The Glorious Gospel: Before & After - Adam Meckelborg | First Assembly Church
This past Sunday, our pastor, Adam Meckelborg, preached a message entitled “The Glorious Gospel: Before and After.” Pastor Adam contrasted life without God and life with Him through Ephesians 2, showing that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead, following the world, the flesh, and the enemy. But in Ephesians 2:4–5, we see the turning point: “But because of his great love for us, God… made us alive with Christ — it is by grace you have been saved.” He emphasized that God’s motive is love and His character is rich in mercy, covering every sin. Through the gospel, we are brought from death to life and raised with Christ.
✍️ Notes
The Glorious Gospel: Before and After – Adam Meckelborg
Contrasting Realities
Live Without God VS. Life With Go
Life Without God
Ephesians 2:1 (NIV)
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins”
Ephesians 2:1b-3
“… you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
3 Things We Follow (Life Without God)
* “The ways of the world.”
* “The ruler of the kingdom of the air.”
* “The desires and thoughts of the flesh.”
Paul’s Unholy Trinity
* The World: Systems of success build on anti-God principles.
* The Flesh: Animalistic cravings and desires.
* The Devil: Spiritual force seeking to invert right and wrong.
Spiritually “Dead”: Immobilized / Stuck / Unable to change
Bound to the flesh.
Ensnared in the systems of the world.
Unable to defeat the power of Satan.
We need someone who can step into the reality we are in, break the bondage of that reality, and bring us into another one. We need a hero.
Life With God
Ephesians 2:4-7 (NIV)
“4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Life With God:
God’s motive: “Because of his great love for us.”
No hidden agenda, unsaid expectation, no catch.
God’s character: “God, who is rich in mercy…” No error, mistake, misstep, that mercy cannot cover.
Our sin is no match for the wealth of His mercy.
Ephesians 2:5
“…made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
Ephesians 2:6-7
“6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
The Glorious Gospel:
* Because of His great love the world is redeemed.
* Because He is rich in mercy the flesh is not our master.
* Because of His cosmic power the devil is His subject.
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