When God Flips That Switch
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Tim Challies Tim Challies' Blog
- Updated Jul 14, 2015
I suppose we are all familiar with the categories of sin and depravity. We are all familiar with the Bible’s ugly descriptions of fallen humanity and equally familiar with the internal corroboration of our hearts and the external corroboration of our lives. The simple fact is, we are sinners. We are people who have offended a holy God and people who act out that rebellion every day.
I know you have read the second chapter of Ephesians and reveled in the beauty of what God has done in calling some people away from a life of rebellion and toward a life of righteousness. What Christian hasn’t read it with joy? What Christian hasn’t seen the word “but” there and rejoiced that God entered in and changed everything? “But God…”
I wonder if you’ve noticed one fascinating little part of the text—the change in actors or the change in agency.
Read the first three verses of the text, and allow me just a little bit of liberty with the pronouns:
You can hardly fail to notice that it’s all about me. This is who I am when left on my own, when left to live my own life in my own way. And it’s not a pretty picture. It’s an ugly plummet from sin to sin, from spiritual disobedience to spiritual death and destruction.
And then there is the word “but,” and look what happens after that.
You can hardly fail to notice that it’s all about God. This is who God is when God acts in accordance with his character. And it’s a beautiful picture. It’s a beautiful progression from love to mercy to grace to life to righteousness to glory.
The point and the purpose is simple. When we take action, we find only destruction. When God begins to move, we are given grace.