Part 3| “The True Nature of Salvation”
The book of Ephesians is the Christians’ roadmap for life in a world that’s not our home. We are strange to this world. We are not of this world. This book repeatedly calls us to think of ourselves as different. For that is what we are. And we rejoice in that fact because HE has made us that way. Christian, instead of focusing on how the world may not welcome you, rejoice that heaven embraces you. You are blessed in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You are “Blessed Strangers.”
From Ephesians 2:1-10
Ephesians 1: our salvation from HEAVEN’S perspective.
Ephesians 2: our salvation from EARTH’S perspective.
3 CLASSIC VIEWS of HUMANKIND:
1.Humanity is : Can produce an mentality.
2.Humanity is : Can produce an mentality.
3.Humanity is : Can produce a mentality.
📖 Ephesians 2:1 (ESV) And you were DEAD in the trespasses and sins 2 in which 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— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Scripture’s Diagnosis:
1. We FOLLOWED the .
2. We were INFLUENCED by the .
3. We were DRIVEN by the .
4. We were RUNNING from .
In Sum: We were dead down .
📖 Psalm 53:2-3 (ESV) God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. 3 They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
Unless we understand our we will never the .
UNDERSTANDING the TRUE Nature of SALVATION:
1. is about making people .
📖 Ephesians 2:4-7 (ESV) But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.
A. = God not giving us what we deserved.
📖 Psalm 103:10 (ESV) He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
B. = God giving us what don’t deserve.
📖 Romans 5:2 (NLT) Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
C. – God’s unconditioned response toward sinners.
📖 1 John 4:19 (ESV) We love because He first loved us.
2. is about making people into a .
📖 Ephesians 2:6 (ESV) and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
“Men without Christ are death walking. The beauties of holiness do not attract man is his moral insensibility, nor do the miseries of Hell deter him.”
-John Edie
📖 Philippians 3:18-21 (ESV) For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.
UNDERSTANDING the TRUE Nature of SALVATION:
3. is about making people people.
📖 Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
📖 Jeremiah 9:23-24 (ESV) Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
UNDERSTANDING the TRUE Nature of SALVATION:
4. is about making people a people.
📖 Ephesians 2:10 (ESV) For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Sermon in a Sentence:
We are by for .
Notes Section:
