What Happens After Salvation
Today’s Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10
2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 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.
Paul tells the Ephesians that before they heard the gospel about Jesus and trusted in it—i.e., before they became Christians—they were actually following “the ruler of the kingdom of the air”, i.e., some kind of personalized spiritual power. We’ll say more about this in the future.
The point is that they were alive but dead, spiritual zombies.
3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
But Paul says that everybody was actually a spiritual zombie, even the Jews. And no one deserved anything good.
4 But because of his great love for us,God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
“But God.” Although we were dead, God has made us alive—and not because we deserved it!
6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 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.
And then, in one of these Pauline paradoxes, Paul says that we have already been raised with Christ and seated with Christ in the heavenly dimensions. It’s one of these strange “now and not yet” statements. More on this later!
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
We are not saved BY our good works;
Rather, we are saved FOR good works.
That’s worth pondering for a long while.