Created in Christ Jesus for Good Works

Prayer for Illumination and the Gospel of Jesus

Let's pray. Almighty Father, lead us to your words that we may find healing of heart, soul, mind in the gospel of Jesus. Be near us as we read for ourselves that Jesus has indeed died and has risen for us.

Keep us steadfast in your grace and your mercy that we may spread your love to those who haven't heard the good news and to those who have heard but have forgotten it. Let us do all that we can to win souls for you that they may go out and do the same.

We ask this in Jesus' most holy name, in whose name we pray. Amen. All right, so I'm going to cheat again this week. So last week we used the occasion of the texts to note that biblically Christians still have a sinful nature.

Salvation by Grace, Not by Works

This idea that somehow you can have a special gift from the Holy Spirit that will cancel out the original sin and make it so that you can then have a sinless, perfected life, that's bogus. And it would seem so obvious, it really would, but the reality is I've noticed in churches that where they do not make a proper distinction in law and gospel, you create a class of people who believe that they're pulling it off and they're always looking down their noses at everybody else who apparently can't seem to get their act together.

Today we're going to use the occasion of our text to drill farther into this concept that scripture teaches that we are created in Christ for good works and our good works do not merit our salvation. When you think that you have to merit your salvation by your good works, by your obedience, by whatever scheme you come up with, you are setting yourself up for major failure.

Major failure in either despair or major failure in becoming a completely obnoxious, self-righteous jerk. Now I've been down that road too. So were you raising your hand, Michael? So there's a phenomenon that gets described from time to time.

Have you guys ever heard of like a Roman Catholic guilt? The Nazarenes have this as well, right? And that is that you invest in this salvation by works scheme and at the end of it all you feel is complete guilt and you got nothing left.

And God is angry, Jesus is upset at you, and you can't seem to get that picture out of your mind. And that's a problem. That's a real problem. So it's always good to again to just consider some of the basic texts.

I cited this text in my sermon and worth reviewing in this context because when you run the verbs in the middle portion of this text it makes perfect sense. But listen to what again Paul writes in Ephesians 2 and I'm going to read 8, 9, and 10 to just frame everything.

Those words right there should tell you something. But I'm going to demonstrate from the fuller context here that that has to be the case because of how the verbs work in this section. It is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

And if you had to earn it, it's not a gift. If salvation is something you have to earn by your obedience, by your good works, by your almsgiving, by name whatever schema, making sure that you don't dance, smoke, or chew, or go with a girl that does.

That doesn't rhyme but I just messed up the poem. Oh well I was never good at that anyway. If you're doing that then it's no longer a gift. It is no longer a gift. So it is not the result of works. So works are completely ruled out.

But then you're going to note here, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. So are works mentioned in this text? Yes. Are the good works the cause of your salvation? No, they are the result of your salvation.

And you sit there and go, yeah but pastor you don't know my good works are pretty weak. Join the club. Well my good works are all soiled with sin. Yeah scripture describes our good works as filthy menstrual rags, which is really gross.

That's how it describes our good works. So there's no good work that you're going to do that isn't soiled with sin. But still regardless of that, are you saved by your works? No, not at all. Not at all.

Now if you don't have any good works, does your neighbor think that you're a Christian? No. You know, yeah that neighbor of mine he says he's a Christian. He goes to church and the only person he cares about is himself.

And that guy slanders me all the time. That guy, you know, I mean he'd rob me blind if I let him put a blindfold on me. You know, yeah there are people who the reason why they go to church is because there's good business networking that can take place at church.

They don't believe in Jesus. That's the reality of the situation. Because scripture is clear that Satan sows tares among the wheat. This is most certainly true. But all of that being said, stop focusing on them for a second.

Focus on yourself. All right. My immediate question is, do you believe? Well yeah, I believe. But I don't know if I'm doing enough. Enough what? What is it? What do you mean enough? Enough for what? No, you're not doing enough if by what you mean perfectly loving your neighbor and loving God.

And that's why we have the means of grace for forgiveness. But you got to know good works again are the result. And this perfectly accords with James Epistle. James Epistle again is focusing on Coramundo, our status before the world.

And some yahoos were basically claiming, you have, you have, you have, I have faith, you have works. And James is like scratching his head going, where'd you guys come from? Because Paul and James agree that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.

And just as the body that is not breathing is dead, faith without works is dead. You got to know faith is a living thing. It is a gift given. You have been regenerated in Christ. And so I'll make the case here.

We'll back up into the context to note that it is not the result of works. It is the gift of God. And this, this text just screams at this. So again, looking at the bad news, this is each and every one of us as we are conceived and born in sin.

And you were dead. And it's not mostly dead. It's not partially dead, mortally wounded, or anything like that. You're dead. You were dead in trespasses and sins. And once 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 we were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. That's me. That's you. That's all of us. Full stop. There's only one person who was not born by nature, a child of wrath, and that's Christ.

Most important word is in verse four, but. That's the most important word, because but seems to erase the things before it. And if we take a look at what's going on here, I always like to point it out when I review this passage.

In verse four, you know, if you know Greek, and I don't expect you to, but I'll highlight it here. In Greek, when a noun is the subject of the sentence, it comes, it appears in what's called the nominative.

So ha-de-theos. De is but, and since it's a post-positive particle, it has to come after. It can't be the first word in the sentence. So ha is the, theos is God, de is but. So it translates but God.

And if you were to translate it, it would literally be but the God. But it's in the nominative, which means that's the subject of the sentence. Every verb in the sentence then is being done by the subject, and the subject is God.

Okay, so if you're dead, are you able to do any verbs? Unless the verb is decomposing, right? You're not really able to do much, right? I always love the joke about the guy who visited Mozart's grave, and he was hearing music coming from it, and it was all this music, beautiful classical music, was all being played backwards.

And he went and told somebody, he says, yeah, I was at Mozart's grave, and I could have sworn I heard one of his, one of his works, but it was being played backwards. And they said, of course, he's decomposing.

It is the glory of love.

Why do you all look at me like you want to beat me with an inch of my life? What's wrong.

With you people? That's not true, but you may have just got bumped up a bit on my prayer list.

I'm surprised you haven't heard that. Okay. I was being repressed. Okay. All right. So who's the subject of the sentence? God. It's in the nominative, so God. God. And so now we get some descriptors regarding God.

Being rich in what? Mercy. All right. Now, I want to talk about this just for a second. When we talk about how God is normally, as opposed to when he's acting, when he's provoked. All right. Have you ever known anybody who found themselves in a situation where you saw a side of them you've never seen before?

And you went, whoa, I didn't even know you had that in you. All right. That's a good way to kind of think about this. And so when we talk about God the way he is, his normal state is kindness, love, mercy.

When God is provoked, then comes wrath. Wrath is not the state of God. Now, that's part of his nature, but the idea here is that that's the part of nature where you want to continue to test God, you want to continue to provoke him, you want to continue to test him.

Fine. You don't want his mercy, you don't want his love, you don't want his grace. Have it your way. So when God goes all Burger King on you, unless you have it your way, that's a bad thing. But when God's wrath shows up, that's not the way he is normally.

And I know that's kind of a metaphor, but the idea here is if you want to get a really good picture of what is God like, you look at Jesus on the cross, bleeding, suffering, dying for your sins. Why? Because of his great love for you.

And so you note here that it describes God as being rich in mercy. And if he's rich in mercy, is he chintzy with it? I'm going to keep all my mercy to myself. Or is he gratuitous in how he distributes out that mercy?

It's the second one, right? So God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. And so here we get this beautiful picture of God. We're dead in trespasses and sins, we're following the course of this world, we're following the passions of our sinful flesh, the devil, and everything.

But God in the midst of this, this beautiful verse, he's rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were unlovable, even when we were dead in our trespasses. Next comes the verb.

The verb made us alive together with. It takes five, five English words for one Greek verb. And it's a little bit of a of a tongue twister, if you would. Is its lexical form. Here it's just a lego word, it's just this huge word.

Made us alive together with. You were dead, God did this verb. And the verb is made us alive together with. That's the verb. Who did it? God did it. Who'd he did it to? Bad grammar. He did it to you. He did it to us.

He made us alive together with Christ. Did you make you alive? No, again, that doesn't make any sense. Dead people don't do verbs. God did the verb. He made you alive together with Christ. Why? Because of his great love, because he's rich in mercy.

Even when you were dead in your trespasses, which is complete rebellion against God and complete disobedience, God makes you alive together with Christ. And then you kind of come to the middle portion of the chiasm that's in this outline.

By grace you have been saved. Notice it does not say by grace you might be saved. It is not a subjunctive. By grace you have been saved. If I have been saved, and this is a perfect aorist, sorry, perfect passive, and it's a participle here, perfect passive, have been, have been, are continuing to be saved, you have, huh?

Pursive, perfect, passive, participle, masculine, plural, nominative. Got it? Yeah. Yep.

I don't know. Thrown off by the present tense of estin as opposed to the past, the participle being.

In the past tense. That's correct. Greek. Yep. Female, Trixie. So you have been, are being saved. Does this say if I try hard enough I can be? This says you have already been. He has made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. And now comes your next verb. Raised us up with him. All right. Raised us up, which is sun egeren. Actually sun egero is your lexical verb. But here this one says he has raised us up.

Who's doing the verbs? God is. So God has made us alive together with Christ, he has raised us up with Christ, and he has seated us with him, which is your next verb. Again, these are just a little bit tricky because of how lego together they, these are like long words, and they're very, very rare in the way they appear.

And then this sug kathidzo, seated us with him. Who did all the verbs? God. Why? Because of his great love. Because he's rich in mercy. He made us alive together with Christ. He raised us up with him.

He seated us up with him. You have been saved. Well, when? Because I don't remember making a conscious decision to serve Jesus, you know. I know I was told I have to have, I have to make my free will decision.

Memory gets spotty when you're dead. Yeah. Here's the thing is that those experiences, they're, if your trust is in the fact that you've had the experience, yeah, we got a problem here. But you're going to note here, I can point you to another passage that talks about when I have died with Christ and been raised with him.

And what's it referring to? Baptism. It's referring to baptism. So, do a little bit of work here. I'm going to show you two things because I think it's helpful in this regard. First of all, Romans chapter 6, which we did in part look at last week.

So, what should we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried 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. So, you'll note that the verbs that we're looking at here in Ephesians 2, made us alive, raised us with him, those two verbs, they have kind of the ring of baptismal reality to them.

Because we can point to the fact that we were baptized and that's helpful. Now, always and again, I am sensitive to the fact that I've been down this track. I used to deny that baptism did anything. I used to believe that a baptism was merely a symbol.

And I also used to believe that Lutherans were going to hell because they believed in baptismal regeneration. Baptism was for them a work and salvation is not earned by a work. I used to buy into that idea a lot and I get a lot of flack to that effect.

And I want to show you a couple of things here. There's a wonderful text in Titus chapter 3 and I want you to consider the language in this one as well. And I think I need Luke 19 as my cross-reference in a momento.

I'm going to duplicate this tab. There's a verb, there's a word there that only appears a couple of times in the New Testament and let me find it. Let's see, I'll find it in a second. Let's go this route first.

So, looking at Titus chapter 3, listen to what verse 4 says, but when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. All right, who did the saving? God. So, we're running the verbs here and watch what it says, He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness.

All right, this is a good text. So, God saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy. And then comes the most fascinating bit of this, by the washing of regeneration.

We'll do a little bit of work on this. So, if we were to take a look at this. So, He didn't save us by works done by us in righteousness, but here's our phrase, dia lutru, and this is a tough one to kind of pronounce out, palingenesias.

All right, when you got the two gammas together, the first one takes on a new sound. So, dia lutru, let's start with this. What is a lutru? Its lexical form is lutron, and a lutru, let me make that bigger because I hate my eyes.

Okay, listen to what it says. Bath, a washing of baptism for ceremonial usage. That's remarkably unambiguous. What? Can't that just be a metaphor for the Spirit? Nope. So, you're going to note here, the Holy Spirit gave us a word that makes it impossible for us to get around this fact.

Lutron is a bath, a washing of baptism for ceremonial usage. So, let's come back to the for a second and just consider what it says. Again, watch how this works. When the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness.

So, works are totally off the table, but according to His own mercy, and then phrase, dia lutru palingenesias, that's just a great phrase. So, dia, by the way, when dia shows up in here, it talks about the means.

So, this is your word, dia. So, this is the means by which He saved us. So, that's what this is talking about. So, He saved us by means of a ceremonial washing, which can only refer to baptism, and it's called the washing of palingenesias.

And this is just an amazing word. It only appears twice in the New Testament. And palingenesia is a state of being renewed. It's a renewal. It is experience of complete change of life, of rebirth. A good way to translate it would be regeneration.

It appears many times in the writings of classical Greek, and it gives you all of that, but in the New Testament, this one's a toughie because it appears in the text that we are looking at here, but it also occurs one other time, and that's in the Gospel of Luke.

And let me find the reference because I know it's in here. Hang on a second here. Just have to hunt it down. Oh, it's Matthew 19 .28. I got the wrong gospel. Getting old, getting old. So, let's go to Matthew 19, and I want you to show it's only, I wanted to show you it's only other appearance.

Matthew 19 .28, and when you literally translate this verse, it's really fascinating. Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, and here's the phrase in question. In the new world, that's how the ESV translates it, but what it says in the Greek is actually very interesting.

So, Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, antepolygnesia, in the regeneration. Isn't that amazing? So, there's two times this word appears in the New Testament. The first one is in the one we just read, in the regeneration, referring to what?

The new earth. In the regeneration, he says, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne. Okay, that's the first time it appears. The second time, and the last time it appears, then, in the New Testament, is in Titus 3, talking about the washing, or you could even translate the baptism of what?

Regeneration. Right. Isn't that great? And then it goes on, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, and if you don't think this is wet language, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Okay, this text is all wet. So, if I could kind of drive the point home, we're baptized. We are. You are. Your parents brought you to the waters of baptism, and when you were baptized, it is a washing of regeneration and a renewal of the Holy Spirit.

And so, you'll note that this text makes it very clear that belief in the washing of regeneration is held in contradistinction to the false claim that baptismal regeneration means that baptism is a work.

Who is doing the work in baptism? God. I know we've seen a few baptisms since I've come here. I've got the easy part. I take Minnesota tap water. It comes right out of that sink. I put it in one of our water pitchers, and if I'm nice, I'll make it warm.

If I'm feeling ornery, I'll put ice in it. Okay, depends on the baptizee. That's a joke. Okay, and what do we do? It goes over to the baptismal font, and then when the time comes, I take the water over the baptizee, and I say, I baptize you in the name of the Father.

We have a wonderful shelf for this. In the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, I baptize you. Easy part. Who's doing the rest? God. It's a washing of regeneration. It's for the forgiveness of sins.

It is what Jesus referred to in our gospel text as what? Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, it is that washing that Jesus talks about in John 3. It's that being united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, or as Ananias said to Paul, it is to wash away your sins.

It is a washing of regeneration. So, when you're struggling and saying, I'm not good enough. Well, this is true, but what does that have anything to do with whether or not you're a Christian? To say that you're not good enough is to say the same thing as Scripture says anyway, but note then, counter with, but wait, I'm baptized.

God has forgiven me. I've been united with Christ. My sins have been washed away, and if you need something a little more current that maybe you can remember, oh, I remember that silly pastor up at Kongsvinger.

He said that my sins were forgiven, or I heard those words in the Lord's Supper. Take, eat. This is the body of Christ given in death for the forgiveness of your sins. Who's doing all the verbs? God is.

It's a gift. It's held on to and apprehended everything by faith, and even the ability to believe and have that faith is given to you as a gift anyway. What the gospel demands, God gives it to you. You were dead in trespasses and sins, and you had no faith.

God then makes you alive with Christ, and he gives you faith, and that faith immediately grabs onto those promises and says, I'm not going to let go, but you couldn't even do that the moment before God made you alive.

All of that being said, we're still working our way through Ephesians 2. So God... I did none of the tangents.

Huh? I'm just stating. For the record, I did none of the tangents. I tangented myself. I need to see my.

Therapist. Yes, sir. Yes. False dichotomy. It's a false dichotomy. Let me explain this. All right. I love it. We got another tangent. This is going to be a good one. I promise it'll be worth it. The payoff is going to be good.

Okay. So when I talked to my Reformed Baptist friend, Steve Camp. All right. This is the guy who... He was a famous evangelical singer in the 80s, and I had some of his albums, and now we banter back and forth on Twitter.

And there was a time when we were working up towards me potentially debating him on this topic of baptism. And we had a friendly exchange on Twitter, if you would. And I said, Steve, all the passages are against you.

And I just started going down the line. Acts 2, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. Took them into other portions of Acts. Be baptized, washing away your sins, calling upon the name of the Lord.

That when you're baptized, you're buried in Christ, you're raised with Christ. It's a washing of regeneration. Steve Camp says, none of those are talking about water baptism. That's all Holy Spirit baptism.

My response. So you have a dehydrated hermeneutic. Okay. It's a dehydrated hermeneutic because every time the work of God is mentioned in conjunction with baptism, you're denying that water is involved.

That's silly. That's utterly silly. And no text says that. And so he doesn't really have a response to that, but this is what they do. But what does scripture say? One Lord, one faith, one what? Baptism.

One baptism. Now, take a look at something here, and I'm going to do this out of order to kind of frame the concept. Again, day of Pentecost, who has showed up? The Holy Spirit. He's showed up. And Peter preaches this blisteringly awesome sermon, accuses all of the people there of crucifying Christ, of being culpable in his murder, and proclaims that he has risen from the grave.

It's just this amazing sermon. And so when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. They said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Peter said, repent and be baptized.

Passive. Be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the.

Holy Spirit. Wait, wait, wait. There's a duh in there? The and? There's an andual? Is it a chi?

Hang on, let's see. Yeah, it's chi. Yeah, it's chi. So,.

That would almost grammatically require baptism to be different than, you know, receiving the whole, almost like it can't be the baptism of the Holy Spirit,.

Because they're in different clauses of the sentence. It's there? Oh wow, that's not fair to.

Poor Baptists. Okay, I know you feel for them. Okay, so you're going to know. What is baptism for? The forgiveness of sins and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. That's all a package. It is for the forgiveness of sins and for the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

Is there a such thing as a Christian who is baptized who does not have the Holy Spirit? No, no. The two go hand in hand. Now, if they protest, then I would recommend this course of texts. We begin in Genesis chapter one, and I know this is going to seem like I'm going on a tangent, and I am.

So, but I want to show you thematically how this works. So, in Genesis chapter one, verses one and two in particular, I want you to see how this works. In the beginning, he created, God's God, he created the heavens and the earth.

And then you get to this next set of statements that are fascinating. And the earth was Tohu Vobohu. It was formless and void. So, it's just a big chaotic mess. And then you get to the really interesting words here, and talking about the Ruach Elohim, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the darkness.

And the word for hovering is Merikaphet. And so, let me, it's right over here, Merikaphet. And this is an interesting word, because it's an avian verb. It's used to birds. And the picture is this. There's the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God, doing this, all right?

Brooding, hovering over the waters. And it's distinctly avian. So, when the Holy Spirit shows up, and water is present, what happens? Answer, creation, all right? Another data point on this. We go to same book.

I think it's chapter 9. Let's see here. No, it might be a little farther back. Hang on. I might have to go back into 8. Let's see here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. So, the world has been deluged, deluged by a flood.

The only human beings are alive are inside of a really large coffin, this thing called an ark. And the waters were over the whole face of the earth. Apparently, there are no portholes in this coffin. And so, we've got to come, we've got to figure out whether or not you can get out of the ark yet, because it's a little tough to tell.

So, at the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, sent forth a raven, and went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the water had subsided from the face of the ground.

But the dove found no place to set her foot. So, here you've got a physical dove doing what? Over what? Water. All right. And what is the deluge? It's the destruction of the earth and a new creation, kind of in type and shadow.

Huh? We're heading for Peter.

Well, yeah, just slow down there. Slow down. You're right. We are. But let me get there. Okay. Spoiler alert. Okay. We have one more day to stop. One more. Okay. So, we will be in 1 Peter, just so you know.

But one more day to stop. And I'm going to point this one out because it's super helpful. Matthew chapter 3. Jesus is baptized. So, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? And Jesus answered him, let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented.

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water. And behold, the heavens were opened to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, the voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

So, here we got water again. And this time, the Holy Spirit comes down and just rests on Jesus. Where did Jesus receive the Holy Spirit? In baptism. That's what it says. Was there water involved? Yes.

I think we can say that all the Baptists would argue that baptism has to be full immersion. So, Jesus had to be fully immersed in the Jordan. About this deep at that point anyway. But he had to be fully immersed in order for this to be an effective baptism.

And who shows up? The Holy Spirit. So, the Holy Spirit, just watch the train. Genesis 1, hovering over the deep, over the waters. Come back to Noah and the ark. Again, a picture of the new creation. Now come to Jesus in his baptism.

The Holy Spirit's present over the what? Over the water. And he comes and descends on Jesus. And now we can get to 1 Peter. Okay. All right. We're going to put it in context. 1 Peter 3, 18. Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

Who's doing the bringing? God is. Christ is. Being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. Now, this is talking about Christ's descent into Sheol, into the dead, to hell.

Because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah. While the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism. And here's the thing.

I know the English says corresponds to this, but the Greek word is baptism, which is the anti-tupos, which is the anti-type. Okay. Which means that what? The whole flood is the type. All right. The flood is the type.

Baptism is the anti-type. So baptism, which is the anti-type to this, to what? The flood. Now saves you. Verb. Saves. What's the noun? Baptism. That's the nominative. Baptism saves. That's your nominative.

So y 'all remember when you had to take grammar classes and your teacher would make you take a sentence and like shorten it up to its tightest form, you know, so that you could figure out where the subordinate clauses and all that kind of stuff were.

I was never good at like... That's when grammar became math and it really hurt my feelings. But if you were to take the sentence and put it into its smallest form, baptism saves. That's your noun. That's your verb.