98: What Baptism Has to Do with Ephesians 2:5-7

I'm Eddie Lawrence and this is Ready for Eternity, a podcast and blog for inquisitive Bible students. Paul opened Ephesians 2 with a grim picture. We were dead. Not spiritual zombies who couldn't respond to God, but people walking a road that ended in judgment and death.

The Deadness of Sin and the Road to Judgment

We followed the flesh. Not a sinful physical body and not an inherited corrupt nature, but a capacity for sin that every person carries and acts on by choice. We were by nature children of wrath, not because we inherited guilt at birth and not because we inherited a corrupt or sinful nature, but because a life spent chasing selfish desire naturally leads to death.

Then Paul writes two of the most important words in the whole letter of Ephesians, but God. In verse 4, mercy steps into our story and changes where it was headed. Verses 5 -7 of chapter 2 show us how.

Made Alive with Christ and Baptism in Romans 6

Paul says God made us alive together with Christ. Look closely at that wording. Paul doesn't say we were made alive in Christ. The phrase in Christ appears constantly in this letter, but not here. Instead, he says we were made alive with Christ.

That specific phrase points back to Romans chapter 6 verses 4 -5 where Paul describes baptism. He said we are buried with Christ in death and just as he was raised, we now walk a new kind of life. This isn't an accident of phrasing.

Paul is describing baptism here. In the water, we die with Christ. We leave the old road behind and the one heading toward judgment and death. Then we rise with him into new life. Ephesians 2 -5 and Romans 6 use the same picture because they describe the same event.

What Salvation Rescues Us From

But what is it that we're saved from exactly? Paul doesn't leave the word saved vague. Look back at verses 1 -3. We were on a road that would have ended in eternal death. We followed the ruler of the power of the air, that is, the devil.

And because of what we did under his influence, we were children of wrath, headed toward the fate that the title implies. God's mercy didn't simply make our lives a little better. It pulled us off the road we were on.

That's the full weight of the word saved here. Grace did not repair a flaw we were born with. Grace rescued us from where we were going. Verse 6 goes further still. We aren't just made alive and raised.

We are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. And again, as before in Ephesians, this isn't talking about a place. It's talking about status or position. We went from serving a tyrant, the devil, and facing the penalty that service carried, from that to sharing in Christ's own honored place.

Daniel described the righteous shining like the brightness of the heavens, like the stars forever and ever in Daniel, chapter 12, verse 3. And Jesus said something almost identical. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father, in Matthew 13, 43.

Paul is painting the same picture. The reversal from wrath to honor could not be more complete. But he didn't just do this for us. Verse 7 tells us why God did all this. He didn't rescue us only for our good.

He also did it to put his grace on display. Andrew Lincoln explains it well. He said,.

What God has done in making believers alive with Christ, raising them up with him and seating them with him in the heavenly realms, he has done not only for their sake, but also as part of the larger purpose of displaying the richness of his grace.

This balances what Paul said earlier in the chapter. His wrath shows his justice. Our rescue shows his mercy and the reward that waits for those who love him. Both truths about God stand side by side in this passage.

Ephesians 2, Baptism, and the Calvinist Reading

Calvinism teaches that made alive is a description of God invisibly regenerating a sinner who can't respond on his own before the sinner is even able to believe. But Paul frames this moment in the language of baptism, a step scripture consistently ties to belief.

This isn't a hidden work done to someone incapable of responding. It's a real rescue that takes place when a person unites with Christ in death and raises to walk in the newness of life. Read this way, the passage describes God rescuing someone from a path they were on, not God overriding someone's will who never chose to choose him.

So what's the takeaway? We were headed somewhere. Wrath was not a label stamped on us at birth. It was the road to death our decisions put us on. In baptism, we died to that way of living and rose to a new one.

God didn't just spare us from eternal death. He did much more. He raised us, gave us a new status and standing, and put his own generosity on display in the process. That's not a small rescue. That is the gospel.