January 15th, the freeness of grace.

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 ceded us with Him in the heavenly places in

Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2, 4 through 6. The decisive act of God in conversion

is that He made us alive together with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses.

In other words, we were dead to God, we were unresponsive, we had no true spiritual taste or

interest, we had no spiritual eyes for the beauties of Christ. We were simply dead to all that

ultimately matters. Then God acted unconditionally before we could do anything to be fit vessels of

His presence. He made us alive. He sovereignly awakened us from the sleep of spiritual death

to see the glory of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4, 4. The spiritual senses that were dead miraculously

came to life. Verse 4 says that this was an act of mercy. That is, God saw us in our deadness and

pityed us. God saw the terrible wages of sin leading to eternal death and misery. God being

rich in mercy made us alive and the riches of His mercy overflowed to us in our need.

But what is so remarkable about this text is that Paul breaks the flow of his own sentence

in order to insert by grace you have been saved. God made us alive together with Christ by grace

you have been saved and raised us up with him. Paul is going to say this again in verse 8. So why

does he break the flow of his own sentence in order to add it here? What's more, the focus is on

God's mercy responding to our miserable plight of deadness. So why does Paul go out of his way to

say that it is also by grace that we are saved? I think the answer is that Paul recognizes

that here is a perfect opportunity to emphasize the freeness of grace. As he describes our

dead condition before conversion, he realizes that dead people can't meet conditions.

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