Saved to be God’s Masterpiece

In this message on Ephesians 2:1–10, Pastor Jim urges us to grasp the depth of what it means to be rescued by grace. We are not simply saved from something but brought into something entirely new. Jim describes the contrast between our spiritual death and the new life found in Christ, inviting us to see salvation not as a ticket to heaven but as a radical relocation into God’s household. Through vivid imagery and honest reflection, Jim unpacks the beauty of God’s mercy, our position in Christ, and the truth that we are God’s workmanship created for good works. The church, as God’s new family, becomes a sign of new creation in a world desperate for hope, healing, and wholeness.

Transcript

Ryan: Today's passage is coming from Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. As for you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air. The spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following his desires and thoughts.
Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive. With Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. In order that in the coming ages, he might show us the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Or it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is a gift from God. Not by works, so no man can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Pastor Jim  Amen. God's word for God's people. 
So I worked at a church before I worked here, my home church where I grew up in South Jersey. And I was on staff there for about seven years. And I think I've shared this story before. But one of the things that I got to oversee when I was there was sort of outreach in the community. And there was a day where we got a phone call at the church that there was a house in my neighborhood, sort of on the other side of the neighborhood, so I didn't see it too often. But there was a house in my neighborhood that... Was being condemned. 
Totally dilapidated. You know, trees growing out of the gutter, porch sinking in, moss all over the place, grass overgrown. And the-- I forget if it was the police or, like, somebody from the state called us and said, "Look, there's three people that live there. "We're going to remove them from the home, "and we want you to be part of that process. And so me and one of the other pastors from staff went over to check out the house and to see it and went and knocked on the door and nobody answered. But I came away with fleas. Just from the seriously from the few minutes of being around the house, I started getting bit and we realized the house was covered in fleas. I couldn't get the door open. I could see inside. There was tons of animal feces all over the place. Just everything you can picture. It was just terrible. And the part that was crazy to me about it was that it was an older couple and a son who was probably in his 20s. But when we interacted with him, it was clear that he was just emotionally Not there. He had not developed. Into a full 20-something-year-old at that point. Probably because of the environment he was being raised in. And it was an incredibly sad experience, humiliating for them. And we were happy to be involved, but you know, that story, like, I don't know how that gets better outside of a divine miracle of God, just getting inside of these people and completely changing them. But I particularly felt for this young man and what they essentially were asking us to do was just to be there and sort of dignify them in the moment, you know, help them get a hotel, give them some humanity. And we did that. But really what needed to happen there is some sort of, I mean, a bigger organization than our church was able to be in that moment, but somebody to come along and to say, You're coming with me. It's not supposed to be this way. There's another way to live. And retrain them. Retrain these folks in how to live and how to develop and how to be whole and how to not live in squalor. 
Someone to come along and rescue them. To say, "You're coming with me. There is another way to live." Today's passage in Ephesians 2 says, I know some of us come to this, so, you know, it's by grace you've been saved. It's by, you know, through faith, not by work so that no man can boast. And if you grew up in the church, like I did, what you hear is doctrine immediately. And you hear saved by God, not by any of our works. And we think there's some sort of Protestant Catholic thing happening there that we're not saved by our works. Fine. I'm asking you to set that aside for today. And to come with me and look at this passage with fresh eyes. And to see that what Paul is doing here in Ephesians 2 is saying, you were stuck in squalor and sin. And someone needed to rescue you. 
Someone needed to pull you out of that and say, "Come with me. You're going to live with me, and I'm going to teach you another way." I'm going to give you another way. This passage is very much full of multiple opposites. It used to be this way, now it's this way. It could be like this, but it's like this. It's not by this, it's by this. Paul's constantly positioning these things against each other. The other thing I want you to think about, again, we come to this passage with like loaded with doctrine, If I were to ask you the question, As a Jesus follower, as a born again believer, what does it mean that you're saved? What does it mean to be saved? Most of us, I think, would probably say, "I'm going to heaven someday." That's true, and that's good news. Paul's not talking about heaven here. He is. But he's saying there's so much more. He's saying, "I'm rescuing." This idea of rescue in the Jewish mind in the first century wasn't necessarily about going to heaven. It's about being put into a new kingdom. With a new king. Where all are equal at the foot of the cross, which we'll get to next week. But what Paul is saying is someone has come and rescued you and said, come and be with me. There's another way to live. Right. That's what's happening in these 10 verses. And so I'm going to try to lead us through looking at our lostness, what it means to be lost, our lostness, God's grace, and the new works, or the good works of new creation. All right, so our lostness, God's grace, the good works of new creation. All right, I'm going to pray about this. Would you pray with me? God, These are your scriptures. This is your apostle Paul that wrote this. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, And the only way our minds and our hearts, the center of our beings can grasp this spirit is if you open it, is if you illuminate this to us. And so I pray that you would open our eyes. Speak through me. Speak into people's hearts and minds, the truths of the gospel that are presented here. Help us see with fresh eyes what it means to be rescued. What it means to be lost and found. Your faithfulness, your grace. Would you make much of Jesus and the gospel in this moment? Pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right, so let's talk about our lostness. I know you probably don't remember this because it was three weeks ago, unless you've been reading along, but chapter one ends with Paul basically saying he's elevating Jesus. He's making much of Jesus, the greatness of Jesus. 
And then he starts chapter two with, but as for you, it's sort of this, but as for you were dead in your sins and transgressions. I want to look at these first three verses with you. He says, "As for you were dead in your transgressions and sins." What he's talking about there is, obviously they weren't physically dead, right? They were spiritually dead. There's another realm at work here. Spiritually, they were dead in their sins and transgressions in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world. And the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, and following its desires and thoughts. 
Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath." He's saying you were stuck in sin. He goes on in verse 12 to say without God and without hope in this world. He's saying it was a hopeless, stuck situation. Stuck in sin and transgressions and I think this is why I interpret this passage and you know, there's room for nuance here for sure But I think in some ways because it's a Gentile and a Jewish congregation mixed. I think he's got both in mind here and This is the way I read this. I think what he's saying is, as for you, and I think he's mostly speaking to Gentiles there. As for you were not walking with God. They were not Jewish people who had the law, who had the covenant, who had the sacrificial system. They were completely godless pagans worshiping all sorts of things. The temple of Artemis was in Ephesus that they would worship at all these other, you know, Greek gods who'd come into the Roman world. He's saying they followed the ways of the world. They walked in the ways of the world. They were somehow had this spirit of disobedience on them that came from the ruler of the power of the air. Ever thought about that term before? 
Like, what does that even mean? What is happening there? What he's saying is the world walk works in a certain way, walks in a certain way. And there's a spirit of disobedience in the world, in our flesh, as he goes on to say, the scriptures say that there seems to be that there are three enemies of our soul. The Satan, the world, the flesh. Thus Satan, it is often singular, okay? I'm not grammatically crazy. Thus Satan, the flesh of the world. He's saying there is a spiritual thing that is happening in our midst. There's a spiritual spirit of disobedience causing people to walk in disobedience to God. There's an invisible spiritual world at play. Working to pull us away from God, pull us away from obedience to him, pull us away from walking in his ways, walking in the good works that are God's. And so I just a little tangent off to the side here for a second. Friends, there is a spiritual world. Maybe you've never thought about this before, but there is in fact a spiritual darkness that exists in the world that is trying to devour our souls, trying to pull us away from obedience to God where full life is. And so, Can I just tell you, because that exists, I would caution you Against dabbling in things of the dark arts, in things of the spiritual, and you might think, like, "Why would I ever do that?" I know only recently of a conversation we were in where somebody was saying like, " well, I go to a psychic and we look at tarot cards together." Some of you, again, you're going to think I'm the most crazy, prude person in this moment. Ouija boards, again. There's... There's a spiritual world out there that is trying to distract us, trying to pull us away from God. And so can I just caution you against those things? There is a darkness out there. Now in the coming weeks, we will look at what Paul says about that, how to deal with this. When he gets to chapter six, he talks about the spiritual world and putting on armor and things like this. We'll get there. But what he was trying to tell them in this passage is that you Gentiles have been dabbling with these things. You've been worshiping these other things. And there is a spirit of disobedience that is present in the world that is trying to pull you away from God. And you are stuck in it. You are dead in that sinful way. You are dead in the transgressions against a holy God who is of spiritual light and love and goodness and wholeness and purity. 
So you've been stuck in that Gentiles. But then less they start to, less the Jewish population in this church starts to think, well, we're great. He says, We.. Used to walk in the ways of this. And again, this is why I think he's maybe pitting these two, not pitting them against each other, but showing that it's not just the Gentile world. It's the Jewish people. He's saying, we used to walk in this way. We were under the power of the flesh. This is a term that Paul uses regularly in Romans. We see it in Galatians that there's a fleshly self that is anti-God that is opposed to the things of God. And he sings, we, even though we were doing the religious things, we were following the law. We were doing the covenantal system. We were offering the sacrifices. We too were actually still stuck in the flesh. We lived among them, gratifying the cravings of the flesh. And, following its desires and thoughts. His point In these first couple of verses is that whether you are a Gentile living in an obviously ugly, dilapidated house with things growing out of the gutters and the grass is overgrown and you're worshiping other things and you're in spiritual darkness, whether you're in that world or you're a Jew who has a nice looking house, but the foundation is cracked. It's still broken and falling into the ground because of the flesh. He says, regardless of which one you are in need of rescue. Friends, you can be super religious and still be in need of rescue. Your life can be full of pagan worship. It needs rescue. All of us dead in sins and transgressions before God, spiritually separated from God because of our brokenness, because of our sinful flesh that we, you know, we seek to gratify these cravings, right? Doesn't matter if you're religious or not. There's an internal problem by nature. He says we are objects of wrath, which I'll get to in a second. Whether we're giving in to the pressures of the age or the passions of the flesh, we are stuck. We have a sin problem. We are ruled by it. It rules us. Have you thought about this before? Do you remember? What it used to be like. Following it. "Walking in it," he says, "producing the works that it produces, which lead to death, That doesn't mean inactive or insincere either. But unable to self-rescue. That's his point. Could be totally sincere, could be totally active, could be doing religious things, but still stuck in the flesh. 
Still stuck following the ways of the world, still stuck in spiritual darkness. And he calls it death. In sin and transgressions. 
So He says, all of us. All of us. Namely All of us. Are deserving of wrath. "By nature, children of wrath," he says. We hear the word wrath. And we picture an angry dad flying off the handle. If we're honest, right? 
Somebody just losing it. Screaming, yelling, banging pots and pans. I'm coming to get you, right? I'm getting out the belt, right? 
Like this is what our mind We hear the word wrath, it sounds uncontrolled. It sounds chaotic. It sounds incredibly, unhindered and scary and just Nuts, right? I read a commentary from a woman. She says this is what this means. Wrongs done to the vulnerable will be punished. Injustices unresolved will be paid up. And the arrogant who abuse others will be silenced. This is what God's wrath is. God's wrath is coming and saying this house that is Dilapidated and keeping people in bondage, it needs to be torn down. I'm going to-- Tear this thing down and build a new one. This is God's wrath. It's a bringing of justice against the wrongs. And if we're honest, we want God's justice. When we see an abuser, when we see somebody in history like Hitler, right? When we see dictators, when we see the poor being robbed, we say something ought to be done, right? That's justice. God's wrath brings justice. The problem is, We all deserve it. We all deserve God's justice because we all have that thing inside of us that's still stuck in sin, that still is stuck in spiritual darkness. That thing that says, well, I didn't murder anybody, but man, I could if I could get away with it. I didn't commit adultery, but I did look at that woman lustfully. 
Right? I didn't rage at that person, but man, I curse them in my heart. This is what Paul's talking about. This is the flesh. That's stuck in sin and transgressions. Whether that house looks good or it's cracked at the foundation or it's all dilapidated, he's like, "Same thing." And justice should be done against that. God's wrath cannot allow that to go on forever. And so he says he's going to bring that someday and make it right. And we actually long for him to do that. He says, but the problem is we would all be on the wrong side of it. God. But God who's rich in mercy, who's full of grace, comes and offers a way out of that. He says, that's the whole point is that there's a salvation that comes and rescues us out of that and says, I'm going to give you another way to live. You used to do these things that only produced works of death, but now I'm going to give you a way to produce godly works. I'm going to make you a masterpiece. You're my handiwork. I've got something prepared for you. 
So wrath is not God emotionally flying off the handle friends. It's putting things right. The way it was intended from the beginning, but humanity rebelled against it. That old house needs to be torn down. It is rotten on the inside. We need to be rescued from it. We need to be saved from sin and the punishment that it's, it deserves. We need somebody to come along and say, okay, I'm going to pull you out of this. Come and live with me. I'm going to teach you another way. And that's what we get to in verse four, look what he says. If in Christ is the most important verses of the first chapter, these are the most important verses of chapter two. But because of His great love or but God. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive. Made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved." And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can He's saying, You are by nature, children of wrath by nature, deserving of that justice to come upon you. But God who is rich in mercy, raised us up, made us alive in Christ. He says. Because He is so rich in mercy, because He is so, compelled to rescue humanity, to make things right. He says, I'm offering you a way out. I'm offering a way to make you new, to make new creation available to you so that the kingdom can come on earth as it is in heaven. And you can see the glory of God and live it out and be filled with him and produce good works that made you alive when you were dead. Exodus 34 and multiple places in the Psalms say this, the Lord is gracious. He's compassionate. He's slow to anger. He is abounding in faithful, steadfast love. Romans five, eight, another place where Paul's talking about this. He says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners dead in our transgressions, Christ died for us. Do you see it? He's not just a wrathful God that flies off the handle. He says, I am going to bring justice like you want. I'm going to make things new. I'm going to make things right. All the brokenness of this world is going to be put to rights. The problem is you're in the wrong. But God who is rich in mercy says, "Put it on Christ." Put it on Christ on the cross. Take those sins and that brokenness that are yours. Own it. Say, yep, they are mine, but Jesus, you take them. You pay the penalty for that. 
So that I can be raised up and seated with you so that I can be made new. This is the goodness of our God. Made us alive with Christ Jesus even when we were dead. God places us into Christ's life. See, so often we've been taught, I'm going to invite Jesus into my life. And I think God is often like, I don't know. I'm putting you into Christ's life. And I'm putting his life into you. 
Like it is a dynamic thing that is happening inside of you. All the wrath that is supposed to be on you has been put on him. 
So now that you can be raised up and made alive, God places us into Christ's life, into his resurrection, into his ascension, into his rule and reign, into his seating at the right hand of the father. He changes our status now and forever in Christ, by God, by God's grace through faith. We have been joined to Jesus. The true family of God. The better Israel, the better Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the true Moses, the true Noah. He says, I've placed you into him. You should be blown away by this. You don't need to live in that junky old house anymore. You can come out of that and find a new way to live. It's not a renovation. It's not a repair. It's a complete and total rescue out of and put into a new family, into a new household, God says. By grace, you have been saved. 
So I'm, I've had this thing stuck in my head for the last month or two. And I'm going to offer to you now, and I might come back to it in the coming days. I don't know. I want you to picture-- I want you to picture-- Jesus in two different ways. One, I want you to picture Jesus as a little magnet, little cross magnet maybe. We'll make it nice. Little cross magnet. We like those, right? Put it on the fridge. I think this is what a lot of us do with Jesus. We take Jesus and we put them on the fridge of our lives. Picture your fridge at home right now. What's on it? I know in ours right now, we've got a college acceptance letter. We've got a baby shower invitation. We have a wedding invitation, other odds and ends. We have an emotional wheel chart so we can figure out what our emotions are in any given moment. There used to be a chore chart. And a little Jesus magnet thrown on there, right? This is how a lot of us approached Jesus. Just put them up there with the soccer schedule. Right. With the upcoming invitations, with the other things we've got going on in life. And sometimes we go into the fridge and we're like Jesus. 
Yeah. Cool. Does that sound like enough? Jesus. I think though, what Paul is after here in this passage, I think what God wants for us is to view ourselves as a little bit of metal. And Jesus is a giant magnet. He's one of those really strong magnets that if you were put in the fridge, you would never get it off of, right? Or one of those ones you see in a mechanic shop where they go around and they, after you do a roof, they go around and they pick up all the nails. I think he's saying, that's actually how I want you to see Jesus. 
Like this thing that is so strong and just pulling all of us to himself, not just some little thing that we throw in the fridge and we look at now and then, but stuck to him, just incredibly stuck to him so that everywhere that he goes, we're with him. And that magnet is so strong that we can't get away from it. It just dominates our life. I think a lot of us though, treat Jesus like a magnet. We just kind of throw him up on the fridge and we're like, he's part of my life. I'm glad he's part of my life. It's nice. I can go to him now and then. And I think Paul's like man, It is so much more than that. It is supposed to envelop our entire being. You have been moved from darkness to light. You've been moved from being stuck in sin and transgressions into having his righteousness, his holiness, his wholeness, his life, his light, his warmth, his love. He's like, stick yourself to that. Just hang on to him. Allow him to pull you into his life, into his household, because you've been rescued out of that old dilapidated thing. You need so much more than just a magnet stuck on the fridge, friends. You need so much more than that. If that's what you're experiencing, can I call you to rethink that? Say I want more of Jesus than that. This is what he was after in the first part of chapter one, right? Praying for more for them. Friends, we have been made alive with Jesus. We've been, our position has permanently changed, no longer stuck in sin, but now seated with him in the heavenlies. Ruling and reigning with him someday. Wild. Changed from the inside out, rescued out of that old dilapidated house, no longer needing to give in to the power of the ruler of the air. But able to give in to the power of the Spirit and to go where He goes. To be with Him everywhere that we go. And it's the gift of God. By God's grace, you've been saved. , Friends, a dead man can't raise himself. God has to do it. A dead woman can't raise herself. God has to do it. And so maybe today, maybe today's the day you gotta be like, God, I can't do it. I'm stuck. I am dead. I need you. Tell him. Allow him to pull you to Jesus and say, here's where it's at. Here's where you'll find it. Not by works so that no one can boast. Listen. There's nothing in us that can earn it. We just can't do enough to overcome our brokenness, to overcome our sin, to overcome our transgressions. Nothing we can do to earn it. Not by works, Now, I think this matters. I'm just going to offer this little tidbit here. Maybe you care, maybe you don't, I don't know, but hopefully it'll stick with you. We often come to that not by works, and we think that the Jews were trying to do everything by works. That must be what he's talking about there. That they were trying to earn their way to God. I actually disagree with that picture of the Jews, but that's a whole other conversation we can have over coffee sometime. But it is true, we can't earn our way there. We can't earn our way there. But I think probably what's in Paul's mind is that in the first century church, in the first century Roman world, there were what were known as benefactors. People who would pay a lot to the local temple. 
And then their name would go up on a wall. Or on a statue somewhere, they'd be like, "This statue was paid for by Bob." That's not a very Roman name, but you know what I mean. There were benefactors. They would earn their way into the good graces of that God. And it had a political charge to it too. They would be well known in the political world as well. And so what it seemed like in this day and age is that rich people had a way to get good with God. And so Paul's reminding them Jew and Gentile. Slave and master, rich and poor, man and woman, child and parent, as he goes on to talk about. None of it is earned by works. This doesn't matter if you're wealthy. 
You know whose name's up on the wall? Jesuses. His name's up there. You don't pay your way into this, Paul's saying. You don't buy your way into the kingdom of God. Jesus made that clear, didn't he, to the rich young ruler? 
So Paul's saying it's not by works. You're all equal in this is what we're going to talk about next week. He says you all come in equal. None of you can do this by your works. But if you want to take it the view that the Jews are trying to earn their way in, fine. He's saying that as well. You can't earn your way in by your righteous good behavior because we're still corrupt on the inside, stuck in our sins and transgressions. 
So it's all by God's grace. So what? To do what? To lead us into doing good works of new creation. See, this is why I said, I don't think this passage is about heaven. Heaven is still out there, friends. It is still waiting for us someday. The fullness of new creation someday still out there. But what he's talking about here is to say, you used to be stuck under the ruler of the power of this air, the prince of this world who calls you to do bad works. Unholy works. Now you've been moved into a completely other house and you've been made a masterpiece of God so that you can do good works that lead to life, lead to holiness, lead to goodness, lead to shalom. Verse 10 says this, "For,"? I'll just read it back there. For we are God's handiwork or masterpiece. The word there is poiema, which means poem. That's where we get our word poem from. He says, you are God's artistic creation. You are this thing that God has cobbled together and made. This artwork that he's put on display, this masterpiece. You are God's handiwork, plural. You, plural, the church, are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do what? Good works. He could have said, "Just to go to heaven someday." Just to white knuckle it and get out of here someday. But that's not what he says. He says to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Us to do as the church. He says, you have been saved by God out of your lostness by God's grace to do good works. This is the point of this whole series friends. Is that we together have been brought in to be the church. This local expression of it here in Nazareth, our congregation in Bethlehem, right? This local expression to be the church, to be a new family, a new household of God joined together with Jesus to display his incomprehensible riches to the world for all to see extending his kindness and grace to the world rescued into a new family. That's part of a new creation experience to do good godly works. Friends, God rescued you. He rescued me. He's rescuing us to be part of a new family. And he's saying, I'm pulling you out of that old house. Come with me. There's another way to live. There is another way to be fully human. The church becomes a working model of new creation. A foretaste, a sign of what is to come when Heaven comes in its fullness to this Earth someday. And so I just want to remind us of this line I'm going to throw this up on the screen for you. Can you read this with me again? I'm just going to ask you to just to embrace this with me, read this with me. The masterpiece is more than a saved soul. It's the new family of God. The masterpiece is more than a saved soul, it is the new family of God. Is your individual saved soul Worth a ton to God? Absolutely. But his point has always been bigger than one person. His point has been to be a new family. Rescued out of that dilapidated house so that we can join him in doing new works, new godly works so that the world can see and give glory to him in Christ. We are now children of the father, no longer under the ruler of the air. The old Eden that is so broken all these years, the old Eden is being remade. The curse of sin has been upended and we can now live for God. Doing his good works, filling the earth with his glory as the waters covered at the sea. Friends, this is full life. This is not slavery. More terms that Paul bounces back and forth with. Good works prepared in advance for the family of God to walk in. We, his masterpiece, displaying his manifold wisdom to the world, Paul says. What are these good works? This is what we're going to spend the next weeks talking about. I hope you keep reading with me, but just a tidbit of what's coming. Good works for us to advance in or to walk in. Good works are possible because we've been freed to do them. We used to be stuck in slavery to do bad works. Now we've been set free to do good works. Not to earn anything, but because that's where full life is found. We respond in obedience to a good savior. We're going to spend the rest of this series explaining this. We're going to be looking at what it means to have unity as a family next week. See the world is trying so hard. The world is trying so hard, particularly in the West. We just need to be united. We just need to be unified. 
You see football teams talking about it, Coca-Cola talking about it, Disney talking about it. None of them can do it. Why? Because they don't have Christ. They don't have Christ, the great equalizer. Paul says it actually can happen in the church. That a very disparate world can be brought together in unity. Unity is God's family and a living temple. Reconciliation with people is actually possible because of Christ. There's a household demonstration that he talks about between husband and wife, children and parents, slaves and masters in the household of the days. Putting off the old self and walking in newness of life. 
You see, you know this friends, you know this if you're a Jesus follower, that just because you've been rescued out of darkness, out of sins and transgressions, you know that flesh is still fighting you, right? You know that it still is warring against you and you know that there's still this battle going on inside of us, right? 
Well, we're going to talk about what that means to walk in newness of life, to put off the old self. And then finally, we're going to close in chapter six, talking about standing firm in the gospel against the powers of evil. Against that spiritual power that is against us trying to consume our souls and to pull us away from God and to defame him and to do us harm. 
So, I pray that you take Jesus from being just that little magnet on the fridge and you get stuck to him like the powerful magnet that he is and make him the center of your life and realize that you've been pulled out of darkness into light. Now you've been pulled out of that old dilapidated house with its overgrowth and its fleas and its nastiness and the brokenness that is there. And you've been put into a glorious new house with God. 
And that you would continue to walk in these good works that you would see that as a church, we are called to be his handiwork friends, his masterpiece. And so. Please read ahead. Read the rest of chapter two, read up through chapter six, keep soaking in this with me so that when we're together, you can be like, yeah, I remember reading that. I remember thinking about that. Dwell on these things, meditate on these things and be prepared as we move forward in this together as the new family of Jesus. Would you pray with me?