WE ARE SEATED WITH HIM

Eph.2:4-7 – But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Paul makes some very powerful and I would even say some extremely radical statements in this passage. First of all Paul says that because the Lord is rich in mercy He has made us alive together with Christ. As I consider this passage I am reminded of something else Paul said about redemption, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’. This is the power and the heart of the gospel, Jesus died to save sinners. This is the first step we take to enter the kingdom, I am a sinner in need of a Savior. All of us come from a sinful past; all of our sins are different. Your sins may be related to sexual immorality or drunkenness, someone else may be arrogance and pride about their greatness. It really makes no difference, we have access to the throne of grace regardless of where we came from because of His great mercy.

Paul goes on to say that He raised us up together with Him. We were dead in our sins and He has raised us up into a different kind of life. The life we now live is supernatural; it is marked by new desires and a new lifestyle. No, its not marked by rules and regulations but it is marked by a new kind of liberty. We are freed from the sins that had trapped us and we are now living a new life of freedom marked by the joy of the Lord.

Next Paul has the audacity to say we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Christ is on the Father’s throne and we are seated with Him; whatever that means it will take eternity to figure it out.

Finally, we get to God’s purpose in all of this; He wanted to display the kindness of His grace toward us and upon us. The point is this, our enjoyment of the kindness of God in our lives goes out to show others His goodness. In other words God is glorified by showering us with His grace.