The Greatness of Grace

To try to earn your way to heaven is like rearranging chairs on the Titanic.

You can look better, but you're still going down. Dr. Tony Evans says when the ship is sinking, you don't need a makeover, you need a lifeboat. You must place your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone as your only God and Savior. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans.

You don't have to be rescued unless you're in danger, and spiritually speaking, we all are. Today, Dr. Evans unpacks the incredible grace God offers that saves us, lifts us, and gives us a brand new identity in Christ. Let's join him in Ephesians as he reveals how salvation is God's masterpiece, not our own achievement.

Today I want to look at the first 10 verses of chapter 2. Paul the Apostle lets you know that all of this spiritual reality is born out of the great New Testament term, grace. He wants to talk about the greatness of grace. The first three verses describe the need for grace. It places grace against a dark backdrop, the backdrop of sin. You will not understand grace, you will not appreciate grace, and you won't respond to grace unless you understand the backdrop against which grace comes. When you go to a jeweler and you want those big pretty diamonds, they will often put them against a dark backdrop because the diamond glitters even more brightly against the dark backdrop. The diamond is grace. This dark backdrop is sin, and God places the diamond of grace in the first three verses against the backdrop of sin so that grace will glitter even more.

And you were dead. They're saved now, but they were, before they became Christians, dead in trespasses and in sin. Paul addresses spiritual death. Every person outside of Jesus Christ is spiritually dead.

Verse 1 is fundamentally giving you and me a coroner's report on the state of the non-Christian world. Their spiritual faculties are dysfunctional. They're non-functional, and the Bible says they're dead. They are like zombies walking and moving and bobbing and weaving and even terrorizing the town, yet they were dead. That is the spiritual description of men without God. They are spiritual zombies going through the motions, but the motions only. Now a person may say, well, I don't feel dead.

Well, fish don't feel wet. Why? Because death is your environment. It's where you live.

So you don't feel it because that's it. It's the graveyard you're in. In fact, we're given the name of the graveyard. It is called trespasses and sins. That is the realm of death.

It is the realm of the spiritual because he deals with the issue of trespasses and sins. Trespass means to step out of line, to take the wrong path. The word sin means to miss the mark. The Bible declares that all men have veered away from God and that they have shot at the wrong target and even missed it.

They have missed the glory of God. Having said that, he now describes that you formerly walked. See, this is the night of the living dead for you formerly walked in verse two, even though you were dead in verse one. So you walked, you moved, but physical, social, and psychological activity does not equal spiritual life.

It just equals how you move while dead. He gives us the three locks that are on the coffin that keeps men locked up in the graveyard of trespasses and sins. Those three locks are stated as the course of the world, the prince of the power of the air, the devil. And then verse three, that you live formerly in the lust of your flesh, the flesh, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Those are the three locks that keep mankind encased in this graveyard and in this tomb of trespasses and sin. Verse four introduces us to the nature of grace, but God. Verse four introduces us to a whole new environment, but God. As you've heard me say so often, two words that can change anything, but God.

You see, if you're here today and you're a Christian, the reason why you don't have to give up on hope no matter how bad your thing looks is because, but God. That introduces an equation to your scenario unlike any other, but God. He introduces the divine.

Two words that can address any situation. So the first thing we learn about grace in these first two words is where it originates from. Grace originates from God. Grace is the pleasure of God. It refers to the goodness of God. It refers to the supply of God. And that's why only God can get the glory for grace. It's God's activity. You can't grace your way out of your coffin, but God. Being rich in mercy, that has to do with the pitied side of God.

Pitying our situation. It is all built within him because of his great love, the state of his being with which he loved us, the action of his activity, the verb. It says, even when we were dead and our trespasses, transgressions, made us alive together with Christ and Paul couldn't contain himself. You have now been seated with Christ alongside of Christ. You've not only gotten on the plane, you've been bumped up to first class because you were Christ.

You're not only alive, you're alive with Christ. And where is he? Seated on the right hand of the father.

He is in the position of authority and you are alongside of him. So God reached you down and exalted us up. And how much grace is this? Look at verse seven.

In order that in the ages to come, wait a minute, wait a minute now, come on, you're going too far. In verses four through six, he's telling us what's happening now. Then in verse seven, he jumps to not, he doesn't even jump into the age singular to come. The age singular, the next age is the millennial age.

That lasts 1,000 years. He doesn't talk about that. He talks about in the ages to come, 100 quad zillion years from now. You got to think about this now. This is deep. In the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. You ain't seen nothing yet.

That's what he's saying. Pick your best day. And I know living in this sinful world are bad days.

But look over your life at your best day, best month, best week, best year, that year or month that you wish you could go back to and relive all over again, because they were the happiest days of your life. And God says that nothing. He gives some of it now. He doesn't give it all of it now because of the sin nature of the world. But in the ages to come, when sin has been eradicated, there is no opposition, he says, you will be rained upon in grace. Now, what is grace?

Grace is God's inexhaustible supply of goodness. So what is he saying? Every minute of the day, and there will be no night, God will shower you with riches. He will shower you with riches.

Why? Why is he going to do this? He tells us why at the end of verse seven, in Christ Jesus. See, it's not so much about you, it's about Christ. It's about the Father showering the Son. It's just, we so close to the Son, it rubs off on us too, because we're his brethren. We're sons of the living God. And so the showering of the Father to the Son will become the participation of the body, because you can't shower the head without it rubbing off on the body. You can't stand on the shower, have the hot water coming down on your head and your body stay dry.

You can't do that. Our head is Jesus Christ. God the Father is going to shower on his eternal Son all of the glories of his inexhaustible supply. But because we're his body, as it comes down off the head, it will rain down onto the body.

And that's you and me forever and ever and ever and ever. And since God is infinite, there is no ending to God, which I do not understand and prefer not to think about. Since God is inexhaustible and there is no ending to God, therefore this raining down on the head will never end.

All eternity. So when God gives grace, he's given you something spectacular. And remember, the Holy Spirit's job is to give you a down payment now. You don't get the full thing now, but you get a pledge, he calls it, a down payment of grace now. So there are many things God will do for you in this life, but not everything. But even a down payment of grace is an amazing thing to experience. And when Dr. Evans continues in a moment, he'll show how that grace can become a daily reality.

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I'll repeat our contact information after part two of today's message. Let's join Dr. Evans again in Ephesians chapter two. Then how do we experience grace? Verses eight and nine. For by grace have you been saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not as a result of works.

Why? So that no one can boast. No peacocks in heaven.

Nobody's saying we made it, didn't we? Look at Romans 11 verse 6, hold your finger here in Ephesians, but look at Romans 11 verse 6. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

That's a very important verse. Once you mix works to grace, you nullify grace in the area of justification. He makes it clear here, in Ephesians, it is not by what?

Not by works. In other words, you can't merit it, earn it, work for it, accumulate it, because remember, you dead. God has a means by which common grace is experienced, but it is a non-meritorious means.

In other words, it is the means that you can get it and it's available so everybody can have it, but you cannot get it if you try to pay for it, earn it. You can only get it by receiving it by faith. Or to put it another way, you must place your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone as your only God and Savior. To try to earn your way to heaven is like rearranging chairs on the Titanic. You can look better, but you're still going down.

Won't do you a bit of good. This ship is going down, and you can live a good life all you want to, but you nullify grace because you're banking on your works. So if you're here today and you were saved, you were saved by grace, apart from works, verse 9, not as a result of works, so that there's nothing for you to brag about. And remember, Ephesians 1, God is doing everything to the praise and glory of his grace.

That leads to verse 10, and oh, what a verse it is. The overflow of grace or the outworking of grace. Our need for grace is that we're dead spiritually. The nature of grace is God's inexhaustible supply of goodness. The way you experience grace is through faith apart from works in the finished work of Jesus Christ. But then the outworking of grace, verse 10, for we are his workmanship. We are his masterpieces, his portraits, his paintings. Now watch this, for we are his workmanship. He has created us, created in Christ, in connection with Christ, for good works. Now let's talk about good works for a moment.

Let me tell you what it doesn't say. It does not say we have been created for good things. You don't have to be a Christian to do good things, but only Christians can do good works. So the question is, what's the difference between a good thing and a good work? Well, please notice the second half of this verse, which God prepared beforehand. So number one, good works are God's works. That's the first thing, because they're created by God. So in order to talk about a good work, you must talk about a God work.

But follow this. Any work that is a God work is one where God gets the glory from the work, because it is a God work. Matthew 5 16 says that men may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So it is a divinely prescribed action done in a divinely prescribed way for divinely prescribed recognition. God gets the glory.

Now that raises one simple question. How then do I cultivate a grace life so that I have power for a Christian walk? That's both lifestyle and obedience to the calling that God gives me in my life.

How do I even get to see what it is? How do I even get to know God's will? Well, one, we learn from Philippians 2, it starts on the inside, God works in the will to will and to do His good pleasure.

So how do you get it? Your growth in grace, which then empowers your works, is tied to your growth in your relationship with Jesus Christ. You don't have to read it now, but read John 15 verses 1 to 15. You abide in me, my word abides in you, and you will bear fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and remaining fruit. When you grow in intimacy with Christ, there is the overflow of grace. You are infected and affected by God supplying you this new will, God supplying you this new power. You don't have to work for it, grunt for it. Yes, you must have the decision to obey, but the decision to obey is powerless without grace.

Then you're just grunting the Christian life. I told you that I went to Niagara Falls many years ago to watch that majestic sight, and it is a lovely sight, particularly from the Canadian side, and so we went over to the Canadian side of the falls. The first time I saw the falls, it was from a distance. I was near my hotel room, and I could look out the window and watch the gush of water. It was beautiful, I liked it, I enjoyed it, but I was fundamentally unaffected by it.

I just enjoyed it. Then we went walking across from the falls of the little park. I was closer to the falls. It was a little different this time because you could hear the thunderous roar of the water as it hit the basin of the falls, and I was more affected than I was in the hotel room because I was closer.

And so the rumble of it was more captivating. Then if you cross the street from the park, there's a railing over the fall. This time, the mist from the water as it hit the basin was so explosive that I got mist on me. I was now being made wet by the falls. But then, there is the Maid of the Mist.

These are boats that are at the basin of the fall that take you up to the falls. When you get into the Maid of the Mist, they give you a raincoat, and they give you an umbrella. Because now you will be drenched by the falls, because they take you in a little boat called the Maid of the Mist, and they whisk you right up to the fall, and you are staggered by it, but you also are drenched by it. If you live a hotel room kind of Christian life, hello, you'll see Jesus from afar, but be unaffected by Him.

If you stand on the park, you'll hear the rumbles, and it'll sound good, but you'll be unaffected by Him. If you draw a little closer to Christ and intimacy with Him, the mist of grace will trickle your way, and droplets of grace will be your experience. But if you enter into the Maid of the Mist, you will need a spiritual raincoat to handle the drenches of grace that will pour your way because you've gotten too close to Jesus Christ. So the way to experience grace is not to look for grace. You've already gotten all the grace you're going to get because you've already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. The way to get drenched with grace is to get close to Christ. Dr. Tony Evans, talking today about the greatness of God's grace and the key to experiencing more of it.

And he'll have a final word on that when he returns in just a moment. Before he does, though, don't forget to request your copy of his current 16-part series on the book of Ephesians called Ordinary Holy. It includes the full-length versions of all the messages in this series, including a couple that you won't be able to hear on the broadcast. And we're adding a special bonus gift to go along with this series, Dr. Evans' powerful book, Kingdom Living. Receive this entire package with our thanks when you make a donation to help keep Tony's teaching on this station. Get all the details and make your request online at tonyevans.org before this limited-time offer runs out. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members assist you.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. We may live in a world that's divided, but God has already designed a plan to bring people together, and it starts with the church. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans shows how Jesus breaks down the walls that divide us. Right now, though, he's back with his final thought on the greatness of grace. You get close to Christ and grace will take care of itself. You will experience this inexhaustible supply of God's goodness. So yes, you ought to read your Bible every day, but not because a verse a day keeps the devil away, but because, Christ, I want to get close to you. You make getting close to Christ, you're driving forth in life, and you'll get more grace than you can handle, and you will be God's masterpiece.