Aron Ralston Trapped
On the brisk morning of April 26, 2003, Aron Ralston set out on a hike through Blue John Canyon in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Ralston was hiking alone and he hadn’t told anyone where he was going. He was an experienced hiker and climber, but he wasn’t prepared for what he would face that day and the days following.
As he descended a part of the canyon, an 800 pound boulder came loose and crushed his right hand against the wall. He was trapped between a rock and a hard place (the title of the book he wrote recounting what happened). Ralston spent five days trapped in that canyon. He drank what little water he had, ate what little food he had, chiseled away at the rock with his two-inch pocket knife, but by the fifth day he was dehydrated and delirious. He chiseled his name, date of birth and presumed date of death on the canyon wall, videotaped his goodbyes to his family and didn’t expect to survive the night.
When he woke up the next morning, he realized that his arm was starting to decompose due to lack of circulation. And he had an idea that he could break his arm using torque and then amputate it using his dull two-inch pocket knife. So that’s what he did. He freed himself, climbed out of the canyon, and started walking back to his vehicle. He met a family hiking nearby who called the authorities and Ralston was taken to the hospital. Ralston’s ordeal was popularized by the movie “127 Hours,” of which he said jokingly was “the best film ever made.”
We All Feel Trapped
The movie made me never want to go hiking again, or to at least pack a sharper knife! None of us like the thought of being trapped. We get anxious when we’re in small spaces, like a crowded elevator or if we have to have an MRI. We don’t like the feeling of being trapped, but many of us feel trapped. By all appearances, we’re free. We’re not stuck in a canyon or in prison or bed-ridden, but we feel trapped in the here and now. We feel stuck in the traffic of our everyday, normal lives. We long for something more, something bigger and better, something more exciting. We want to be part of something that’s bigger than ourselves. But we feel trapped in the here and now.
Theologian R. C. Sproul describes it like this, “We are a generation of people who feel trapped in the here and now. We sense no access to the heavenly or to the realm of the transcendent. There seems to be an unbridgeable chasm that cuts us off from the arena of the holy. We are doomed, it seems, to live out our days chained to the profane…We have an aching void that screams to be filled by the holy.”
He’s saying that we want to be out of the small canyon of our lives, but there’s an 800 pound boulder that has us pinned to the wall. We look up from the canyon and see the sky, the beautiful expanse above us, and we want more of that. We want to live for something bigger but we feel cut off from the “arena of the holy,” or the “realm of the transcendent.”
We look to things like social media and television and sports and sex and all kinds of things to fill the void that is “screaming to be filled.” But we find that no amount of Netflix binging, or likes on our Facebook posts, or toys in our garage, or dollars in our account, or accomplishments on the wall can give us what we’re looking for. Even religion doesn’t give us freedom. We try to reform our lives, start going to church, and clean up our act, but we still feel trapped. Like Ralston, we try to cut ourselves free. But, unlike Ralston, we find that our efforts to find freedom and joy and life leave us stuck in the canyon of the here and now.
We Need Resurrection because We Are Dead
Are we destined to live trapped in the here and now? Is there any way that we can gain “access to the heavenly or the realm of the transcendent”? Can our lives be “filled with the holy”?
The Bible’s answer is, “Yes, we can have access to the transcendent, we can experience the presence of God on this side of eternity.” But the path to this kind of life starts with severe honesty. The Bible says that if we want to live in the freedom of a relationship with God, we have to first be honest about our slavery. It says that, instead of trying to rescue ourselves, we need to humble ourselves. We can only be free to know and enjoy God when we admit that we’re stuck in the canyon of sin, unable to cut ourselves out.
The text we studied last week told us plainly how bad our situation is (Eph. 2:1-3). We’re spiritually dead and deserve the wrath of God because of our sin nature. Our condition is worse than Ralston’s. We aren’t just stuck under the boulder of sin; we’re dead under the boulder of sin. This is why any efforts to save ourselves are illogical. Dead people can’t do anything.
Because of our condition, the only solution to our condition is resurrection. In order for us to have what we all long for, access to God and an enjoyment of his glory, we must be raised from the dead. The good news is, according to the Bible, that we can indeed be raised from the dead. By God’s grace, and through faith in God’s Son, we can be given spiritual life. We can enjoy fellowship with God himself.
God Raises Us Out of Love
This is what we learn in Ephesians 2:4-7. In this text, we see four things: God raises us out of love (v. 4), God raises us despite our sin (v. 5a), God raises us with Christ (vv. 5b-6), and God raises us to unending enjoyment of God (v. 7).
First, God raises us out of love (v. 4). The first word of the verse lets us know that Paul is setting up a contrast. Verses 1-3 are true, “but” there’s more to be said. Though we’re dead in sin and by nature children of God’s wrath, God’s love and mercy has compelled him to do something.
It’s the truth of verses 1-3 that make God’s love amazing. We like to talk about how loving God is, but often we think of his love in sentimental ways. We think of his love as a warm feeling between friends. But only when the gravity of our spiritual condition outside of Christ is felt will we be able to truly appreciate the wonder of God’s love. In love, God gives us the exact opposite of what we deserve. We deserve wrath but we get mercy. New Testament scholar Peter O’Brien says, “Only the person who understands something of the greatness of (God’s) wrath will be mastered by the greatness of his mercy.”
When a couple first gets married, they’re in love. But one of the reasons couples who’ve been married for many decades say that they love one another more than ever is because they’ve been sinned against, their spouse has disappointed them in thousands of ways, both small and large, and yet they’re still committed to them. Their love has grown because their knowledge of the other person has grown. The genuineness of love is proven when it knows how bad the other person is and chooses to love them anyways. We were dead to God and deserving of his wrath, but God’s love toward us was so great that he came for us anyways.
God Raises Us Despite Our Sin
The second thing we see in this text is that God raises us despite our sin (v. 5a). Notice that we’re dead in our “trespasses.” Paul uses this word here and in verse one to bring out the true nature of what we’ve done and why we’re dead spiritually. The word refers to breaking God’s law. When we do what God’s law says we shouldn’t do, and don’t do what it says we should do, we’re “trespassing.” We’re going into a place we shouldn’t go, going onto someone else’s property, we’re leaving God’s will and carrying out our will, we’re not heeding the good boundaries that God has established. All trespassers of God’s law will be shot, so to speak, because trespassing is an affront to the very character of God. We trespass because we pridefully assume that we can do whatever we want and get away with it. Our trespassing has earned us the death penalty. We’re dead spiritually because we’ve broken God’s law.
Paul’s point is that God’s love for us is despite our spiritual deadness and our rebellion against God’s law. God loves us in spite of us. God’s love isn’t a reaction to our love. That’s how we often build relationships. We love the people who love us. The Bible says that God loved us even though we didn’t, and couldn’t, love him. Spiritually dead people can’t, all of sudden, start loving God. This is how some think salvation works. Some think that we can just decide to start loving God, and when we do, God will give us his saving love.
But God’s love isn’t a forced love. It’s not a cause and effect love where we love him so he saves us. God’s love us free and unbound. It’s not reckless, as the popular song says. The saving love of God is measured and purposeful and directed toward the spiritually dead people of God’s choosing. As Paul says in Romans 9:18, God “has mercy on whomever he wills.” God’s love is free. There’s no reason why he loves us, other than that he loves us.
God Raises Us with Christ
The third thing we see is that, out of love, and despite our sin, God raises us with Christ (vv. 5b-6). Implied in this verse is the fact that Jesus has been raised. If I say, “Suzy is going with me to the game,” it’s implied that I am going to the game. So when it says that God “raised us up with Christ,” it implies that Christ has been raised.
There are good reasons to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. One piece of evidence is that his followers were willing to die because of the testimony of Jesus’ resurrection. Charles Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, went to prison because of Watergate, was converted to Christ, and founded Prison Fellowship upon his release. Regarding the resurrection of Jesus, he said, “I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because twelve men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for forty years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled twelve of the most powerful men in the world – and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me twelve apostles could keep a lie for forty years? Absolutely impossible.” Liars don’t make good martyrs. Jesus’ resurrection is a truth that thousands of men and women have been willing to die for.
Jesus has been raised, but what does it mean to say that we have been raised with Christ? Have any of you been raised from the dead? Do any of you currently possess your resurrection body? The Bible teaches that no one will receive their resurrection bodies until the day when Jesus appears. Colossians 3:4, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
None of us who’re in Christ have literally been “raised with Christ” in the sense that we now have new bodies. So what do we do with Paul’s statements here that we’ve been “made alive together with Christ,” and that God has “raised us up with him”? How can we be raised if we haven’t been raised?
A Spiritual Resurrection
The answer is that we can be raised spiritually before we’re raised physically. There’s a spiritual resurrection that takes place in a believer’s life when they’re saved. As we’ve seen in verses 1-3, we’re all dead in our sins and cut off from the life of God. We’ll stay that way until God raises us up from the dead spiritually. This is what Jesus was referring to when he said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3). And what Paul says in Colossians 2:13, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses…God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.” The Bible uses the image of a dead person coming to life, or of a person being born again, to describe the miracle of salvation.
Our salvation is illustrated by what happened to Lazarus in John 11. He was dead and in the tomb for four days and beginning to stink when Jesus said, “Lazarus, come out” (v. 43). A dead man heard the voice of Jesus and got up. The only way we become a Christian is if God, in love, stops by our tomb, by the canyon that we’re lying dead in, and says, “Come out!” And in that moment he gives us life, he even gives us the things that he commands.
Some here this morning have heard the voice of their Lord and gotten up out of their tomb of sin and death and started following Jesus. The reason I know that is because it’s not hard to notice someone who’s alive spiritually. They have a love for God, his word, his church, the lost, and a hatred of their sin and a desire to put it to death.
Others here this morning may be hearing the voice of Jesus, through his word and by his Spirit, saying, “Get up out of your sin and guilt and despair. Receive my love and grace and follow me.” If you hear Jesus this morning, don’t dismiss or ignore him. Get up and follow him.
So what does it mean to be “raised with Christ”? It means that there’s a spiritual resurrection that takes place in a believer’s life when they’re saved. God, in his grace, calls spiritually dead sinners out of their graves and gives them new life in his Son.
God Raises Us to Unending Enjoyment of God
The fourth thing this passage says is that God raises us to unending enjoyment of God (vv. 6b-7). When God saves a person, he puts us where Jesus is, “seated with him in the heavenly places.” After God picks us up out of our spiritual graves, he sets us in his presence. We obviously don’t go to heaven immediately. Paul’s point is that positionally we’re know “in Christ” so that wherever he is is where we are. Since he’s seated in God’s presence, we’re seated in God’s presence. God resurrects us and gives us a seat at his table. He adopts us into his family. He doesn’t raise us from the dead and then say, “Have a nice life!” No, he ushers us into his presence. He even deposits himself into our lives through the Holy Spirit (1:13-14).
Verse 7 says that he does this so that he show us his love forever. God raises us up into his presence so that he can give us unending experiences of his grace and kindness. He saves us so that he can show off his wealth, the wealth of his grace and mercy. And it’ll be unending because the “riches of his grace” are “immeasurable.” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Our minds can’t comprehend the fullness of glory and grace that God will show us.
Fullness through Faith
This fullness of life that we all long for is only found “in Christ Jesus.” God’s kindness is only “toward (those) in Christ Jesus” (v. 7). The love and kindness of God is for those who turn from their sin and put their trust in Jesus. We’re saved from spiritual death by admitting our spiritual death and by putting our hope and confidence in Jesus. We’re saved by grace. But the grace of God flows into our lives through faith (2:8).
Christianity is not about self-improvement. It’s about resurrection, Jesus’ and ours. Jesus is alive, are you alive with him? He has been raised from the dead physically, have you been raised from the dead spiritually? At Easter, we rightly celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. But we also need to pause and consider our own.
If you’re trapped in the here and now of your sin and your attempts to look alive even though you’re dead, you can be set free. You can be raised. Look and marvel at what God has done for you in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Receive him by faith, turn from your sins and make him the treasure of your life. If you will, you’ll enjoy his love his grace in ever increasing ways, both now and forevermore.