Corey Fields preaching

June 10, 2007

Ephesians 2:4-10

Are you alive?  And if you are alive, how alive are you?

The passage we just read focuses on this concept of “being alive in Christ.”  So let me ask you a question.  Are you?  Are you alive in Christ?  But wait, we have to back up.  What in the world does that mean, anyway?

Every once in a while it’s interesting to look into the meaning of words.  I decided to look up the word “alive” in the dictionary.  The first definition listed for alive was very helpful and informative.  ALIVE = Not dead.  Well, based on that definition there are a lot of people who are alive. So that’s not all that helpful.  Another definition of “alive” is ALIVE = Knowing or recognizing the existence of.  For example, “alive to the danger.”  But that’s not really helpful either, because then “alive in Christ” would simply mean that we acknowledge His existence.  Or maybe another definition listed for the word alive:  ALIVE = marked by alertness, energy, or briskness; much life, animation, or activity. There it is!  That’s the Christian, right?  The Christian is supposed to be animated and happy and bubbly and…etc.  Come on, where’s the enthusiasm, where are the alive Christians in this room?!

[[Enter Matt, acting like a crazy, bubbly, overbearing, overenthusiastic Christian]]

            Well, actually, on second thought, I hope that’s not what it means to be alive in Christ either.  Let me go back to my original question.  Are you alive?  More specifically, are you alive in Christ?  How do you know?  What does it mean to be alive in Christ?  I don’t know about you, but this Christian idea that Christians are happier, peppier, etc. than other people is just exhausting.

            One of my favorite authors is Donald Miller.  He wrote a bestselling book called “Blue Like Jazz.”  When a group of us went to the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta last October, I got to hear him speak on several occasions.  Donald Miller said something that made a light bulb turn on in my head.  He said that one of the biggest obstacles to Christians living out an authentic faith is consumerism.  Now, not in the way that you might think.  We often hear about how there is such a focus on materialism in the outside world, and all of it serves as a distraction from Christ.  No, Donald Miller says that consumerism over last several decades (at least) has crept into the very way that we think about the gospel.  Think about it.  When companies market a product, even though they use lots of creative layers and aspects and music, most marketing messages are the same.  They use the “before and after” model.  “Your life is not complete.  You’re not sleeping well enough.  You don’t look good enough.  Your car isn’t good enough.  Basic marketing is about creating a felt need.  Your life is currently incomplete, and you are not as happy and satisfied as you could be.  We have the answer.  Our product will provide what you need to be happier,” and then you have the after picture.  And you see, we might miss it because commercials today are very creative and they all look different.  But look for it.  Look for the smiling face at the end of every commercial.  Notice how happy and perfect that family on TV looks who happen to have a full roll of “Bounty, the quicker, thicker, picker-upper” on hand.  Before and after.  If you don’t believe me, watch your TV carefully for the next commercial featuring the Enzyte man.

            Now think about how some of us have been taught to present the gospel.  Is it any different than this American consumerism?  The before picture is the sad, unfulfilled, unforgiven person.  The company is the church.  The product is Jesus.  And if you get Jesus, you can be happy, and fulfilled, and WE have what you’re looking for.  Before Jesus – after Jesus.  You know what happens when we do this?  People then come across Christians who are mean, and contentious, and closed-minded, and arrogant, and isolated.  And they look and they say, “Religion must not be a very good product.  Jesus must not be a very good product.  I think I’ll pass.”

            When did we ever let the gospel become this?  This is not how Jesus presented himself.  Not once.  Jesus said things like Luke 14:27 – “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  That’s very different than a “before and after” message.  He said things like Matthew 19:30 – “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”  That’s very different than a “before and after” message.  And Paul said in Philippians:  Philippians 1:21 – “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,” and later in the same book, he said:  Philippians 3:10 – “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”

            Coming back to the Ephesians passage we read earlier, Paul had just finished saying that we all come from a place of being “dead in our transgressions and sins,” then going on to say that we have been made alive in Christ.  Paul said, Ephesians 2:4-7 – “4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”  Those last 2 verses make me wonder if one of the things that makes us alive in Christ is that we have been “raised up,” so to speak, to where God is, and have been given the gift of seeing the world through God’s eyes.  You see, God is concerned with the needs and hearts of all people.  When we as human beings are dead in our transgressions, we are dead to the world around us.  We are absorbed by ourselves.  After all, couldn’t it be said that the root of all sin is pride and selfishness?  That’s what C.S. Lewis says in his book Mere Christianity.  Selfishness characterized the first sin recorded in the Bible.  Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit because they selfishly wanted something they didn’t have.  They were told that they could be like gods themselves if they had the knowledge that this tree provided.  Think about it.  Almost every sin you can think of is rooted in selfishness.  To be alive in Christ, then, is to be “seated with God in the heavenlies,” as the passage says.  In a great paradox, we are not freed to do whatever we want (which in the end is a false freedom) – we are freed to come outside of ourselves and see the world as God sees it.  To “die to self” as Paul and Jesus call us to.

            In one of the wittiest, most clever songs I’ve ever heard, Steven Curtis Chapman talks about what it’s like to be stuck in ourselves, dead in our transgressions, and not alive with Christ in his song “See the Glory.”

When it comes to the grace of God

Sometimes it’s like:

I’m playing Gameboy standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon

I’m eating candy sitting at a gourmet feast

I’m wading in a puddle when I could be swimming in the ocean

Tell me what’s the deal with me?

Wake up and see the glory

            When we can’t see past ourselves, we are still dead in our sins.  We’re playing Gameboy in the middle of the Grand Canyon.  We’re eating candy at a gourmet feast.  Wading in a puddle instead of the ocean.  Giving our lives over to Christ can wake us up!

            But there’s more, I think.  Earlier we saw a bunch of pictures and heard some definitions.  What DOES it mean to be alive in Christ?  Better yet, what does a person look like who is alive in Christ?  I think of something John the Baptist once said that has become a well known Bible verse:  “He must increase, and I must decrease.”  The fully alive Christian looks like this.  [[\ Picture of Jesus]].  The Christian life is about stepping out of the picture so that Jesus can step in.  It’s about living so transparently that what people see through us is a portrait of Jesus.  It’s the great paradox of the Christian faith.  We’re called to surrender ourselves and to die to our old nature, but in doing so, we gain everything.  We truly find our life, our purpose – God living in us.  Do you remember what Jesus said?  Matthew 10:39 – “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Now there are critics of Christianity who take this message and say that we’re out to rob people of their own unique identity and make everyone the same.  But that’s not it at all.  It’s taking the unique person, the unique gifts, the unique experiences that God has given us and saying, “They’re yours.  I’m yours.”  And when we do that, we are freed.  We are made alive – to see the world through God’s eyes, and for people to see Jesus in us.  I had a professor in seminary whose definition of a Christian has stuck with me.  He said, “A Christian is a person whose own life is so entangled with the life of Jesus that you can barely tell the difference between the two.

            And thank goodness this doesn’t come by our own effort.  There’s not a single person in this room who can live up to the challenge of being like Jesus.  We don’t get there by trying.  We get there by surrendering – saying “God, I’m yours.”  As it says in those famous verses at the end of our passage,

8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And you know, the interesting thing about following Jesus is that it really doesn’t require us to be that peppy, perfect, always happy Christian.  Jesus got tired. Jesus cried.  Jesus got angry.  Jesus had to ask God for help.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  But he was also ALIVE to the world.  He had authentic faith.