2:4-7
“But” – the opening word of this new section. What a great word! “But”- something different is afoot. Something can be done to change our old state. Then Paul adds “God” – “But God”. Now this is not only a great but also a glorious phrase. The unholy trinity has an adversary, one who is intent on and powerful to defeat it. And he does it with “mercy” and “great love” (v.4). The One truly triune will debunk, dethrone, and destroy this pretender and thus liberate humanity from death, even as he raised Jesus from death to new life on the first Easter (remember 1:20-23!). And God will do it a way the unholy trio never saw coming!
The God who rescues us is “rich in mercy” (is there a better summary of 1:3-14 than this!). He is full of “great love” as well (remember the phrase “in love” we traced through the letter earlier). So great is God’s love that he acts before we want to or even can respond – “even when we were dead through our trespasses” (v.5). Such is God’s initiative in our salvation (“for by grace you have been saved”; v.5). This is such a crucial and non-negotiable point that Paul inserts it here in shorthand and returns to it to expand on it in vv.8-10.
This uncompromising grace of God is what makes Christian faith truly Christian. The gospel of grace is always Jesus + nothing. Whenever we begin to add something to Jesus we falsify the gospel and undermine the free grace of God. This is a hard word for North Americans to hear! After all, we are the people of Thomas Jefferson, who believe that with a little better government we can improve and even perfect our lives. And we are the people of Benjamin Franklin, who believe that with a little more common sense and self-reliance we can master ourselves and, hence, our world. Finally, we are the people of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believe that with a little more attention to our inner lives, our spirits, we can live to our fullest potential as human beings.[1]
It’s in our national and cultural DNA to dose everything we try with a healthy measure of our own effort, wisdom, ingenuity, or programs. None of these are bad in and of themselves, of course. Yet when we add them to Jesus and formulate salvation as Jesus + whatever our particular “thing” is (works, speaking in tongues, social justice, dress, abstaining from prohibited social activities, denominational loyalty, particular teachings or theological views, etc.) we have mortally skewed the gospel and made ourselves at least partially responsible for our salvation. And that, that is a place that I at least, never want to be!
Paul spells out God’s action for us in three verbs – “made us alive together with Christ” (v.5), “raised us up with him” (v.6), and “seated[2] us with him” (v.6). Each of these verbs begins with the Greek preposition sun which means “with” in the sense of “together with”. They describe what God has done for all of us in and through Christ. Paul says we have been “made alive,” “raised,” and “seated” with Christ. When did these happen to him? Obviously, in his death, resurrection, and ascension around 33 AD in Palestine. That’s when we too were “made alive,” “raised,” and “seated” with him. Paul is saying, in other words, that what has happened to Christ, has happened to us as well.
If Paul’s language here sounds familiar to you, he uses similar such language in Romans 6 to describe what happens in baptism (Rom.6:1-4). An allusion to baptism thus lies in the background here. God in Christ has already redeemed and set us apart as his people, his subversive counter-revolutionary movement. As an act already accomplished by God for us, remembering our baptism is a critical matter for us to keep in the front of our minds and hearts.
God’s love has brought us from death to life through Jesus Christ. He has seated us with Christ “in the heavenly places” (v.6). This, as we noted earlier, is less a reference to cosmological location than an affirmation of Christ’s victory (1:20). Paul wants us reaffirm the assurance of the victory we share in Christ. This is THE skin on the wall that warrants our joining up with God’s cause. If God has defeated death not only in and for Christ but through him for us as well, there’s no greater victory to be had or to be on the side of!
The purpose for this great action of God on our behalf Paul gives in v.7: “so that in the ages to come (God) might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”. God’s past and present works on our behalf, great and astonishing as they are, form only the prelude to the divine grace to be showered on us in the ages to come! This is, I suggest, another way of saying what Irenaeus said so long ago: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive and life is beholding God.” It is for this relationship between God and humanity that God has acted decisively toward in Christ and called all who will respond to enlist in his subversive counter-revolutionary movement. And it is on this relationship in which God will finally gather all things together in Christ that God promises to shower the “immeasurable riches” of his gracious love and mercy.
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