Alive with Christ | Easter Sunday

Ephesians 1:15 – 2:10

Easter changes everything. Not just for Christians gathered in churches around the world on this one Sunday, but for every person who has ever drawn breath and wondered if death gets the final word. The answer, according to the apostle Paul, is a resounding NO.

But to understand why, we have to start with an uncomfortable question.

What Did Jesus Actually Come to Do?

We have a tendency to shrink the gospel into something manageable. He came to make bad people good. Or, if we're feeling a little more generous, he came to take good people to heaven. Both of those are smaller than the truth.

Any self-help guru can help you build better habits. And scripture itself pushes back on the "good people go to heaven" idea, reminding us that no one is good, not even one.

So what did Jesus actually come to do?

Christ came to make dead people live again.

The gospels give us at least three stories of Jesus raising people from the dead: Jairus's daughter, the widow's only son, and Lazarus, who had already been in the tomb four days by the time Jesus showed up. In each case, death looked like the final answer. In each case, Jesus proved otherwise.

When John the Baptist sent messengers from prison to ask if Jesus was really "the one," Jesus pointed to the evidence: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. Death is not a wall in the kingdom of God. It is a door.

That reality culminated on Easter morning, when the women arrived at the tomb and found the stone rolled away, the guards gone, and two angels asking what must have been the most bewildering question imaginable: Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

Every other person Jesus raised would eventually die again. But Jesus was raised to a new and indestructible life, never to die again. That changes everything.

A Prayer Worth Making Our Own

In Ephesians 1, writing from a prison cell where he doesn't know whether he'll be released or executed, Paul breaks into one of the most remarkable prayers in all of scripture. He prays that his readers would receive a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, and that they would come to know:

• The hope of God's calling on their lives

• The wealth of their inheritance in Christ

• The immeasurable greatness of God's power toward those who believe

That last one is worth sitting with. Paul piles up every Greek word for power he can find into a single verse, like a kid trying to describe something too incredible for ordinary language. He can barely contain it. And then he tells us what that power looks like in action.

It is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him above every ruler, authority, power, and title, in this age and in every age to come. Caesar. Kings. Dictators. Presidents. Whatever human power looks most formidable to you right now, Christ is seated above it.

That is the power Paul wants us to know.

And You... We also... But God...

Here is where the story gets personal.

After building this towering picture of divine power and resurrection glory, Paul pivots in chapter 2 with two of the most important words in scripture: But God.

Before those two words, here is what he says about us: we were dead. Not struggling, not wounded, not spiritually sluggish. Dead. Dead in our trespasses and sins. Shaped by the ways of this world, pushed around by spiritual forces working against us, driven by desires that kept us trapped in cycles we couldn't break on our own.

It is not a flattering portrait. But it is an honest one, and we have to sit with it before the next part means anything.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ.

Notice the preposition. Not alive in Christ, though that is true. Alive with Christ. The resurrection that Jesus experienced is one we are caught up into. He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens. The power and authority given to Christ has been delegated to us. No earthly power has the final word over someone who has been seated with the risen King.

This is the gospel. Not just "Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven." It is that what God did for Christ, he is also doing with us.

Saved For Something

Paul closes this section with a phrase that has echoed through centuries of Christian thought: "For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not from works, so that no one can boast."

Grace is the initiative. Faith is the response. We do not earn this, we receive it.

But salvation is never just a destination. It is a calling. We are saved for good works that God prepared ahead of time for us to walk in. And the word Paul uses for what we are, his "workmanship," is the Greek word from which we get poem. Some translations render it "masterpiece."

Those who have been made alive with Christ are God's living poetry. His artistic expression. His plan A, not an afterthought.

Fill in the Blank

There is a simple exercise worth sitting with today:

I was ____. But God ____. So now I ____.

John Newton, the 18th-century slave ship captain, filled it in something like this: I was lost and blind. But God's grace found me. So now I write hymns and fight for the freedom of the people I once exploited.

Or as he famously wrote: "Amazing grace – How sweet the sound! – that save a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see."

His story was messy. God's grace worked slowly on him, like a slow cooker rather than a microwave. But it worked.

What are your blanks?

The tomb is empty. Death did not get the final word over Jesus, and because of that, it does not get the final word over you either. That is the good news of Easter, and it is good news not just for the life to come, but for the life you are living right now.

Do you believe it?

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