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Sermon preached on Ephesians 2: 4-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/14/2025 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
Two weeks ago, I gave us an overview of this passage (2:1-10). Last week, I had us focus on the first three verses, about how we were spiritually dead. As I described our former fallen nature I also described how we still struggle with something of that sinful nature. Today, we will delve into the details of verses 4-7, considering how God has made us alive together with Christ. So last week was focused on our spiritual death, now we will focus on our spiritual life. Our first point will be to emphasize God’s work in our new birth. Our second point will consider what it means to now be alive. Our third point will then think about how our union with Christ further explains how we are now alive.
Let us then begin in our first point by considering how our new birth is God’s work. I’ve titled this point on your outline as “But God”, reflecting the start of verse 4. In our first sermon on this passage, I really emphasized this “But God” moment of the text, to say that we couldn’t save ourselves, we needed God to make us alive again. No one can’t bring new birth to a dead soul, except God. We also noted that verse 4 explained that God’s saving work in our hearts is rooted in his rich mercy, his great love, and his emphatic grace. Be reminded that it’s such mercy, love, and grace, that God has shown us by causing us to be born again. Let us then delve further into this idea of God’s work inside our hearts to make us born again. At this point, I especially want us to see all the prophecy about this in the Old Testament which now finds its fulfillment in Jesus. That will help us appreciate that this is God’s work not man.
So then, think back with me to the Old Testament. God began to especially hone his saving work when he called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into covenant with him. Ultimately, that line grew into the people of Israel. What is very clear about that family line, is that they are sinners who needed God’s mercy, love, and grace, to save them. As we see God’s work among them, a truth comes out. None of them were perfect. None of them were deserving of God’s blessings. They were all sinners who fell short of God’s glory. Yet, God had entered in saving relationship with them, nonetheless, even as he brought judgment on other peoples because of their sin and transgression. God made this very clear in Deuteronomy 9. Turn with me there. There, God promised how he would bring Israel into the Promised Land as he used them to judge the wicked Canaanites. Look at what God through Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy 9:4. “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.” Then look down at verse 6. He continues, “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.” While God was showing Israel mercy, love, and grace, they themselves were also people with depravity in their hearts. They too were fallen creatures who ultimately would need new hearts.
This is confirmed in the new chapter. Turn to Deuteuronomy 10:12. What is the proper response to God’s saving work in their lives? Verse 12, they need to fear the LORD and walk in his ways and love God and serve him with all their heart. But remember, they are a stiff-necked people. All humanity had fallen into a state of spiritual death, having unclean hearts. Verse 16 then explains what their hearts will need. Verse 16, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” That’s law. God saw their stubborn, unclean hearts, and commanded them to circumcise their hearts. They were to cut off from their hearts anything unclean, anything depraved. The law calls us to cut off from our hearts, anything that doesn’t belong there.
Fast forward then to Deuteronomy 30. Moses goes on to explain to them that once God brings them into the land, they were to live holy, clean, and righteous lives in careful obedience to God’s law and in adherence to the covenant. If they were faithful to the Lord, they would find blessing in the Promised Land. If they were not faithful, God would bring curse upon them and ultimately remove them from the Land and exile them among the nations. That brings us to chapter 30. Look at verse 1. It envisions there that one day they would find they were unfaithful and that they had received the covenant curses and that God had exiled them among the nations. It goes on to describe how they will then repent and return to the Lord they would find his grace and mercy. And look then at verse 6. “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” It prophesies, a “But God” moment, that God would circumcise their hearts.
I hope you are connecting the dots here. Back in chapter 10, God commanded the people to circumcise their hearts. But chapter 30 will foretell how they would fail to do that, and so that ultimately God will circumcise their hearts. The law commands us to circumcise our hearts. The gospel says that God will circumcise our hearts. Israel’s history here walks through the very idea present in our passage here in Ephesians. This is not to say that God wasn’t bring new birth to various individuals in Israel back then. Surely, he was. But as a nation, he uses their collective story to paint the picture of what all people need. We need God to bring life to dead souls, because we can’t do it by our own power.
This theme is revisited in various other Old Testament passages. Ezekiel especially brings out the same law versus gospel tension. Ezekiel prophesies after the people found themselves exiled in Babylon. Ezekiel 18:31 commands wayward Israel to make for themselves a new heart and a new spirit. But then Ezekiel 36:26 says, “And I [God] will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” The law says make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit. The gospel says that God will make us a new heart and a new spirit. We see the same contrast in Jeremiah. Jeremiah 4:4 commands the people to circumcise their hearts to remove the foreskin of their hearts. Jeremiah 31:33 prophesies that God will one day make a new covenant with his people and write his law on their hearts so they would all know the Lord.
So then, Israel’s history repeatedly makes the point. They ought to have made their dead hearts alive. But they needed God to make their hearts alive and clean and righteous. These several prophecies all look forward to the soul regenerating work God would especially bring in the new covenant in Christ Jesus. Ephesians announces that this has come with Jesus.
Let’s turn then to our second point and consider more fully what it means to be made alive. The regeneration of our souls is an instantaneous change that affects the entirety of our inner self. There are a number of ways that we could speak of this, but let us consider it from the standpoint of three aspects: intellectually, emotionally, and morally. First, think of how our intellect is affected when we are made alive spiritually. Think narrowly how we see this at our conversion. As the Shorter Catechism describes, the Christian has had their mind enlightened in the knowledge of Christ. Last chapter, verse 13, described the Christian as one who hears the gospel and believes unto salvation. Verse 9 of today’s passage reminds us that such faith is ultimately a gift of God, because we would never believe if God hadn’t first made alive our dead heart. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, no can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. In other words, being born again includes renovated knowledge. I don’t mean in the mere academic sense, of just knowing certain facts. But the sort of knowledge that recognizes divine true, understands it, and believes it to be true. This enlightening of the mind is why we can say Jesus is Lord and Savior and even God in the flesh. This enlightening of the mind is also why we can affirm that what the Bible teaches is true and good. This includes his law. For example, you can talk to an unbeliever who might say they don’t agree with some moral teaching of the Bible. But an enlightened mind has eyes to see and ears to hear God’s word. So, when someone who practices some sin says they don’t see any problem with it, that’s their dead soul and darkened mind talking. But when we are able to accept and affirm that what God says is sin and what he says is righteousness, that is coming from a heart that God has enlightened with the knowledge of the truth. That is an aspect of our new birth, intellectually, we begin to think more clearly and see things for the way they really are.
Second, then, consider how our emotions are affected in the new birth. God made us with passions and affections and part of being made alive is he renews these. As Deuteronomy describes, God’s circumcision of the heart is so that we would love God properly. Augustine spoke about this as the need for rightly ordered loves. Our new birth makes us begin to love what we are supposed to love and to not love what we shouldn’t love.
Similarly, Jonathan Edwards says that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections. Our hearts are being reoriented toward that which is good, away from that which is depraved. We begin to desire and want and delight in that which we should. We begin to grieve over evil and rejoice over good. Unrighteous fear and anger begins to be put off and replaced with godly fear and righteous anger. The fruit of the Spirit can be recognized here. For example, finding joy and peace in the way of Christ is a result of the Spirit reorienting our affections. This is an aspect of our new birth, emotionally, our passions and affectioned are governed and guided by a heart that feels things the way it should.
Third, consider how morally we are affected in the new birth. That Jeremiah prophecy described that God is writing his law on our hearts. When God makes us alive, he liberates us from our former slavery to sin (Rom 6:17), so that we can begin to walk in the path of righteousness. No more do we suffer from the bondage of the will! We said our intellect is renovated, so we know what is right. We said our affections are renovated, so we desire what is right. In the freedom of our liberated will, we then can begin to morally choose what we know to be good and right. This moral category is seen right here, that before we were dead in sin and walking in disobedience, now we alive in Christ and walking in good works. This is an aspect of our new birth, morally, we are given the power to not sin.
I hope you appreciate that a great change has been wondrously worked by God in our hearts so that our inner self is wholly changed in that moment of regeneration. We should rejoice greatly in such a heart transformation. We should endeavor then to think, feel, and live in a manner consistent with this new birth. Yet, I would remind you of what we acknowledged last week. At this point, we Christians still struggle with a remnant of that old fallen self. We’ve truly been made alive and that has made a real difference in our life. But we still struggle with sin and transgression. Sometimes our thinking is still unbiblical. Sometimes our affections crave things we shouldn’t or we just emotionally feel the wrong way. Sometimes our thoughts, words, or deeds are sinful and immoral. I remember that James 3 laments how we can find such hypocrisy within us, that one moment we are praising God and another moment sinfully cursing a neighbor who is made in God’s image. James 3:10-11, From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?” James recognizes that struggle we still have, spiritually made anew, but still at times living like we were still dead. We can be tempted to cry out, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver us from this body of sin and death?” We can genuinely wonder how it is that we are born again and yet still have such internal struggles?
That actually is my segue for us into our third point. Now, I want us to connect being made alive with our union with Christ. And it will address this question of how we still wrestle in this life between our new life and the old man. Notice how verse 5 explains that we are made alive “together with Christ.” So, our text explicitly connects our new birth with our union with Christ. We only experience regeneration in connection with our union with Christ. No one is born again expect in Christ.
So then, see how our union with Christ is developed here in context. When it says we were made alive with Christ, we need to go back a step. For Jesus to be made alive, it means that Jesus had been dead. Jesus died at the cross. He died, not in his own sin and trespasses, but in our sin and trespasses. He who knew no sin became sin for us that in him we might become the righteousness of God, 2 Corinthians 5:20. Jesus came and related himself to his elect whom he came to save. We were dead in our sin and trespasses, so he died. But up from the grave he arose, unto new life. That’s where verse 5 picks up when it says that our regeneration is connected with Christ’s resurrection. He rose from the dead even as we now rise from spiritual death in him.
But it’s important that we don’t stop there. Verse 6 goes on to say that we have been raised up with Jesus and seated with Jesus in the heavenly places. Do you see how that is still working out this thought of our being made alive? Our spiritual resurrection connects us with Jesus’ bodily resurrection. He then was ascended and seated in heaven and it says that we have also been ascended and seated there. Now, it is obvious that we are not bodily ascended and seated in heaven. No, bodily, we are right here. But spiritually speaking, that is essentially our state. Spiritually, we are united to Christ in his exalted place of victory there in heaven.
But it is this fact that we can use to answer our question as to why we still struggle with sin. Think about the nature of Christ’s exaltation right now. He has already inaugurated his kingdom, but it has not yet been consummated. Right now, Jesus reigns over all, yet he still reigns in the midst of his enemies. Right now, Jesus has defeated the works of the devil, yet Satan still is presently at work in this world in the lives of unbelievers. Right now, Jesus reigns from heaven, but one day he will return to establish his throne in a new creation. What I’m trying to say is that Jesus’ victory is fully realized in principle, yet it is only partially manifested. This is the already and the not yet that we talk about. For Jesus to right now be up in heaven is to say that he hasn’t yet returned to manifest the fullness of his victory. What is therefore the situation for Jesus, is also the situation for us. We have already and not yet tasted the fulness of the victory we have in Jesus. It is already a sure and complete victory in principle, but only partially realized in its manifestation even in our hearts. Thus, this is what we see in how we’ve been born again. That new birth unites us to the already realized victory of Jesus. But as Jesus awaits his return to consummate the victory, so we too wait until we fully enjoy the fullness of our resurrection life. In the meantime, our soul lives anew in the midst of the enemy of the old self that still seeks to afflict us. Yet, one day we will be perfected in our hearts as sure as one day Jesus will return in glory. The full realization of our new resurrection life will not precede Christ’s coming in glory. In other words, our union with Christ explains why we are not fully perfected yet. We must patiently wait for Christ’s return, then in our union with him we will return with him in full perfected glory. So then, we are indeed more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24).
We can then apply this truth back to those Old Testament prophecies I cited in our first point today. When Deuteronomy, Ezekeil, and Jeremiah speak about that heart change God will bring, those statements might have sounded like God would change our hearts even more than what he has already done. That is correct. That means that these prophecies have been only semi-realized so far. They have already been fulfilled in our regeneration. They are being fulfilled in our sanctification. They will be finally fulfilled in our glorification when Christ returns from heaven to usher in the fulness of his kingdom in the new creation.
Trinity Presbyterian Church, let us live our lives with this perspective. We are new creations in Christ. We are already reigning with Christ even while we still battle several enemies, including our own flesh. But let us firmly believe that Christ will finish the work he has begun in us, as surely as he will return here in glory. So then, let us rejoice in our new birth. Let us live Christ. Let us hope in his coming.
Amen.
Copyright © 2025 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
