​HOW DO YOU FAIR IN THE UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECK?

 
4But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! 6He also raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. 7He did this so that, in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.
10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:4-10)
 
Background checks are a fact of life, aren’t they?  Before you can have a Concealed Pistol License in the state of Michigan, you have to pass a background check.  A search is made to see if you have any kind of a police record or other issues that would prohibit you from carrying a concealed weapon.  Employers regularly require background checks, too.  Some may be official searches of police and FBI databases.  Some may be more unofficial, looking at a person’s social media activity and interviewing references.  The point of it is that before an employer entrusts things of value to a worker, he or she wants to be sure that the worker is worthy of the job and the responsibility that goes along with it.  After all, it’s the employer’s possessions that are at stake!
 
In the opening two verses of Ephesians chapter 2, our background check results are published.  It isn’t a pretty picture.  Listen to this:  “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked when you followed the ways of this present world. You were following the ruler of the domain of the air, the spirit now at work in the people who disobey.”  Just look at what Paul says is in our background check! –

• dead in your trespasses and sins
• you followed the ways of this present world
• you were following the ruler of the domain of the air
• people who disobey

Again here in our text Paul lays out the truth about us:  we were dead in trespasses.  Those are direct quotes from God himself. 
 
Let’s take a moment to understand fully what God means by those statements.  Twice, God says we were dead in our trespasses and sins.  He’s not talking about physical death there, although that happens because of sin.  He’s talking about spiritual death – being born into this world physically alive, but spiritually dead.  Not in a coma.  Not unconscious.  Dead.  Now, let’s remember that God the Holy Spirit breathed into the Bible writers not only the truths he wanted them to write about, but also the very words he wanted them to us in writing about them.  Do you recall Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:13:  “We also speak about these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual truths with spiritual words.”  The Holy Spirit meant to say “dead” here.  That means just what you and I know it means:  spiritually lifeless, unable to act in things spiritual, unable to make decisions about spiritual things.
 
“you followed the ways of this present world ...” Paul reminds us that because we were born into this world spiritually lifeless, we were and would always have been like spiritual driftwood carried along by the currents of the unbelieving world into which we were born.  Those currents run along these lines:  God is whoever you want him to be.  Right and wrong are whatever the situation requires for your benefit.  What matters – what’s real – is what you can understand, hold in your hand, spend, drive, or call home.  The most important relationships are the ones that bring you emotional satisfaction in the moment.  It’s your body and your life to do with as you please.  And all of that seems so right because as we look around us, we see lots of other pieces of driftwood heading in the same direction.  If everyone is going that way, if everyone thinks that way, if everyone believes something like that, then we must be going in the right direction?  Right?
 
But then Paul reminds us that that current is not just an impersonal force.  He reveals the dark hand that helps to push and pull the driftwood along:   “You were following the ruler of the domain of the air...”  That’s the Devil, Satan, the Destroyer, the Accuser, the Tempter, the Father of Lies.  As invisible as the air around us, always on the move like the air around us, he pushed at our back and pulled us along.  He did that with the very same power he has always used since he fell:  lies.  His lies are really no different than what he used in Eden on Adam and Eve: planting doubts about what God really says, offering “alternative truths” (that is, lies) in place of God’s truth, convincing us that God does not always act in our best interest, planting seeds of suspicion and doubt about God in our hearts, and finally convincing us that our way is just as good as God’s way – better than God’s way. 
 
The result?  Paul says that we failed the background check.  Across our name, God’s Law wrote the reality of it:  “people who disobey.”  That’s God’s assessment.  It’s what got Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden.  It’s what brought death into the world.  It’s what disqualifies us for eternal life. Do you see? – failing this background check doesn’t just bar us from certain earthly freedoms, nor is it a matter of not being hired for certain jobs.  This is about much more serious consequences than that.  Speaking of heaven itself, the apostle John wrote in Revelation:  “Nothing that is unclean and no one who does what is detestable or who tells lies will ever enter it, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” (Revelation 21:27)
 
Where is the hope for that in the Word of God?  It is in some wonderful past tense verbs in those very same first two verses of this second chapter of Ephesians.  Listen to those verses again: “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked when you followed the ways of this present world. You were following the ruler of the domain of the air, the spirit now at work in the people who disobey.”  Did you hear the way Paul talked about you and me there?  That horribly failed background check status before God used to be so.  But it is no more!  What happened?  Now I want you to look with me to the verses of our text today.  As I read it, watch and listen for who the active agent is in changing our condition.  I want you to listen to the reason that is given for that active agent changing our condition.  And I want you to listen for how the change in our condition is described:  4”But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! 6He also raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. 7He did this so that, in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.”
 
Who is the doer in those verses?  Do you see that it is consistently God himself?  And did you hear how his work in us and for us is described in such miraculous terms? – 5”made us alive,”  “you have been saved,” “raised us up,” “seated us in the heavenly places.”  That means just what it says.  God did a raising-Lazarus-from-the-dead-like miracle in you and me in making what was once spiritually dead live.  How did that happen?  Peter tells us in his first letter (1:23) – “you have been born again, not from perishable seed but from imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”  That life-giving Word empowered the water of baptism to give that rebirth.  Is that not what Paul is clearly saying in Titus 3:  “he saved us—not by righteous works that we did ourselves, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit,” Paul tells us in this text that when God raised Jesus to his right hand in heaven, it can be said that he placed us there, too.  Yes, we still live here on earth, for now – but because of what God did for us in Christ our place in heaven is prepared and reserved and waiting.  It is already ours!  Do you see?  You don’t need some person who claims to have had a near-death experience write a book to tell you that heaven is real and that it is really yours – God himself tells you that right here in his Word and in this very text today!
 
Why would God do such a thing for people who have so completely and miserably failed the background check?  Only a few words in our text explain that, but what words they are!  Listen again:  4”But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!”  Did you catch them? – “mercy,” “love,” “grace.”  Every one of those words describes an attribute of God.  It is those attributes of God that alone explain why he did what he did.  He had mercy on our lost condition.  He loved us even though there was nothing in us that merited that love.  He acted in grace, giving us the very opposite of what we deserved.  How else can you explain how we who are under the curse of “the wages of sin is death” would nevertheless receive “the undeserved gift of God...eternal life”? (Romans 6:23)
 
That’s the why of these priceless blessings.  What is the how of them?  Listen again, “7He did this so that, in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.”  Faith is the connection through which all those priceless blessings flowed and flow to you and me.  And they only flow because of the One who as at the active end of our faith:  Jesus.  How can we read and hear these words without seeing and hearing that all these blessings flow to us from Christ and come to us with Christ and are ours in Christ?  Listen again, 4”But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! 6He also raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  Priceless blessings are yours NOW in Christ!
 
But there are also priceless blessings that WILL be ours in the ages to come:  “7He did this so that, in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  I don’t know if the phrase “coming ages” means our future in this life or if they refer to our future in eternity.  In the end, it doesn’t matter which we understand it here because both are absolutely correct.  Because of Jesus’ finished work and through faith in him, you already live in God’s surpassing grace.  And because of Jesus’ finished work and through faith in him you will enjoy the riches of that grace in eternity.
 
And then our text closes with a return to the present tense - to you and me in this life we live now.  But what a remarkable description of that life we find in the last verse of our text!: “...we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.”  Think of how the first two verses of Ephesians 2 described what we were, and then consider what God has made of us!  We are God’s own handiwork, created spiritually anew for a completely different purpose than following the ways of this world and ruler of the kingdom of the air, and disobeying.  Now, in Christ Jesus, we for good works God prepared for us to do and we are doing them!  Even that is not our doing, it is God’s doing in us!
 
Faith.  All that word means is trust.  It is a relationship word, isn’t it?  If there is no object of faith, we can’t really even say that faith exists.  And if the object of our faith is weak or evil or non-existent, then that faith is pointless – like a lifeline thrown to a drowning person but with no one on the other end who can or will effect the rescue.  But what certainty and joy and priceless blessings are yours and mine – because at the active end of our faith is non other than Jesus Christ!  Rejoice in the priceless blessings you have in Christ!  Amen.