Changing the World Was Never Your Job | Ephesians 2

I don’t remember a time before I was a Christian. I don’t even remember my own conversion. I was raised in a family that faithfully attended church each Sunday, where Bible verses and Christian radio programs and praise and worship music were woven into the rhythm of our days. I am incredibly thankful for this. However, in my teen years it did leave me chasing a dramatic “conversion.” Not a conversion from unbelief to belief, but one from routine to radical, from content to called.

Maybe you have a similar experience, or maybe you do remember the moment you first placed your faith in Jesus. But even if you began following Jesus later in life it can still be tempting to believe that there’s another level of radical faithfulness you need to reach, or something big and unique God might be wanting you to do.

In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul describes our transformation from death to life.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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 coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:1-7, ESV)

Whether or not we have a vivid memory of when God “made us alive together with Christ”, this is the most important event in our lives. Paul immediately goes on to write those well-known words “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). There is not a second transformation by which we can add specific works to our salvation and ascend to another level of Christian maturity or importance.

Once we are given new life in Christ the Holy Spirit will begin the process of sanctification in us, making us, in thought, word, and deed, more like Christ. This process is gradual and is meant to happen in the course of our ordinary lives, not in a single season or day or hour when we receive a mysterious “call” to ministry. The very next verse in the epistle makes this clear. Paul writes, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

This verse has often been taken out of context and interpreted to support the idea that God has a specific, radical “calling” for each of us that we must discern and obey. But the Christian life is not a video game. It doesn’t consist of definable levels we master. Salvation is not level 1. Receiving a unique calling or experiencing a dramatic conversion from “regular” Christian to “on fire” Christian is not level 2.

God has created us, or rather re-created us in Christ Jesus, by raising us from death to life. Paul has just spent his letter up to this point describing this incredible spiritual transformation. In the second half of Ephesians (4:1-6:20) Paul will instruct the believers in the good works that God has prepared for them. In fact, he begins Ephesians 4 with the same language he uses in 2:10. He says, “I therefore… urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (4:1). The good works God has prepared for us to do are not a mystery. They are laid out clearly in Scripture for us to obey.

The rest of Ephesians 2, verses 11-22, explains how Christ’s death and resurrection has broken down “the dividing wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles, inviting all people to experience God’s peace as citizens in the household of God. We don’t need to pursue a radical existence when our reality already is. We get to be part of God’s cosmic purposes in salvation. He doesn’t need us to change the world. He already, fundamentally has, and we get to live out that reality in our ordinary lives.