double failure of Christians - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“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 seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2:4-7

“We most therefore all admit as we read the first seven verses of this chapter (Eph. 2) that most of our troubles are due to the fact that we are guilty of a double failure; we fail on the one hand to realize the depth of sin, & on the other hand we fail to realize the greatness & the height & the glory of our salvation. We may admit that we are not perfect, we may say that we occasionally do things that we should not do, & we think that that is sin, & that is a consciousness of sin. But when we read these 1^st three verses (Eph. 2:1-3), we really are given to see what sin is, & how deeply involved in sin we all are, & how fallen our nature is as a result of the original transgression of Adam. We don’t realize, I say, the depth of sin. But on the other hand do we not all fail to realize the greatness & the height & the glory of our salvation. Oftentimes we are content to think of our salvation merely in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Not that one wants to depreciate that, for there is nothing more wonderful or more glorious. My point is that to stop at that is surely tragic. And I verily believe that the whole condition & state of the Church today is largely due to the fact that we fail at both points. It is because we never realize the depth of the pit out of which we have been brought by the grace of God that we do not thank God as we ought. And then there is our failure to realize the great heights to which He raised us. That is what the apostle is dealing with now. He is telling us about the deliverance, the salvation. Here, of course, the apostle is not so much concerned about the way in which we are saved. At this point, he is not interested in evangelism; that is something that has already happened; he is writing to people who are already Christians, & he wants them to realize & to understand what is really true of them as Christian people. He wants them to know ‘the exceeding greatness of God’s power to us-ward who believe’, and so he expounds it.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God's Way of Reconciliation: An Exposition of Ephesians 2