Ephesians 2 gives us some foundational truths about who we were apart from Christ, and who we are now in Christ. In a nutshell, we were dead in our sins, and because of our sin, we were children of wrath, rightly under God’s judgment. 

Enter the gospel. Because of the unimaginable mercy and love of God, he made a way, through the life, death, and resurrection of his own Son, for us to be brought to life and made right with him. We who were children of wrath now become beloved children of God. Through no work of our own, but simply through faith in Jesus, we are forgiven, loved, and alive. 

Then the Lord begins a slow work in us. When God chose us, he also “prepared good works for us beforehand”; that is, it’s always been part of the plan not just to rescue us from the penalty of sin, but to turn us around and put us on a new path. This path is one of obedience and surrender to the Lord, one of increasing likeness to him. It’s simultaneously a grateful response to everything that God has done for us in the gospel, and the natural outgrowth of Christ in us. Maybe we could say it like this: the gospel calls for a response from us that it actually creates in us. Spiritual formation is our participation in this process, a leaning into the life of Jesus that’s now at work in us, as the Lord chisels away everything in us that is not Christ. That’s far from the mark of some sort of “super Christian”; that’s just the normal path of anyone who follows Jesus. And, just like in our conversion, when we bring nothing to the table but our sin and the open hand of faith, so we bring nothing to our formation but our honest selves, weak and desperately in need of Christ. Once again, we open our hands in faith as we read the Word, as we fast, pray, etc., and the Lord does his kind, sanctifying work in us by his Spirit. Discovering these things unwinds a lot of fear and legalism in us, and it helps us to understand how our effort fits into the process. All the spiritual disciplines and practices in the world are nothing more than an extension of the hand of faith. We immerse ourselves in the things of God and draw near to him, and he goes about life-giving and life-changing work. 

Every week, we get a reminder of this in our liturgy as we confess our sin and hear assurance of God’s pardon in Christ. The humble act of acknowledging our sin to the Lord, with one another, helps us to remember how much we need Jesus, how desperate we are for his grace. But we’re raised up in humble confidence by fixing our eyes on Jesus, remembering that his finished work secured our salvation, that we are loved by the Father, that his faithful work in us will make us look more and more like Christ, and that we will be brought safely home to eternal glory and rest with him. 

To prepare for Sunday, read Ephesians 2:1-10.