figured out, but he did it. And it’s just a picture of it. And I love you. And he said that and he didn’t know I was going to use him for an illustration. But I love him because he’s an example of living out that faith. Let me love you with my hands in hopes I can proclaim the gospel. It’s a great picture of what it means to follow Jesus, friends. It’s with our words and it’s with our lives. It’s why Tuesday night we’re going to go to Harold’s Place in Decatur and serve food and spend time with the homeless and preach the Word to them. It’s because we want to be a people reaching the lost. It’s what we’re called to do. Friends, our new identity in Christ is this. And here’s what Paul knew it was. It’s a precious gift.

It’s only that. It’s a precious gift. There’s nothing that you and I could have done to merit it.

Christ refashioned us from the inside out. His Spirit, the Spirit of God is transforming us, making us into His image. God is using us, weak, broken vessels. He’s reconditioned us to do good works for Him, to do things for Him that’s going to echo throughout eternity. When people die that don’t know Christ, they’re going to go on the ground and that’s the end of the story. But friends, now being joined to Christ, now living for the kingdom of God, now surrendering and sacrificing everything for the cause of Jesus, that’s going to go on forever. And that’s going to, that’s going to resound throughout eternity of having lived a life dedicated to, devoted to, united with Jesus.

That’s not something to spurn. That’s not something to squander. That’s not something to think little of. That’s something to receive gladly, humbly, freely, and give your whole self away for it.

We were dead. He made us alive.

We were under wrath. Now we’re under grace. We were enslaved to sin, but now we’ve been set free to reign with Christ.

Friends, salvation in Christ is a wonderful, beautiful gift. Do you know Jesus? And I don’t mean, have you heard of Him? I mean, do you know Jesus? Is He the first thought when you wake up and the last one when you go to bed? Is He your Lord? Is He your Master? Is He your friend? Is He your Savior? Is He your all in all?

Don’t wait. Don’t tarry. If you don’t know Jesus, come to Jesus. Come to gentle Jesus in your found life.