Salvation by Grace through Faith unto Good Works (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Introduction

In the history of the church, nothing has been so continually contested as grace. That would seem an ironic thing due to our familiarity with the matter. But it is nonetheless true. Even from the very beginning, during the lives of the apostles, the nature, necessity, and sufficiency of grace has been contested. This, in many ways, is the beating heart of Galatians. In combatting the Judaizers, Paul emphatically said, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly” (Gal 2:21). Those who do set aside the grace of God and rely on righteousness that comes through the law would submit themselves to that law. So, Paul says to them, “You have been severed from Christ, you who are being justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal 5:4). These were no doubt the same group as those who seemed to come from James who went among the brothers of Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Luke records there that “Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them.”

Paul spent his life and ministry defending salvation by grace through faith. It is the subject of Galatians and Romans with a great deal of specificity. He addresses it in Philippians, Colossians, and throughout the pastoral epistles. It is the timbre of all his letters, the emphasis of his writings, the very atmosphere in which his theology breathes.

But the battle over grace has extended into all of Christian history. The major controversy in church history was between Augustine and Pelagius. Many of us know Augustine from his Confessions. He was an African church father, and probably one of the most influential voices in church history. Pelagius was a British monk who denied original sin. He believed that every human being was born into the world in the same way that Adam was created—neutral and innocent, able to choose either good or evil. The problem with humanity, he argued, was that Adam had set a bad example for all his posterity and so we habitually choose to sin, not because it is in our nature, but because we are born into an environment of sin and bad choices which influence us to sin. By consequence, it was possible to live a sinless life and, in a similar vein, salvation became not about the action of God to redeem a fallen humanity but rather about individual effort and correct moral behavior. Human goodness grew out of the exercise of the free human will, not as the result of God’s transformation of the human soul. Grace, Pelagius said, was necessary, but grace was defined differently. It was not the unmerited favor of God, but the gift of freedom to humanity and the example he set in Christ to influence us for good rather than for evil.

You can see how this destroys the gospel. There is no sin, and therefore no grace. And where grace fades, human works take their place. Heaven is a reward to be earned through the strong exertion of human effort and free will, not the gracious gift of a merciful God. And therefore, we have something to boast about.

And so Augustine wrote against Pelagius. He asserted the biblical realities that we are not born free to do either good or bad, but that we are free to do what we desire. And, because we are fallen in Adam, all we ever desire is sin. Our wills are bound to always do what is evil unless God intervenes. And thus, if we are to see heaven, we must receive the free and gracious gift of God—life by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to do good, not as a way to earn our salvation but as a way of expressing that salvation has come to us.

As Paul says, salvation is “not a result of works, so that no man may boast.” The result of salvation by grace is that you can take no credit for yourself. God has saved us in such a way all boasting is excluded. All we contribute to our salvation is the sin which made it necessary. That was the point of 2:1-3. God contributed all else by acting when we were dead, enslaved, and led astray by Satan. Thus, 2:4, he made us alive, 2:5 he raised us up, he seated us with him, all to show the immeasurable riches of his grace (2:7). In fact, the contrast is so stark between our life of deadness in sin and God’s saving work such that, at the very juncture that he begins to talk about God’s saving grace in 2:4, he steals his own thunder and blurts out “By grace you have been saved! You have been brought from death to life, from earth to heaven, from subjection to rule because of God’s action, and that action by definition excludes all human religious effort or action as a basis or reason for boasting. It is all of grace. Grace is not just necessary. Grace is also sufficient. And therefore all boasting is excluded.

Thus, we must emphasize and defend grace because it is always under attack. Paul focused on grace for this reason, and so must we. And so, we need help to understand God’s grace. And to that end, see four assertions in 2:8-10 about salvation to help us glory in God’s grace.

I.                            Salvation is because of God’s gracious gift, not because of human beings.

For look at how the text says it. First you have the statement: “By grace you have been saved…” There is the great assertion! You have been saved by grace. Grace is the cause, the ground, the reason that you are saved. And then in the next phrase you have the same thing put a different way: “And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God.” That again speaks of the source, the cause, the ground, the reason that you have been saved. It literally reads, “And this (salvation) is not out of you. It is God’s gift.” He is the source of salvation and gives it freely. It does not proceed out of you. It in no way comes from you. It is not the product of your personality or will or powers or religious activity or family history or choices. It is not even the product of your faith. It is grace.

And this is the very core of the Christian faith, isn’t it? This is the defining commitment of Christianity and the teaching that sets it off from all other religions. We are what we are solely by the grace of God. Grace is not given to us in response to anything we do or anything we are. Grace is not the result of taking advantage of an opportunity afforded by God. It is not just that we need grace, but that grace, and grace alone, as saved. That is why Paul does not just say “by grace you have been saved” but then further guards the doctrine by proceeding to say, “this is not out of you.” You are not the source of this grace. Grace is not a response to what you did. Salvation from our spiritual deadness does not proceed from or on the basis of anything you have done, whether in whole or in part. Again, that is why he says, “It is a gift of God.” Gifts cannot be earned by definition.

And it must be because of grace we are saved! That is the whole point of the contrast with our past deadness in sin! If we really are as bad as Paul is saying in 2:1-3, if we really are that spiritually dead and unresponsive, enslaved and dominated by Satan, then the only possible explanation for our salvation is the grace of God.

The grace of God comes in spite of our sin. 1 Corinthains 15:10, when Paul considers the great privilege it is to be called an apostle, he says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

The grace of God also comes in spite of our own righteous deeds. The things which ought to set us apart as uniquely valuable to God, God sees as an impediment to salvation, not an aid! Listen to Paul’s former boast: “circumcised on the eight day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil 3:5-6). And what was his evaluation of these things? “Rubbish.” He counts them as loss, “that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…”

Yet, we are very slow to acknowledge this. Human pride hates grace because grace requires that we humble ourselves and acknowledge that we have no solutions. There is nothing so offensive, so distasteful, so odious to sinful man than grace—unmerited, unearned, freely given favor. Even as believers, we struggle with this. We walk around confessing that the grace of God has saved us, and yet in our heart of hearts, in our actions, in our attitudes, we subtly rely on ourselves and begin to believe by subterfuge “It is of myself. It is not a gift received freely but a payment for what I do.” There is a great deal still left in us which opposes the grace of God! So, we need to be constantly reminded that all is of grace lest through slow and imperceptible ways we begin to rely on ourselves and fall from grace.

That is what it means to be a true Christian. True Christians rely only on the grace of God, not on their own human efforts or achievements. When I ask someone what makes them a Christian, fundamentally I’m listening for the answer, “Because God saved me!” That’s how I know someone truly gets grace. When it comes to their salvation, they look exclusively to God and not to themselves! And they do this because they know that in themselves lives nothing good. And they look not even to their own faith! Philippians 1:29 says, “For it has been granted (the word for grace) to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” Faith is a gift of grace! There is a kind of religious boasting which says, “I am saved because I believed!” And I suppose there is a particular sense in which that is true. But the question to ask in response is, “Yes, and what inclined your heart to believe?” The biblical answer is “Because God changed my heart.”

But self-reliance can take another form too. Rather than the proud boasting in self-righteous religious activity, proud boasting can also take the form of a false humility which looks not to the savior but to its own sin. I’ve met people like this, who only have the presence of mind to think constantly about all the things that they’ve done wrong, always meditating on their sinfulness and wretchedness before the Lord. Why do they do that? I believe it is because they think that if they feel bad enough about their sin that their dour sullenness will somehow merit the forgiveness of God! They believe that God will look down on them and say, “He really gets how sinful he is. She really understands how terrible a person she is now. There’s a person who deserves salvation.” And so even our times of confession can slip into this self-righteous pride.

But as Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved…and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

II.                        Salvation comes through the instrument of saving faith, not through the instrument human works.

Again, see how it stands in the text. We are saved by or because of grace, and therefore not out of ourselves or what we do. We are also saved through faith, and therefore not because of religious deeds. If grace is the reason, then faith is the method. Grace is the cause, and faith is the instrument. If Grace says, “God is the one who saves, not man,” then Faith says, “I will therefore not try to save myself but will instead fling my life upon his grace.” “For by grace you have been saved through faith.”

If we are saved solely by God’s grace, then that means the only instrument which is appropriate to receive that grace is faith. If we are saved by grace—by God’s saving action on our behalf—then the way we receive that grace is to trust him, to give ourselves up to him, to roll ourselves onto his grace by believing in it.

It is by definition impossible that we would be saved by our own religious actions. We are not saved by any other method. Which Paul says in 2:9: “not a result of works,” that is literally “not out of works.” Salvation proceeds out of grace, not out of works. And so salvation comes through faith and not through works. To be saved through faith means that we cannot be saved by works, because faith and works are opposite instruments for salvation.

Paul explains this very well in Romans 3:19-20. After expositing human sin for three chapters and laying all bare before the law and under conviction he says this: “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be accountable to God. For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Now, justification and salvation are not precisely the same category, but still you get the point. You cannot be right before God if you do it by trying to keep the commandments of Scripture. You cannot be saved by doing the Ten Commandments or by keeping the ethics of Jesus he explains in the Sermon on the Mount. And that for two reasons: 1) that was never the purpose for those things in the first place. They were give to demonstrate your sin, not to provide a way to save yourself from sin. And 2) that wouldn’t be possible anyway because your sin prevents you from keeping it perfectly, which is always the standard of obedience. Even one sin disqualifies you from salvation before the law. And even if you were to keep it perfectly from this time forward, you have already violated that law in the past, which means that all future obedience cannot save you! Keeping the law justifies nobody because the law exposes our sin and teaches us that we must approach God by another way.

Which is why again Paul says here in Ephesians 2:8–9, “you have been saved through faith…not a result of works.” Paul says that we are saved through faith. Faith is the instrument by which we are saved not works. Now, that is not to say that we can be saved without doing any works. That is not true, and we will get to that soon. But that is to say that the instrument of salvation, the method by which we are saved, the channel which brings the water of eternal life to our parched souls is faith. Works then become the overflow of a faith alive with the life of God, not the basis or beginning of that living faith. And it is perilously important to get the order correct!

There are many who are trapped in a hamster wheel of works, believing earnestly that if they do enough right, do enough good, do enough law-keeping that God will accept them. But the problem with that is that it just piles on heaps of guilt. We know that we aren’t perfect. Isn’t that something that we say regularly in our society? Don’t we utter the truth when we say that? “Nobody’s perfect.” Correct you are! But strangely that doesn’t cause people to then look for a solution! They just keep trying and trying and trying, but never succeeding! And what that turns into as the parading of a self-righteous religious façade that has no substance behind it.

For example, listen to the Pharisee in Luke 18:9–14. READ. And what’s the banner over the whole story? “they trusted in themselves that they were righteous.” Now, we poopoo on the pharisee because we know where Jesus is going. Yet, even some slight paraphrasing can uncover our own self-righteousness: “God, I thank you that you have transformed me to be unlike the world, unlike those liars and cheaters at work, those adulterers and unrighteous judges in our court system. Those murderers. I am faithful to my spouse. I tell the truth. I pray. I give generously and regularly to the church. I come every week. I serve every week. I even helped plant a church!” All of those things may be good! And yet all of those things may condemn us as expressions of our own self-righteous pride. Because all of those things could be boasts in ourselves, rather than boasts in a powerful savior who does these things through us. We must be able, even in the midst of doing good works, constantly to maintain the posture of the tax collector who beat his chest and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” He did not trust in himself that he was righteous, because he knew he had no righteousness. And he went down to his house justified.

III.                   Salvation causes boasting in God, not boasting in ourselves and works.

We are saved by grace, through faith. But what is the purpose? See the text: “so that no one may boast” (2:9). Those who rely on themselves for salvation boast in themselves, like the pharisee. But those who rely on God for their salvation boast in God. Those who trust in themselves that they are righteous boast before others about themselves. Those who trust in God to give righteousness as a gift boast in God.

Boasting in the Old Testament is praise. Psalm 34:1-3 gives an excellent example: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” Boasting in the Lord here is parallel to blessing him, praising him, hearing with humble gladness, magnifying the Lord, and exalting his name. That is what boasting means. It means to point out the strengths of something and take pride in them.

Do you want to know what you boast in? Just turn that psalm around.

·      What do you bless instead?

·      what do you talk about to others?

·      What do you hear that makes you glad?

·      What do you magnify/make a big deal out of?

·      What do you lift up in the sight of others?

Can you say that you have learned to boast in the Lord like Jeremiah 9:23–24 says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.” The good kind of boasting is boasting on the Lord, taking pride in the Lord’s work, bragging on the Lord so that we point out his strength and his action and his work.

And that is what Paul means in Ephesians 2:9 when he says that God has saved us by grace through faith for the purpose of excluding all human boasting. In other words, he has saved us in such a way that eliminates any proper ground for taking credit to ourselves for our salvation. If it is on the basis of grace, then it is not on the basis of ourselves. If it is through the instrument of faith, then it is not through the instrument of human effort. Which means that, if we were asked to give an account of why we are alive in Christ and raise up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places, all we can say is, “God did it all. May his name be praised.”

Which brings us right back to the refrain on chapter 1. We are chosen to “praise the glory of his grace” (1:6). We are redeemed and forgiven and made wise and inherited “to the praise of his glory.” We heard the gospel and believed and were sealed with the Holy Spirit “to the praise of his glory.” We have been swept up into this glorious plan of God to renew the whole universe by his grace through faith and therefore he gets all the glory. And we magnify God’s glory most evidently through our conscious, deliberate, and enthusiastic acknowledgement of the abounding sufficiency of his grace—which is the ultimate purpose of everything. This is the whole design of the universe. And that design becomes visible in each of us individually when we are most consciously, deliberately, and enthusiastically dependent on God’s all-sufficient grace.

Self-sufficiency decimates the recognition of God’s glory in human hearts and therefore eviscerates the joy of God’s people in his saving work. As soon as we turn our eyes off of him and his work and start focusing on what we can produce, what we can create, what works we can do or don’t do, we extinguish the praise of God in our hearts. And that is like taking a fire extinguisher to the blaze of joy in our hearts which being enamored with God’s glory produces. It is only through dependence on the Lord, a conscious trust in his promises and a receiving of his grace that he is glorified and our hearts are made happy in him. Plead.

IV.                   Salvation creates good works in us, causing us to walk in them.

Ad this is the final piece, and the substance of that last verse, 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” And in this one verse, Paul starts to pull together his entire argument from chapter one and sets up for all that is to come in Ephesians.

Remember from 1:10 how God has a plan for the fullness of the times to unite all things in Jesus Christ? Another way of saying that is that God desires through Jesus Christ and under his headship to recreate the entire world to be as it always should have been. He desires to make a new creation. And in Jesus Christ he has done that through his death, resurrection, ascension and rule. And he has united us to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit and thus the life of Jesus Christ courses through our souls. We are now alive with him, raised up with him, and seated with him, and destined for a new world with him. And he has moved in your life now to recreate your soul as a little foretaste of that world, a miniature model of the new creation, so that people can look at your life and see something of what Christ is doing to reunite everything in him.

And that is precisely what Paul means in verse 10: We are his workmanship, his craftsmanship, the evidence of his skill. Just like you can see the evidence of a woodworker’s skill by the wooden creations strewn about his house, so also you can see the incredible skill of God in recreation on display in the church. And we are his craftsmanship because he has created us in Christ Jesus. But he has not just created us but has created us for good works which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

By the good works you do you show that the grace of God is at work in your life. By the good works you do you show that the faith you profess is a living faith. By the good works you do you boast in God alone and attribute all to his grace. Why? Because he has recreated you!

And this is the necessary balancing from what we said before. Good works in no way contribute to the basis or reason of our salvation. They are not a part of the ground of our salvation. And as soon as we make them part of the ground of salvation, we lose salvation altogether because we can never do perfect works and we can never do enough. But just as good works do not contribute in any way to the basis of our salvation, they are in every way necessary to our salvation, not as the reason we are saved but as the consequence of having been saved. Hebrews 12:14 says that there is a “holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Jesus taught that we will recognize false prophets and false believers by their fruits. James says, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless” (Jas 1:26).

Just because you are not saved by works does not therefore make good works optional. In fact, if you really have been recreated in Christ Jesus, if you really have been made alive with him, then you will act like it. It his life lives in your soul, you ought to live like he lived.

And what are these good works? Paul is setting us up for the rest of his letter by using the word “walk.” We “walk” in the good works he has prepared beforehand. Sometimes we can read that to think of a hyper-specific set of good works he has for me personally. But I don’t think Paul means that. I think he means the Christian walk he lays out in chapters 4-6. Do you remember, those who were with the core group not many months ago, when we walked through these chapters? They are structured around the word “walk.” 4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15. The Christian walk is the walk of unity in common ministry. It is the walk of new life and leaving off the old man. It is the walk of true love for one another. It is the walk of holiness and light. It is the walk of wisdom in the church and the home. Those are the good works we are to walk in.

Do you want to be part of what God is doing in the world? Be holy. Do you want to demonstrate to those around you what God’s saving power is like? Walk in unity, holiness, love, light, and wisdom. Do you want to telegraph what the new heavens and the new earth are going to be like? Walk in these good works.

Conclusion

So, salvation comes from God, not from people. Salvation comes through faith, not through works. Salvation causes us to boast in God, not ourselves. And salvation recreates us to walk in good works.

Daniel 4:28–33.

Nebuchadnezzar’s boasting in his own works, and his consequent humbling before the Lord so that he would come to acknowledge what he really is—nothing better than a brute, a beast, an animal. He soul had become so deformed that the Lord cursed his body to be as he had formed his soul to be. And he did this “until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (4:32). As is often the case with human rulers, they assume that their kingdoms are the result of their own works, when in reality it is God who rules over the kingdoms of men and raises up this ruler or than ruler by his will and grace. And so God humbled Nebuchadnezzar in order to teach him who rules the world.

Nebuchadnezzar, after he had been humbled as a beast, repented. Rather than boasting in the works of his own hands, it says, “I lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and non can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”

And here is an appeal to the lost: perhaps you have been walking in your pride. You have been boasting in your good works rather than trusting in God’s power to save. You have been relying on yourself as though salvation proceeded from you rather than from God. You have been boastfully saying, like Nebuchadnezzar, “Is this not my life, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence for my glory and majesty?”

I urge you to humble yourself before the Lord humbles you. Take your eyes off your own works. Don’t focus on what you have accomplished. Stop seeing yourself as the self-sufficient, self-reliant, “pull myself up by my own bootstraps,” king of your own little kingdom. Rather, lift your eyes to heaven, acknowledge that he is higher than you, that his ways better and his glory is more valuable than what you can manufacture.  Live in the sunshine of his grace. Trust in his saving power. Boast in him and him alone. And then walk in obedience to his commandments, not as a way to be made right with him, but as a way of demonstrating his saving power in your life.

And here is a reminder to the found: Boast in God. Rely on his grace, not on yourselves. Trust in his saving power, not in your works. Fight the entropy of self-righteousness, the insidious inner dialogue that daily attempts to convince us that we are better than we really are. Do not boast in your own works as though you were the source of them. You may perform those works, but God is their source and his power is their cause.