As we’ve met together for a few months now, you may have gathered that I’ve not always had a great relationship with my daughter. In the last couple of months, that has changed dramatically. The main life-changing event is she now has a relationship with her God and Savior Jesus. No other event has the potential to change like that. However, she’s also been spending time with one of her brothers who has been counseling her that she should spend more time with Mom and Dad and try to cultivate relationship with us. Also huge.
Yesterday she invited us to go sled with her in the new skiff of snow we got. Figuring that there wasn’t going to be enough snow to get any kind of sledding result, we agreed but understood that we might just be taking the sleds for a snow walk. Nope, somehow we were successful at sledding down a water tower road across the valley from our house, even on gravel! So much fun.
In her own words, “I’m glad I learned how to have fun!” Me too. I’m not saying that because my girl’s heart has turned toward me, that is salvation. I’m saying that the joy and relief from the darkness that she is experiencing because of salvation is overflowing into other areas of her life.
Keeping Paul’s example in mind, we are glancing at what she once was. She was grumpy and selfish, following a lot of what the princes and the spirits of darkness told her was reality.
And then God moved.
In this article, we are going to examine verses 4-7 of our passage to see some of the why’s of God’s movement for our salvation.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV)
Why Though?
Looking at these verses, before we go anywhere else to gain understanding, let’s list what we learn right here about why.
- Rich in mercy
- Has great love for recipients
- To show his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness
In order to find cross references that explain additional information about God’s character and nature in providing salvation for mankind (in other words, why did God move to save?), I’m looking for verses that have the same words in them that our section has. Right now I’m looking for mercy, in a minute I’ll look for love, because these are words Paul connects with God’s movement.
3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
Titus 3:3–5 (ESV)
Wait, doesn’t that sound familiar? Paul has the same story to remind the pastor Titus. This is how wretched pre-believers are, including you and me, Titus; this is how it all changed.
In this cross reference, we see several more aspects to God’s character. Let’s add to the list of why God does what God does.
- Rich in mercy
- Has great love for recipients and all of mankind
- To show his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness
- His goodness
Are you wondering where the “all of mankind” came from? In my query of the text, looking to see if love and loving kindness were the same word, I saw the NET translators rendered the word behind loving kindness as love for mankind which prompted me to look closer. Examining the words briefly, I think the mankind expresses the authorial intent more closely so I added it to our list.
In an effort to keep our Bible Study Bite bite-sized, we will shift to looking at verses that reference love as we continue to ask the why-would-God? question.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6–8 (ESV)
Would you look at that? Paul relates the same information to the Romans that he relates to our audience in Ephesians and to Titus. All pre-believers start the same way: spiritually dead. Glance at the reality of what was and move on to the reality of what is.
Our purpose currently though is to understand why God moves in salvation. What is his motivation? This verse is similar to our section in Ephesians, but I think it is even more clear about what it means that God loves pre-believers. Let’s add to the information we already had about the love part.
- Rich in mercy
- Has great love for recipients and all of mankind while we were still sinners
- To show his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness
- His goodness
The while we were still sinners sounds like it has more to do with our condition than the-why-would-God-do-this question, but in reality it does have to do with the why-would-God because it clarifies that the reason doesn’t have anything to do with any “goodness” of the recipients of salvation.
Have you ever noticed that if you start to drive a new-to-you car, you notice that type of car everywhere? Or if someone close to you gets pregnant, then you notice all the women that are pregnant?
After spending the morning studying and writing the previous sections about “why would God?”, I was in church listening to our pastor Jimmy Thoma preach. He referenced Psalm 106 in his sermon about both remembering what has happened and looking to the future for what God will do. (Weird, huh? Ties really closely to what we’ve been talking about. I think that’s because it is a major theme of scripture in general.)
In that psalm, among other things, the psalmist talks about how Israel forgot what God had done for them in the past. They forgot God’s wondrous works and his abundant steadfast love, and then rebelled against him when they were in fear. In the midst of that rebellion and fear, this is what God did:
8 Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power.
Psalm 106:8 (ESV)
Why did God save Israel from Egypt? For the sake of his name.
(Psst. Come over here to the side for a second. The word name in this verse is a metonymy, which you can read about here. It is a figure of speech where one word is substituted for another. In this case, God’s reputation, all of who he is, is represented by the word name. Identifying such things makes me a little giddy with joy because I know that I’m closer to understanding the intent of the author. Ok, you can go back over there now.)
Why did God save Israel from Egypt? For the sake of his reputation. And the psalmist tells us that he did it to make known the magnitude of his power, as well. I realize that the salvation at the Red Sea is not the same salvation as eternal life salvation, but it is form of salvation. If you continue reading in Psalm 106, God continued to save his rebellious people over and over, and the psalmist even lists some of the reasons that we have in our list already. In fact, if we consider the glance at our condition we took in Bites 28 and 29, a pre-believer’s rebellion sounds similar. Shall we add to our list about why is God active in salvation?
- Rich in mercy
- Has great love for recipients and all of mankind while we were still sinners
- To show his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness
- His goodness
- For the sake of his reputation
- To make known the magnitude of his power
As we examine this list, do you see that there is nothing about how wonderful or unique or charming a pre-believer is? In stark contrast to such a notion, there is even information about one of the reasons God moves to save is that he has great love for people who are opposed to him. God’s motivation is about who he is and not so much about who we are.
Wrap Up
In the specific case of my daughter’s unbelief, why in the world did God wait so long to reveal himself to her? Seemingly so much unnecessary pain and turmoil. And yet, somehow, I don’t understand it, but somehow God has acted based on these motivators to choose my girl at this time and after so much difficulty.
The motivators are no different for any pre-believer. Receiving salvation as a broken down drug addict, receiving salvation as a self-righteous church attender, receiving salvation as any other sinner–all of the salvation is given as a gift with the same motivation. Why does God move? These are some reasons.
- God moved because he is rich in mercy
- God moved because he has great love for recipients and all of mankind while we were still sinners
- God moved to show his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness through the ages
- God moved to demonstrate his goodness
- God moved for the sake of his reputation
- God moved to make known the magnitude of his power
As our Bible Study Bite for this article, it is one of the tools in the tool box to keep asking questions of the text. For this section of scripture, why did God move in the lives of Paul and the recipients?
Now that we’ve identified some of the reasons God is active in salvation, let’s continue in the passage and see how God moves.
