NOTE: The following excerpt comes from the excellent little book, “Gentle and Lowly” by Dane Ortlund (Crossway)

Have you ever stopped to observe what Paul says, at the end of that long sentence (in Eph. 2:4-7), is the ultimate reason for our salvation? It goes like this, after delineating our hopeless predicament if left to our own resources:

“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.”

The point of unending eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth is that God “might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Here we are. Just ordinary people, anxiously making our way through life, sinning and suffering, wandering and returning, regretting and despairing, persistently drifting away from a heart sense of what we will enjoy forever if we are in Christ.

Does a text like Ephesians 2:7 actually connect with our real-time lives? Or is it just for the theologians to write about?

I would like to linger over Ephesians 2:7 and consider exactly what we are being liberated into by this short text, which simply reflects Scripture’s teaching more broadly on what our future is.

“So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”—what does that mean, for those in Christ? It means that one day God is going to walk us through the wardrobe into Narnia, and we will stand there, paralyzed with joy, wonder, astonishment, and relief.

It means that as we stand there, we will never be scolded for the sins of this life, never looked at askance, and never told, “Enjoy this, but remember you don’t deserve this.” The very point of heaven and eternity is to enjoy his “grace in kindness.” And if the point of heaven is to show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness, then we are safe, because the one thing we fear will keep us out—our sin—can only heighten the spectacle of God’s grace and kindness.

It means that our fallenness now is not an obstacle to enjoying heaven. It is the key ingredient to enjoying heaven. Whatever mess we have made of our life—that’s part of our final glory and calm and radiance. That thing we’ve done that sent our life into meltdown—that is where God in Christ becomes more real than ever in this life and more wonderful to us in the next. (And those of us who have been pretty squeaky clean will get there one day and realize more than ever how deeply sin and self-righteousness and pride and all kinds of willful subconscious rebellions were way down deep inside us, and how all that sends God’s grace in kindness soaring, and we too will stand, astonished, at how great his heart is for us.)

If his grace in kindness is “immeasurable,” then our failures can never outstrip his grace. Our moments of feeling utterly overwhelmed by life are where God’s heart lives. Our most haunted pockets of failure and regret are where his heart is drawn most unswervingly.

If his grace in kindness is “immeasurable riches”—as opposed to measurable, middle-class grace—then our sins can never exhaust his heart. On the contrary, the more weakness and failure, the more his heart goes out to his own.

Ephesians 2:7 doesn’t just say the “immeasurable riches of his grace” but “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness.” The Greek word for kindness means a desire to do what is in your power to prevent discomfort in another. It’s the same word used in Matthew 11:30 where Jesus says, “my yoke is easy.” His yoke is kind. On “kindness” in Ephesians 2:7 Goodwin remarks, “the word here implies all sweetness, and all candidness, and all friendliness, and all heartiness, and all goodness, and with his whole heart.”

His grace in kindness is “toward us.” You could translate this “to us” or even “over us” or “on us.” This is personal. Not abstract. His heart, his thoughts, now and on into eternity, are toward us. His grace is not a blob out there that we have to figure out how to get into. He sends his grace to us, personally, individually, eternally. Indeed, he sends himself—there’s no such “thing” as grace (remembering that such a view is Roman Catholic teaching). He sends not grace in the abstract but Christ himself. That’s why Paul immediately adds “in Christ Jesus.”

Speaking of “in Christ Jesus,” do you realize what is true of you if you are in Christ? Those in union with him are promised that all the haunted brokenness that infects everything—every relationship, every conversation, every family, every email, every wakening to consciousness in the morning, every job, every vacation—everything will one day be rewound and reversed. The more darkness and pain we experience in this life, the more resplendence and relief in the next. As a character says in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, reflecting biblical teaching: “That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” If you are in Christ, you have been eternally invincibilized. This passage speaks of God making dead people alive, not assisting injured people. And how does he make us alive? “He loves life into us,” according to John Owen. His resurrection power that flows into corpses is love itself.

Ephesians 2:7 is telling you that your death is not an end but a beginning. Not a wall, but a door. Not an exit, but an entrance.

The point of all human history and eternity itself is to show what cannot be fully shown. To demonstrate what cannot be adequately demonstrated. In the coming age we will descend ever deeper into God’s grace in kindness, into his very heart, and the more we understand of it, the more we will see it to be beyond understanding. It is immeasurable.

For those not in Christ, this life is the best it will ever get. For those in Christ, for whom Ephesians 2:7 is the eternal vista just around the next bend in the road, this life is the worst it will ever get.

In that resurrection morning, when the Sun of Righteousness shall appear in the heavens, shining in all his brightness and glory, he will come forth as a bridegroom; he shall come in the glory of his Father, with all his holy angels.

That will be a joyful meeting of this glorious bridegroom and bride indeed. Then the bridegroom will appear in all his glory without any veil: and then the saints shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, and at the right hand of their Redeemer.

Then will come the time, when Christ will sweetly invite his spouse to enter in with him into the palace of his glory, which he had been preparing for her from the foundation of the world, and shall as it were take her by the hand, and lead her in with him: and this glorious bridegroom and bride shall with all their shining ornaments, ascend up together into the heaven of heaven; the whole multitude of glorious angels waiting upon them: and this Son and daughter of God shall, in their united glory and joy, present themselves together before the Father; when Christ shall say, “Here am I, and the children which thou hast given me”: and they both shall in that relation and union, together receive the Father’s blessing; and shall thenceforward rejoice together, in consummate, uninterrupted, immutable, and everlasting glory, in the love and embraces of each other, and joint enjoyment of the love of the Father.*

*Jonathan Edwards, “The Church’s Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 25, Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 183-84.