highlight: ephesians 2:1-10
TRANSCRIPT
Ephesians 2_1-10 Leader GuideLEADER GUIDE
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, 5made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens, 7so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9not from works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.
H
E
EXPLAIN
Leaders: Feel free to use any of the “Explain” materials to guide discussion as it is needed or to expound on a certain area of the text as it comes up during your Life Group time, but the purpose of this section is to deepen your own personal understanding of the Word. Your members have access to all of this material as well.
After expounding on the power of Christ in Chapter 1, Paul hones in on the transformation that God, alone, accomplishes in the lives of those who are born again. This passage, though short, is packed with rich theology and application: the regenerating work of Christ is nothing we could accomplish on our own and it fundamentally changes everything about us, all for the purpose of bringing the Father glory.
of 2 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
v.1 Paul uses two words to describe the same thing—“trespasses”(crossing a line) and “sins” (missing the mark). They are two distinct Greek words (paraptoma and hamartia, respectively). However, Paul probably didn’t use both of them to highlight a distinction between a trespass and a sin, but combined them to demonstrate just how dire the human condition is. We were, in fact, dead.
One sense of the word “death” is the notion of a corpse—a body without the spark of life that once made it move. Paul is using this as a metaphor to illustrate a spiritual condition, which is something other NT writers did, as well. James called faith without works “dead” (2:17; 26); Jesus called the church of Sardis “dead” in Revelation 3:1-2; the prodigal son was lost, but considered dead in the eyes of the town and his father (Lk. 15:24, 32). In each of these senses, “dead” refers to a separation of the gravest form: separation from God. Paul uses the term combined with the twin “trespasses” and “sins” to show just how hopeless and dreadful our spiritual condition without Christ is.
vv.2-3 “World”(kosmos), like “dead” in the previous verse, has different associations.
Paul used it in Ephesians 1:4 in a literal sense—the created world. However, in verse 2, he uses it to refer more to a system—one which is “hostile to God, i.e., lost in sin, wholly at odds with anything divine, ruined and depraved” (William W. Klein). Such a world controlled by Satan is referred to many times in the NT: John 12:31; 16:11; 1 John 3:13; 5:4-5,19; etc. Elsewhere, Paul tells believers to avoid conforming to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:1-2).
Paul calls those who participate in favor of this world the “disobedient” or, literally, the “sons of disobedience.” This word carries a connotation of disbelief as well as deliberate rebellion, all in relation to God. Therefore, we round out a picture of what the “ways of this world” look like: they are diametrically, staunchly opposed and disobedient to the ways of God (Paul goes as far as to call those people “children of wrath.”)
vv.4-5 The grand shift in the passage comes with the word “but”. Here, Paul resumes the train of thought he began in Chapter 1 with the power of Christ, showing how He alone is capable of raising us to life from our spiritual death.
There are some important words in these two verses: “mercy” and “grace.” Mercy is not getting a punishment that we deserve; Grace is a free gift that we don’t deserve. God showed us mercy by sparing us from the punishment we should have received, and did so in such a way that we could never even begin to deserve or merit it.
v.7 “So that” is a phrase that indicates the reasoning behind something, or the
ultimate end. All of this—us being dead, God showering us with grace and making us alive with Christ—was for a specific purpose: that He might “display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Our individual salvation is a miracle and is worth rejoicing over, but it is also a piece of a grand picture that exists solely to display the glory, majesty, and generosity of our Heavenly Father to a world that desperately needs Him.
v.8 The Greek construction of this verse reveals that “grace through faith” is “God’s gift”—both the grace and the faith through which His grace comes. It is not that grace is God’s part of the job and faith is ours; salvation in its entirety is God’s gift to us.
of 3 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
A APPLY Your Leader Guide will have material that the member guides do not have. The bolded material is what the people in your group will have, the other material is only for you to help guide discussion.
This guide can be as strict a script or as general a resource as the leader needs it to be.
1. What stuck out to you or challenged you in what you heard in the sermon or read in the text?
2. How do you see the same “world” described in vv.2-3 today? How does “the way of the world” oppose the way of God?
God is, of course, sovereign, but remember who is in charge of the system of the world: the Adversary. We do not have to look far to see the hateful, fearful, divided, bitter, prideful, vile kind of world he stirs up. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self- control. Reflect on each of those words and then imagine their opposites. Then decide which you see more prevalently in the world around us.
3. According to this passage, are Christians more holy than non-believers? What is the difference between a believer and a non-believer? How do you think Christians should behave around non-believers?
One of the most remarkable men of God in history, Paul, was once a murderous Pharisee. He lumps himself in with the rest of humanity in verse 3, saying that we all once did the terrible things we associate with an unbelieving world. The only thing that separates a believer from a non-believer is the salvation given to them by God’s grace which comes through faith—both of which are a gift from Him! Paul set the record quite straight in v. 9: everything in the salvation process is God’s work, so none of us can boast about it.
If none of us is righteous on our own, if we can do nothing under our individual strength to correct this, and we all once lived under control of the passions of our flesh but still God decided to make a way for us to be right with Him, that is certainly the best news to ever come to mankind. How badly must we hate our neighbors to pretend we are at all superior or to withhold this good news from them?
4. What does Paul argue is God’s purpose in raising us from the dead? How does seeing our salvation this way change how we view ourselves and those around us?
Verse 7 tells us in no uncertain terms what the purpose of God’s grace is. Notice how the NLT translates this verse: “So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.” The point of our salvation is not personal fire insurance, it is the thing God uses to show a lost world how desperately they need Him. Pastor Robby says this often, though it cannot be overstated: The Gospel came to you because it was headed to someone else.
of 4 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
R RESPOND Challenge your group to respond either privately or corporately to this question:
• Examine the actions of your life. Are they the actions of someone who is God’s workmanship?
• What can you do this week to act as someone who displays “the immeasurable riches of His grace”?
Encourage one another through email, text messages, or coffee dates throughout the week to build up and encourage each other.
5. Read verse 10. What role do you think works play in a believer’s life? What reaction do you think an unbelieving world would have to a Church full of people behaving as “His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works”?
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, 5made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens, 7so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9not from works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.
H
E
EXPLAIN
Leaders: Feel free to use any of the “Explain” materials to guide discussion as it is needed or to expound on a certain area of the text as it comes up during your Life Group time, but the purpose of this section is to deepen your own personal understanding of the Word. Your members have access to all of this material as well.
After expounding on the power of Christ in Chapter 1, Paul hones in on the transformation that God, alone, accomplishes in the lives of those who are born again. This passage, though short, is packed with rich theology and application: the regenerating work of Christ is nothing we could accomplish on our own and it fundamentally changes everything about us, all for the purpose of bringing the Father glory.
of 2 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
v.1 Paul uses two words to describe the same thing—“trespasses”(crossing a line) and “sins” (missing the mark). They are two distinct Greek words (paraptoma and hamartia, respectively). However, Paul probably didn’t use both of them to highlight a distinction between a trespass and a sin, but combined them to demonstrate just how dire the human condition is. We were, in fact, dead.
One sense of the word “death” is the notion of a corpse—a body without the spark of life that once made it move. Paul is using this as a metaphor to illustrate a spiritual condition, which is something other NT writers did, as well. James called faith without works “dead” (2:17; 26); Jesus called the church of Sardis “dead” in Revelation 3:1-2; the prodigal son was lost, but considered dead in the eyes of the town and his father (Lk. 15:24, 32). In each of these senses, “dead” refers to a separation of the gravest form: separation from God. Paul uses the term combined with the twin “trespasses” and “sins” to show just how hopeless and dreadful our spiritual condition without Christ is.
vv.2-3 “World”(kosmos), like “dead” in the previous verse, has different associations.
Paul used it in Ephesians 1:4 in a literal sense—the created world. However, in verse 2, he uses it to refer more to a system—one which is “hostile to God, i.e., lost in sin, wholly at odds with anything divine, ruined and depraved” (William W. Klein). Such a world controlled by Satan is referred to many times in the NT: John 12:31; 16:11; 1 John 3:13; 5:4-5,19; etc. Elsewhere, Paul tells believers to avoid conforming to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:1-2).
Paul calls those who participate in favor of this world the “disobedient” or, literally, the “sons of disobedience.” This word carries a connotation of disbelief as well as deliberate rebellion, all in relation to God. Therefore, we round out a picture of what the “ways of this world” look like: they are diametrically, staunchly opposed and disobedient to the ways of God (Paul goes as far as to call those people “children of wrath.”)
vv.4-5 The grand shift in the passage comes with the word “but”. Here, Paul resumes the train of thought he began in Chapter 1 with the power of Christ, showing how He alone is capable of raising us to life from our spiritual death.
There are some important words in these two verses: “mercy” and “grace.” Mercy is not getting a punishment that we deserve; Grace is a free gift that we don’t deserve. God showed us mercy by sparing us from the punishment we should have received, and did so in such a way that we could never even begin to deserve or merit it.
v.7 “So that” is a phrase that indicates the reasoning behind something, or the
ultimate end. All of this—us being dead, God showering us with grace and making us alive with Christ—was for a specific purpose: that He might “display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Our individual salvation is a miracle and is worth rejoicing over, but it is also a piece of a grand picture that exists solely to display the glory, majesty, and generosity of our Heavenly Father to a world that desperately needs Him.
v.8 The Greek construction of this verse reveals that “grace through faith” is “God’s gift”—both the grace and the faith through which His grace comes. It is not that grace is God’s part of the job and faith is ours; salvation in its entirety is God’s gift to us.
of 3 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
A APPLY Your Leader Guide will have material that the member guides do not have. The bolded material is what the people in your group will have, the other material is only for you to help guide discussion.
This guide can be as strict a script or as general a resource as the leader needs it to be.
1. What stuck out to you or challenged you in what you heard in the sermon or read in the text?
2. How do you see the same “world” described in vv.2-3 today? How does “the way of the world” oppose the way of God?
God is, of course, sovereign, but remember who is in charge of the system of the world: the Adversary. We do not have to look far to see the hateful, fearful, divided, bitter, prideful, vile kind of world he stirs up. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self- control. Reflect on each of those words and then imagine their opposites. Then decide which you see more prevalently in the world around us.
3. According to this passage, are Christians more holy than non-believers? What is the difference between a believer and a non-believer? How do you think Christians should behave around non-believers?
One of the most remarkable men of God in history, Paul, was once a murderous Pharisee. He lumps himself in with the rest of humanity in verse 3, saying that we all once did the terrible things we associate with an unbelieving world. The only thing that separates a believer from a non-believer is the salvation given to them by God’s grace which comes through faith—both of which are a gift from Him! Paul set the record quite straight in v. 9: everything in the salvation process is God’s work, so none of us can boast about it.
If none of us is righteous on our own, if we can do nothing under our individual strength to correct this, and we all once lived under control of the passions of our flesh but still God decided to make a way for us to be right with Him, that is certainly the best news to ever come to mankind. How badly must we hate our neighbors to pretend we are at all superior or to withhold this good news from them?
4. What does Paul argue is God’s purpose in raising us from the dead? How does seeing our salvation this way change how we view ourselves and those around us?
Verse 7 tells us in no uncertain terms what the purpose of God’s grace is. Notice how the NLT translates this verse: “So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.” The point of our salvation is not personal fire insurance, it is the thing God uses to show a lost world how desperately they need Him. Pastor Robby says this often, though it cannot be overstated: The Gospel came to you because it was headed to someone else.
of 4 4 Spirit and Truth, November 22, 2020
LEADER GUIDE
R RESPOND Challenge your group to respond either privately or corporately to this question:
• Examine the actions of your life. Are they the actions of someone who is God’s workmanship?
• What can you do this week to act as someone who displays “the immeasurable riches of His grace”?
Encourage one another through email, text messages, or coffee dates throughout the week to build up and encourage each other.
5. Read verse 10. What role do you think works play in a believer’s life? What reaction do you think an unbelieving world would have to a Church full of people behaving as “His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works”?