Title: The Gift of Salvation
Content If you accept Jesus Christ, you will be saved and become a child of God (John 1:12). Today's text repeats this fact. Ephesians 1:22-23 is our confession of faith. God made all things subject to Jesus. God exalted Jesus above all things. God has given us this kind of Jesus as a gift. “And he put all things under his feet, and gave him head over all things to the church” (1:22). As a result, we become his body and become full of the life of Jesus. “The church is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:23) because Christ, the head of the church, gives life to us united by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
How did this salvation come about? Ephesians 2:1-10 explains this.
1. Before receiving Jesus as a gift, we were dead to God (2:1-3).
1) We have died in our transgressions, that is, disobedience and sins. Not this biological death here. It means the death of a relationship. It means that your relationship with God, who is the Spirit, has ended.
2) Spiritually, in the state of death, we followed the ruler of the power of the air, the devil. The devil has ruled over us with the customs of this world and the lusts of the flesh.
3) As a result, we were living under the wrath of God.
2. God has given us salvation in Christ Jesus (2:6-7).
“We who were dead in trespasses made us alive in Christ Jesus (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavens in Christ Jesus”
God has given us Jesus. Those who have accepted Jesus can be saved in Jesus Christ. Because God raised us from our trespasses in Christ Jesus and raised us up together and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The verb tense used here emphasizes the fact that God has already worked out our salvation through the redemptive work of Christ Jesus. From God's point of view, I want you to believe that we are already risen in Christ Jesus and are seated at the right hand of God in heaven.
3. God saved us by grace because of love (vv. 4, 7-9).
The reason He saved us is not in us. It is entirely in God. It is God's grace. We are saved only by faith. Therefore, we can never boast of ourselves. We should be proud of the riches of God's grace.
Since we have been re-created by God and become His people, now we must live for God (2:10).