This morning, we come to a new section in our series on “The Love of the Triune God”. For the next five weeks we are going to examine the “Covenant Love” of God. We began with the complete love of God. God is love, which is to say that his nature is defined by that quality. He is good and merciful and gracious. This love is affectionate, but it goes beyond affection to will the good of another. We saw that God’s love is not deficient, and there was never a time that he was not loving, even before he created the world. He has always been abundantly happy in the relationship of the Trinity. The Father loves the Son, and the Son the Father. And the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. So, God did not create this world to meet some deficiency in himself but out of the overflow of his abundant love within himself. Then we saw that God expresses his love in and through his creation by revealing himself. The creation speaks of its Creator, and the Creator speaks through his word to his special creation, humanity. Finally, we just finished covering God’s common love for all humanity. Even though men and women are sinful and rebellious, God still loves them and gives them good things. He provides for them every day of their lives, allowing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He also sets protective boundaries around their lives. These boundaries are meant for their good, to constrain evil and promote human flourishing. So, God gives mankind government, culture, and the church.
Yet, throughout all of this, we’ve had this problem that keeps coming up. How can God be loving and just? How can he will the good of the other while still sending people to hell for their rebellion? I gave a solution to this by explaining that God’s love is directed towards the ultimate good, not our own personal felt needs. The ultimate good is found in Christ, the Son of God, because he reflects the glory and goodness of God. So, we experience God’s love in relationship to and union with Christ. As Psalm 2:12 says, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” It is clear throughout the Bible that God’s love is specially reserved for those who take refuge in the Son, and his wrath is upon those who rebel. God’s love is ordered according to relationship. The Son is the eternal and perfectly worthy object of the Father’s delight. Fallen man stands not in that relationship of delight but in rebellion and under wrath.
This is the problem we have before us this morning. How can we be reconciled to God? How can we know this relationship of delight? Some might say, well, God just loves me for me. I’m special, I have talent, I have worth, so surely God would love me. But, we’ve already established that this is a perverse understanding of love. We might also think that we can become deserving of God’s love, like the child of an austere and demanding father. We might think that we can work to earn God’s favor, checking off a list until we merit his love. This, too, misses the point. So, today, I want to establish one fact of God’s covenant love - we do not receive God’s covenant love based on anything in us or done by us to deserve it. We are unworthy sinners who deserve God’s judgment and wrath. To see that, let’s read Eph. 2:1-3. From this text, see three points: Because we are fallen sinners, we are spiritually dead, willfully disobedient, and deserving of wrath.
First, from verse 1, see that we are spiritually dead. Ephesians 1 and 2 are beautiful in their extremes. In these two chapters, Paul contrasts, in many ways, our inability and God’s great work. Over the next five weeks, I hope to work through all of those contrasts, but there is none greater than what starts here in verse 1 of chapter 2. Paul says that our condition before God, as sinners, is not one of sickness or deformity. It is one of death. There are some who would say that the problem of sin is a matter for reform. They would say that the problem with humanity is not something inherent in their nature, but something environmental. So, the Muslims, for example, believe that men are born Muslim, but through the influence of the unclean and impure, they become corrupted. The Liberal Secularist believes something similar. They would say that it is society that causes crime. Evil is caused by a lack of healthcare or poverty or poor education. There are others who would say that sin is a sickness that simply needs help to overcome. These would say that mankind needs a spoonful of the right medicine to awaken and follow God.
None of this is the language that Paul uses to speak of mankind’s sinful condition. He says, instead, that we are “dead in our trespasses and sins.” Now, obviously, he does not mean that we are physically dead, nor does he mean that we are completely incapable of any moral decision making. What he means is that we are dead to things of God. We cannot effectively act to do the will of God. We don’t even want to do so. In Romans 8:7-8, he says that the mind that is set on the flesh “does not submit to God’s law, indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” 1 Cor. 2:14 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God… and he is not able to understand them.” Our minds and souls are so corrupted by the fall that we do not want to do God’s will or truly know him. Now, we all know people who are unbelievers, and yet they seem to earnestly desire to do good. They will even speak of wanting to know God. I can’t tell you the number of experiences I’ve had (some recently) where a person will hit rock bottom and want help. In those moments, they will quote scripture. They will speak of their relationship with God. But given time, they will fall right back into the pattern of sin that they claimed to want to escape. They do this because their heart is spiritually dead.
Second, in verse 2, we see that we are willfully disobedient. We could make the mistake of thinking, based on what Paul has already said, that we are innocent victims of spiritual death. We might say that our sin cannot be helped because we inherited this sinful nature from Adam. Paul does not leave room for that. We are dead, but we are dead men walking. He says that we walked after the course of this world, following the prince of this world, who is Satan. Notice that walking and following are action verbs. They are things we choose to do. In our spiritual death, we choose to walk after the ways of this world. We pursue our desires of greed and lust and idolatry. And, we choose to follow Satan. As we read from Psalm 14 in our call to worship, “There is none righteous, none who seeks after God, all have turned aside.” We choose to walk in sin and follow Satan because our desires are for the things of this world. We are dead to the things of God, and our desires are for sin. So, Titus 3:3 says that we are “foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures.”
Finally, from verse 3, see that we are deserving of wrath. In our spiritual death and willful rebellion, Paul says that we are “by nature children of wrath.” Here is where this connects to what I said earlier about the love of God. When we are outside of a relationship with God, we do not experience the fullness of God’s love. Instead, we experience his wrath. If you have never trusted in Jesus Christ, your default destination is not heaven. God does not love you just the way you are. You are, by your very nature, a child of wrath. John 3:36 says, “Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” This is an interesting verse because it is in the same chapter as John 3:16, which says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” In fact, verse 36 is offered as a commentary on 16-18. God does will the good of the whole world by giving his son to secure salvation for all who believe, but if you do not believe, the wrath of God remains on you. If you continue in this path of spiritual death and willful rebellion, you will be judged and cast into the depths of Hell where there is no love or mercy or grace, only wrath.
So, friend, repent and turn to Christ. Know the deep, covenantal love of God by being united to Christ through faith in his death and resurrection.
Brothers and sisters, we know the love of God, not because we have earned it, but because God, in his grace, rescued us from the darkness and blindness of our sins. He changed our hearts to desire the things of God. He showered us in the grace of Christ. In him, we have no boast. We can only marvel at his great love and rejoice in it.
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