The Once and Future Christian (Part 1)
Ephesians 2: 1 - 10
And although you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience, among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! – and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, to demonstrate in the coming ages the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.
In recent years, there has been a slew of re-tellings and re-imaginings of the legend of King Arthur, both in books as well as on film, in movies and on television. But one of the first modern re-tellings of this legend was written by T. H. White, who kind of set the bar for modern renditions of the Arthurian legend. One of the things I like the most about White’s version of the story is his ending, because he got the ending right! In his version, Arthur is mortally wounded in his final battle against his half-brother, Mordred, and is taken off to the mystical island of Avalon. But one day, in the hour of Britain’s greatest need, he will return, fully healed, to take back his throne and save Britain once again.
White focuses on this past and future aspect of King Arthur in the title of his book; he called his story The Once and Future King. I love that idea; Arthur was the great High King of Britain long ago, and he will be back one day to save Britain again. Maybe it’s just the literature teacher in me, but I find that idea very cool!
Now, it may be a bit of a stretch, but I think Paul is doing something similar here in the second chapter of Ephesians. In a sense, the first part of this chapter could be titled “The Once and Future Christian.” He spent the entire first chapter of his letter describing the incredible riches we have because we are part of the Body of Christ, and here, in chapter two, he tells us, “These riches are even more amazing considering who you were before you knew Christ!”
Who We Were
In the first three verses of chapter two, he gives a concise but clear description of who we were. And that description is simply that we were dead. He says it straight out: “you were dead….”
Now, the implications of this description are fairly obvious. A dead person generally doesn’t get better. It isn’t like in that wonderful movie, The Princess Bride, where you can take a miracle pill and be back around in thirty minutes. No, death in the real world is forever. And, of course, Paul is referring to spiritual death: before they came to know Christ, the people in Ephesus were separated from fellowship from God; in that sense, they were living in Hell.
But Paul doesn’t leave the description with that. Verse two tells us that they “formerly lived according to this world’s present path,” which is another way of saying that they were conforming to the dictates of the world, and to the ruler of this world. William Barclay explains this idea well; he says, “The essence of the world’s standard is that it sets self in the center; the essence of the Christian standard is that it sets Christ and others in the center.[1]” The Ephesians, before they found Christ, were fully committed to upholding the world’s standard, and were content putting themselves – their own needs, wants and desires – in the center of their lives as the force that guided their thoughts and actions.
So at the start, in their natural state, Paul is saying that their desires and motivations were exactly opposite, diametrically opposed to the desires and motivations of the Body of Christ. They were following their leader, the ruler of the kingdom of the air, living in disobedience as slaves to their sinful desires. Not a very pretty picture.
But I think what strikes me the most about these three verses is the pronouns that Paul uses. Maybe it is, again, just the English teacher in me, but in the first two verses, I notice that Paul is talking to “you”; he says you were dead, you followed, etc. But in verse three, he switches to “we.” Now, most commentators explained that this is because the church in Ephesus was almost entirely made up of Gentiles; though there were, undoubtedly, some Jews, in general Paul was talking to a Gentile audience. So the “you” in the first verses was emphasizing the distinction between Paul, a Jew, and the Gentile Ephesian Christians. According to this idea, these verses could read, “You Gentiles were dead, you Gentiles were following the ways of the world….” But then, in verse three, Paul realizes the implications of his grammar and moves to correct it. There were many people in the early church who believed that the Jews had some kind of higher claim to the promises of the Gospel. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and therefore the Jews were the firstborn of the new covenant. In fact, there were a fair number of Jewish Christians who were downright annoyed at God for including the Gentiles in His atoning work at all.
In many early churches, Gentile believers were merely tolerated as second class believers; they were generally looked down on by the Jewish Christians, who considered themselves the true believers. Paul speaks out against this attitude throughout his letters (including his letter to the Ephesians), and he doesn’t want the believers in Ephesus to inadvertently hear him saying that the Gentile believers were pure sinners before their salvation while the Jews were somehow better off, not quite as bad as the Gentiles before they put their faith in Christ. So he changes his pronouns to make it clear: You Gentiles were dead before you found Jesus, and we Jews were absolutely no better! All of us, like all people everywhere who do not know Jesus, were by nature objects of divine wrath!
Who We Are
So, any way you look at it, the picture Paul paints of those without Christ is pretty bleak. Such people are worthy of wrath, slaves to the desires of sin and spiritually destitute. They are, in a word, dead.
And then come those two amazing words: But God! We were dead in our sins, hopelessly enslaved to the ruler of this world. But God, out of His great love and mercy, made us alive again in Christ!
So, we have two strikingly different pictures painted for us in these first seven verses. In the first three, Paul says, “This is who you were.” And then, in the next four, he shows us “This is who you are in Christ!”
And what a description he gives us! In Christ, we are loved by God. In Christ we are made alive again. In Christ, we are glorified along with Him. And in Christ, we are incomparably rich. This is an amazing blessing, and amazing promise that Paul lays out for us in these four verses.
But again, the thing that really strikes me here is the grammar. Look at verses five and six. God made us alive… raised us up… and seated us with Christ. I find these verbs that Paul uses very interesting, for several reasons. First, they are all in the past tense. Now, that makes sense for made us alive, since this refers to our conversion, the time when we put our faith in Christ; since that action of putting our faith in Him happened in the past it makes sense that this verb describing it would also be in past tense. But for the other two, that explanation doesn’t work nearly as well. I don’t recall ever being lifted up into the heavenly realms and being seated with Christ in glory next to the Father. Seems to me that I would have noticed and remembered if something like that had happened. No, these events that Paul references here are events that we generally assume are going to happen when Christ returns to claim His people sometime in the future, at the end of time.
So why does Paul refer to these things as if they have already happened? The answer, I think, is in the overall picture that he is trying to paint for us here. He makes four observations about our spiritual condition in the first seven verses of this chapter. First, we were dead in our sins. Then, God “quickened us” (as the King James puts it): He made us alive again. Next, He raised us up, or glorified us. And finally, he gave us seats of honor in Heaven.
When you lay it out like that, I’m struck by something that you may have noticed as well. This picture, which Paul applies to us as believers, seems to more accurately describe Jesus Himself. Think of the words of the Apostles Creed. Christ was “crucified, dead and buried”; as we were dead in our sins, Christ died for us. “On the third day, He rose again”; as God brought Christ back to life, so He gives us new life in Christ. “He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God”; just as Christ was glorified and given all honor in Heaven, so we too are honored and glorified, because we are in Him.
I don’t know about you, but I find this fascinating, because I think Paul is trying to emphasize our connectedness to Christ. As one commentator put it, “Paul teaches a union between Christ and those who come to trust in Him, so that what is said of the Redeemer can also be said of the redeemed.”[2] So these historical events in the life of Christ can be equally applied to us, simply because we are joined with Him by faith. In fact, they apply to us so much, so well, that Paul feels confident speaking of them in the past tense. He is basically saying that, since these things have already happened for Christ, that means they are certain to happen for us as well; this is so certain that we can speak of them as already having been completed. Because we are His Body, we are one with Him, not in some mystical, metaphoric way but in reality. We can anticipate with absolute certainty that His suffering, His glory and His honor will be ours as well.
Final Thoughts
The next three verses of this passage really complete the message that Paul begins in the opening verses of chapter two, but we’re going to save them for the next chapter, because I think the picture Paul paints in these seven verses is one that is well worth pausing to meditate on.
Paul wants us to remember that we are all once and future Christians. We need to remember what we once were: dead, enslaved to our sinful desires, serving the kingdom of darkness. And, more importantly, we need to remember who we are: loved by God and raised to new life in Christ!
And finally, we need to remember our future hope. Not that one day, King Arthur might return to save England, but rather, the absolute assurance that we will be glorified, raised up and seated in the heavenly realms, because our Head, with whom we are inextricably joined, is there already, waiting for us to join Him!
[1] Burkitt, William. Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/wbc/ephesians-2.html.
[2] The Reformation Study Bible. R. C. Sproul et al, eds. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995.
>>So the “you” in the first verses was emphasizing the distinction between Paul, a Jew, and the Gentile Ephesian Christians. According to this idea, these verses could read, “You Gentiles were dead, you Gentiles were following the ways of the world….” But then, in verse three, Paul realizes the implications of his grammar and moves to correct it.
Wow, I would be very wary of saying Paul 'corrected' something in an early verse. Inerrancy and all that.
I think the much more natural reading, coming from chapter one, is 'You, the church at Ephesus, Gentile believers, were like this, and like this, but *we* all Christians are like this, then continues with 'ye were Gentiles'.... etc
Paul was both a Jew (not a Gentile), but also no a member (as it were) of the church he is writing to. The word 'you' is natural when talking about them. The word 'we' would be used when moving the discussion to things which were universal in order to point out their universiality.
Cause moving right along he goes back to 'you' ( or 'ye', different part of speech) when talking, again, about their specific state.
Eph 2:11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
Eph 2:12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
So, far from saying that Paul 'corrected himself' I would argue that he used the correct pronoun for each section. And we should apply the 'you' only to 'we' when the shoe, as it were, fits. Thus a modern convert from Judaism would not apply some of the 'you' to himself. (for example 2:11)