Thank you. By nature, we are alienated from God. Being in church, singing hymns, reading the Bible every Sunday, is not what makes you a believer. So how do we know if we've truly been converted?

On Truth for Life weekend,

Alistair Begg examines the radical transformation that occurs

when we come to faith and are reconciled to God.

Well, I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2 from verse 19 to the end of the chapter.

As you turn there, let me read them for us.

So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household

of God. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,

in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being

built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Father, we pray that with our

Bible is open that the Spirit of God will be at work in our thinking so that as we understand the truth of the Bible,

that we might then be embraced by it, that we might live in the light of it,

that we might increasingly become all that you intend for us to be.

For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, we said before that the flow of the second half of this chapter,

the section that begins in verse 11,

can be seen by noting three straightforward phrases.

The first of these in verse 11, at one time. Therefore, remember

that at one time, that's the first phrase. And then in verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus.

And then in verse 19, so then you are no longer. I just reminded myself of what we have

recorded for us here by means of an acronym, and that is art, that we were alienated, we have been reconciled, and we are transformed. Let me just

tease that out for us for a moment. First of all, at one time. The reference there is, of course,

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