Saints in Christ - Ephesians 1:1-3 I Evan Wilkerson

Evan Wilkerson opens his Ephesians series by tracing the stories of John Newton, the apostle Paul, and the dark city of Ephesus to show that the word "saint" has nothing to do with moral achievement and everything to do with the grace that finds wretches, turns them around, and sets them on an entirely new trajectory.

Main Points:

1. John Newton called himself capable of anything, with not the least fear of God and no sensibility of conscience. It was in a violent storm at sea that he cried, "Lord, have mercy," for the first time in years, and out of that encounter eventually came the famous hymn Amazing Grace. This is the story of all who are in Christ.
2. Paul was not a passive sinner. He was actively hunting Christians, arresting them, punishing them in synagogues, convinced he was doing God a favor. Then Jesus knocked him to the ground on the Damascus road, and everything, every single thing, was completely changed.
3. Ephesus was among the largest cities of the ancient world, filled with idol worship, demon worship, and magic arts. Opposition and darkness are not signs that God is absent. Often, it is in the darkest places where Christ's light shines brightest, and the Ephesians proved it by burning their magic books in public.
4. Paul calls these former witchcraft practitioners saints, not because of what they had done but because of what had been done for them. No man is a believer who is not also a saint, and no man is a saint who is not a believer. The title comes with faith, not with performance.
5. Many of us get this backwards. We know intellectually that grace is a free gift, but we behave as though our works will make us righteous, stuck on a treadmill of performance. You became righteous the moment you put your faith in Jesus and his finished work. That is your position. Sanctification flows from it, not toward it.
6. When you sin, don't hide from him. Running away from Jesus when you fail only makes the sin worse. Run to him. He is the only one who will ever be able to set you free entirely.
7. Paul combined the Greek greeting and the Jewish greeting into one: grace and peace. Grace always comes first, and as it fills our lives through the Holy Spirit, it produces shalom, wholeness, restored relationships, reconciled work, and a peace even in the middle of suffering that the world cannot explain.

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