Every time you’ve become aware of your sin and repented of it, every time you’ve silently asked God for help when you feel anger rising up in you. Every cup of tea you’ve made for a hurting friend, every prayer you’ve prayed, every tear you’ve shed for the lost . . . all of it is meaningful. All of it is given meaning by a loving God who is shaping you and using you for his glory. To serve God is to enjoy him with our whole lives.
In Ephesians 2:4, we’re told that God saved us because He was rich in mercy and because of his great love with which he loved us.
In other words, it had nothing to do with who we were and everything to do with who God is. He alone has the power to not only forgive someone but actually bring them back to life. Paul says that even though we were dead in our sin, God made us alive in Christ.
If we look back at our key verse, verse 10, that’s exactly what Paul means when he says we’ve been created in Christ Jesus. We’re a new creation, we have a new being, a new life in Christ.
New Life in Christ
It’s hard to put into words exactly what’s happening here. I’ve heard it described as being similar to a caterpillar that goes into its cocoon for a bit and then out it pops, a beautiful butterfly. It’s transformed—changed from something rather ugly to something beautiful.
But that doesn’t quite capture what Paul is describing here. If we think about it, a caterpillar always had the potential to become a butterfly. It was created with the DNA and ability to build a cocoon for itself and grow the wings and everything else.
But the Bible is clear. We had nothing. We had nothing to give to God. No good works, no lovable qualities that made God bend the rules a bit for us.
But God made us alive. He created us again in Christ. That kind of newness, that kind of re-creation, can only come through Christ. It can only come through being connected to the only perfect one who paid the price for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to.
It Took A Cross
That’s what we received when he died that horrible death on the cross. We got his righteousness. We got his perfect record. He took on our guilt and our shame and we got his perfection and a clean slate before God.
In another one of Paul’s letters, he describes it like this: “You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col. 2:13–14)
You’ll notice how legal-sounding his language is. It’s the kind of language you’d hear in a courtroom. Paul does that on purpose. He wants to communicate the full weight of what’s been done for us. Our debt is paid. Our death sentence has been removed. We have a new standing before God. Not because of anything we’ve done but because of what Christ has done.
We’ve been forgiven, and now when God looks at us, the words “Not Guilty” are over us. In order for this to be true about us, in order to receive that new standing, to be made a new creation, we must acknowledge that we bring nothing to the table. We come with empty hands to receive the gifts of a gracious God.
Paul shows why that’s important in in the end of verse 8 leading into verse 9. He says that this forgiveness, this grace, is a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one can boast.
That word ‘boast’ is a bit unfamiliar. It’s not really a word that we use outside of reading the Bible these days to be honest.
It’s similar to bragging or bigging yourself up. But it’s a bit more than that. It’s not so much about bragging about your accomplishments but it has more to do with where you find your identity.
The risk that Paul sees here is that if we as Christians start to believe that we somehow earned our salvation based on how we lived our lives before Christ, then that automatically translates to how we view the significance of our lives after Christ.
It’s similar to what I said before about faith.