Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Ephesians 2:8-10 | Date: July 6, 2014 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Certainly glad to have all of you here this morning with us. We were wondering, with the holiday weekend, how many would be away. Glad to have all of you here.

We’ll open God’s Word with me to Ephesians chapter 2. We’ve been trying to work our way through this wonderful passage, verses 1 through 10, where Paul the apostle expounds for us how salvation came to us in our experience. Our focus this morning will be in verses 8 through 10. Let’s again read through this entire section. Ephesians 2, I’ll begin with verse 1:

“And you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 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 his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

See these verses again. Verse 8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.

Our Father, it’s always a joy to come together as your children, to come and hear from you and to have your word opened. We pray that you would meet with us this morning. We ask that you would gladden the hearts of your people with thoughts of your grace. We’ve been blessed this morning already to sing of the great things that you have done and will do yet for us. Our hearts are stirred to think of that great day when we shall see Jesus. What a wonderful hope we have in Him. We pray that you would lift the hearts of your people in this hope, and here in this passage, lift the hearts of your people with thoughts of your grace that has given all this to us so freely in Christ Jesus. Lord, if there are any here who do not know you, we pray that you would use this portion of your word to speak to them and make them see the desperateness of their condition without Christ. May they see the glory of Christ, and we pray that you would send your Spirit to give them faith. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

As you may recall, if you’ve been here with us, we’ve been working through to trace the Apostle Paul’s argument that he is developing through this letter. We saw that he took as his theme in chapter 1, verse 3; he gives praise to God because of the blessings with which he has blessed us in Christ Jesus—the blessings with which he has blessed us in Christ Jesus. In fact, he tells us we’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, in the heavenlies.

And so he begins to track that out a little bit for us in chapter 1, and we saw that he traces the blessings that come to us from God the Father, from God the Son, and from God the Holy Spirit. Blessings in the past, blessings in the present, blessings in the future. God has chosen us, He’s predestined us, He has sent His Son to accomplish for us the redemption in Him. In Him we’ve been made sons. He has revealed this wonderful purpose of grace for us that we may rejoice in it, and He has sent His Spirit not only to draw us to faith in Christ, but to seal us unto that day of redemption with the assurance then that this work that He has begun in us will be completed all the way to the end. And so in chapter 1, verses 3 through 14, the Apostle Paul gives us these broad strokes of God’s saving purpose from eternity to eternity.

And it reminds us several times throughout that passage—we saw that repeating refrain—this was done to the praise of His glorious grace (verse 6). Also to the praise of His glory, and then again to the praise of His glory. He does this with the purpose of honoring Himself in the rescue of rebel sinners through grace, through Jesus Christ. In light of all of that, verse 15 of chapter 1, he begins to pray and give God thanks for what he has done in the lives of those in the church at Ephesus—that if salvation is evident in their lives, God is to be thanked for it. And in fact, he prays then that the same sovereign God who has given them this salvation would continue his work in them and complete his purpose in them.

But now, in chapter one he’s been speaking in broad strokes of the purpose of God from eternity to eternity. Now in chapter two he personalizes it all and he comes to explain now how we individually came to experience this salvation. How were we brought in to the blessings of salvation? And we saw that in chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, he emphasizes the condition we were in when God first came to us. We were dead in trespasses and sins. We were walking according to the course of this world, mindlessly duped along following the course of this age, which itself is following the dictates of Satan, the prince and the power of the air. And we are by nature then children of wrath and children of disobedience.

Paul paints a very glib picture of what humanity is without Christ. We are lost, we are hopeless, we’re helpless, we are rebel sinners; we wouldn’t fix the problem if we could and, in fact, we can’t. We are exactly as bad off as we could possibly be. And then in verses four through seven he tells us that now we’ve been raised to life in Christ and we’ve been seated with Christ in the heavenlies and we’re sharing with him in his glory even now. So in verses one through three he says what we were; in verses four through seven he tells us what we have become. And the hinge of it all, you remember we saw last time, the first two words of verse four: “But God.” This whole thing hinges on divine power and divine mercy—God coming to work, finding us in our helpless and hopeless condition in sin, and God then changing the situation through Jesus Christ, giving us to Him and raising us to life in Christ.

And again he tells us his purpose in that in verse 7 is to show off his own grace and kindness so that we will be trophies of God’s grace to his glory. So the whole point then is that God has done all of this for us in salvation, he’s done it for us freely, and he’s done it for us through Jesus Christ. We were lost, we were helpless, but God stepped in. And salvation then is—you’ve heard me say the word often to emphasize it—is rescue in every sense of the term. God has done all of this for us with the overarching goal of displaying his kindness to sinners.

Now you might think that having said all that he said in chapter 1, and now having said all that he has said in verses 1 through 7 of chapter 2, that he’s said it all. And of course he has. But Paul’s a preacher, of course. And so he has more to say. And he’s going to explain it a little bit further. And when we come to verses 8 through 10, we have Paul regrouping a bit and summarizing everything that he’s had to say so far with regards to God’s salvation or the experience of God’s salvation in our own lives individually. And he gives us this summary of it all: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

There really is very little here that Paul has not already said, but he does capture it in a summary statement in a way that has always been made just such a famous passage for Christians everywhere, and we’ll take our time this morning then to work our way through it. In verse 8 then, we have the doctrine of salvation summarized. In verse 9, he expands on it slightly again, and then he explains it a little bit further in verse 10. And again, in case you fall asleep during the rest of the message, I’ll give you the whole in a sentence. What we have here in verses 8 through 10 is what is summarized so well in the famous watchwords of the Reformation—the Latin phrases, the only Latin some of you may know, right? But you’ve heard these: Solus Christus, Christ alone; Sola Gratia, by grace alone; Sola Fide, by faith alone; Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. And that, in essence, is what this passage is all about. Christ has done all of the work of salvation, and necessarily, then, it comes to us by grace alone. And if by grace alone, then by faith alone, so that in the end, God alone will be praised for it.

Alright, let’s work our way through it.

Two Key Terms

First of all, notice two key terms that Paul brings up in verse 8. The first one is the word grace. “For by grace you have been saved.” Grace is one of those words we use very often and I think sometimes the familiarity and the breadth of the use of the word has sometimes masked the significance of it. Grace has come to mean maybe something nice that God does, and of course it is that. When I was in Sunday school as a little boy, I remember my Sunday school teacher giving us a definition of grace that I’ve heard a thousand times since, and I still think it’s probably the best definition we can find. Grace—and you may have heard it—grace is simply unmerited favor. Unmerited favor. It is favor from God, but it is favor that is not deserved. That’s the meaning of grace.

Now actually, it’s not quite enough to say that, because when we look at it in terms of how the scriptures develop the idea of grace, it is not only God’s favor that has come to us undeserved, but it is God’s favor that has come to us contrary to what we deserve. And only there do we really get to the point of it. What we deserve from God is wrath and condemnation. After all, we are sinners, sons of disobedience, children of wrath. And what we deserve from God is punishment. But instead of the punishment, He gives favor. This is undeserved favor from God. It is a favor that is given freely.

I think sometimes the idea today, of course, at least broadly speaking in a Christianized sort of world, is that everybody—well maybe not the really bad people, but virtually everyone—deserves good treatment from God. Maybe not Jack the Ripper and maybe not Adolf Hitler, maybe not Saddam Hussein. You know, there are a few exceptions. You’ve got to have a little bit. But for the most part, we think today that everybody deserves kindness from God. In fact, that’s kind of his job up there. That’s his job description. And when things don’t go well for us, in fact, we’re mad at him. Because after all, we deserve it. I mean, why wouldn’t he do good things for us?

But we don’t even come close to understanding this matter of grace in the Scriptures until we recognize that what we deserve from God is nothing but condemnation for our sin against Him. And so grace becomes a huge word in the Scriptures describing God’s relationship to us. Anything short of condemnation has been an undeserved favor from God, contrary to what we deserve. And this is what Paul has been building toward throughout this whole discussion.

In fact, I think it’s almost amusing to see how Paul slips it in in verse 5. He starts out verse 1: you were dead, and you’re disobedient, and you’re children of wrath, and you’re children of disobedience. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up—and right in between there he sticks in that little parenthetical: “by grace you’ve been saved.” He’s not there yet; he gets there in verse 8. But he had to slip it in already to say it. He has made us alive together with Christ—by grace you’ve been saved—and raised us up together with him.

This is what Paul has been building through throughout. This is why he spent so much time, as he did in verses 1 through 3, painting this awful picture of lost humanity: its disobedience, dead in trespasses and sins, and following the course of this world under the dictates of Satan himself. And he spends his time developing the lostness and the helplessness and the hopelessness of humanity in order that we may now come to understand the meaning of grace. This is something that favor that God does for us contrary to what we deserve. The whole essence of salvation, the whole point that Paul is laboring to stress here really through chapter one and now in our experience in chapter two, is that we have no right and no claim to this salvation whatsoever.

This is a favor that God does, and the whole glory of it is that though we deserve nothing but wrath, and while we were still dead in our trespasses and sins and walking in our disobedience against God, even when we were in that condition, God came to us in grace through Jesus Christ and raised us up and brought us to the heavenlies in Jesus Christ. God intervened. He took the initiative. It is a work of His grace, apart from anything that we have ever begun to merit or deserve. And there’s a sense in which—and Paul has painted this picture here—there’s a sense in which we are nothing but surprised spectators in the salvation that we enjoy. Look what God has done for us. I was going that way, but God intervened and gave me to Christ. And this is why, in verse 8, he tells us it is a gift of God. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.” So we have to say it this way: salvation is a work of God entirely.

So the first key term that he gives us here is grace. “By grace you have been saved through faith.” That brings us our second one: faith. “By grace you have been saved through faith.” Now what is faith? What is it that makes faith so important? Or what is it that makes it so effective? What is it to believe? Well, faith is certainly more than knowledge, although it entails knowledge. You can’t believe something you don’t know. But certainly faith is more than just knowledge. Faith is—it’s been emphasized this way for centuries to explain the biblical idea of saving faith—it is not only knowledge but assent. That is, we acknowledge those propositions as true. We can’t be saved apart from acknowledging as true certain propositions about Jesus: that he is the Savior, that he does the work of salvation, and so on. And so faith is knowledge and faith is assent.

But certainly saving faith is more than that, isn’t it? Because you’ve got to know the devil acknowledges these things as true as well. He knows very well that Christ is the Savior. And I don’t think anyone’s talking about a saved devil yet. And so what is that bottom line of saving faith? Certainly it involves knowledge, it involves assent. And faith is—we have to emphasize—faith is trust. Faith is trust. A believing reliance, an abandonment to Christ, relying upon Christ, resting in Christ to do for us what these propositions about Him say He will do. And so the gospel comes to us saying that God alone saves and He saves alone through Jesus Christ who does all the work Himself. He died in place of sinners. He bore the wrath of sin. He took the curse. He exhausted it all. He rose from the dead having accomplished the work. And we all say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes! And I am resting in that only. That is my whole hope. All of my trust is in Jesus Christ.”

And this is faith that the New Testament speaks of. Faith is what’s left when self-trust and self-reliance are all removed. And this is why—this is why when God saves us, so often this has been our experience in a dramatic way with many of us—when God saves us, what He does first is brings us to an end of ourselves. I remember the day I was saved. I went into church like any other Sunday. God opened my heart and suddenly I recognized. Suddenly I recognized something I never recognized before. I saw my helplessness and my hopelessness. I saw that I needed a Savior. And I went running to Jesus. Isn’t that your testimony? And God brings us to the end of ourselves so that we will acknowledge that nothing else—nothing else could ever help but Jesus only—and we rest in Him.

Let’s take the time to look at a couple of passages that emphasize this meaning of faith. Keep your hand here, we’ll certainly be back, but look at Philippians, over a few pages. Philippians chapter 3. Here the Apostle Paul gives his own testimony, tells us about his own experience as a very religious man before he came to Christ. I’ll pick up the reading in verse 3:

“For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.”

And here he gives his spiritual resume, as it were: “Circumcised the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” So here’s Paul: “What I had was above everyone else and they all knew it.” He was a rising star in Judaism, not only in terms of office, being a Pharisee, but also in terms of recognition. And I don’t think he’s claiming absolute perfection here when he says blameless, but he was recognized as one who kept the law scrupulously and everyone knew it.

And then verse 7: “But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order 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.”

Paul’s whole point here is that in coming to salvation, what I had to do was recognize everything I had to bring to the table. Everything was worthless. I had to count it all rubbish, waste, so that instead I would rest in Jesus Christ alone and find in Him and in Him alone what God requires for salvation. And here then is the illustration of what saving faith is. Yes, there’s a recognition of certain truths about Jesus, but there’s a resting in Christ, trusting Him to be for us what God requires of us. My whole hope is in Christ.

Let’s look at another illustration of this. Let’s look at Romans chapter 10. Romans 10 beginning with verse 1:

“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them [that is for Israel] is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

You see what all is packed into this? Here’s the problem, he says, with my fellow Israelites. It is not that they have no zeal for God. They have zeal. These people are religious. In their minds, they think they are serving God. This is their motive, to serve God. And yet, he says it’s a zeal that’s an ignorant zeal. Because it’s grounded in this false assumption that somehow they can go to God based on their own righteousness. That somehow they can make a way that by their law-keeping and by their goodness, somehow merit a standing before God. And Paul says that’ll never work. And their problem is not a lack of zeal. Their problem is that they refuse the righteousness that is in Christ alone and which alone is sufficient to save. And instead, they trust in themselves rather than resting in Christ alone.

And the whole thrust of the whole scripture is this for us: that Christ is for us what God requires of us. And the essence of saving faith, then, is that we rest in Christ and receive him in that capacity as our rescue. So saving faith makes a comment. Saving faith says something. Saving faith says, “I can’t, but Christ can.” Paul says here, this is how we are saved: by grace, through faith. You see how these two are joined? You see how they’re inseparable? You have to understand this. You have to see it. Paul’s whole argument is that salvation is a work that God does through Christ, right? He does it through Christ. Christ does the work that saves. And so necessarily, it comes to us by grace. But how is it we receive that grace of salvation? Answer: there can be no means whatever of receiving it apart from a believing reliance upon Christ who did it all. It is by faith alone precisely because it is by grace alone. Saving faith is not some kind of meritorious work that we’re rewarded for. It is simply an abandonment to Christ to receive from him what he alone can do.

Two Emphatic Denials

Alright, we have then two key terms in verse 8. I’ve already alluded to the next point, and that is two emphatic denials. Back to Ephesians 2, two emphatic denials that Paul gives us here. I want you to see them with me in Ephesians 2: “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Two denials. “By grace you have been saved through faith,” and here’s the first one: “this is not your own doing.” “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.” Not of yourselves. Now, as several of you know, of course, there’s been no end to the discussion as to exactly what is the reference here. “That not of yourselves.” That what? That salvation? That grace? Or that faith? Not of yourselves. Some of you will know that there’s a question here, a discussion regarding the gender of the pronoun and things like that. It can refer to any of the previous. It’s: “for by grace you’ve been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.” That salvation not of yourselves? That grace not of yourselves? That faith not of yourselves? So which is it?

Well, it seems to me that if it’s “that grace, not of yourselves,” that’s a bit redundant. He’s already said it’s a gift. “That, not of yourselves.” Salvation is that. So also with grace, not of yourselves—he’s already been laboring that point. I think he’s referring to the faith. At the very least, what we have to say here, it seems to me, at the very least, is that Paul is referring to the whole package: grace, faith, salvation—not of yourselves. However you view it, you have to come back to this point that even the faith by which we are saved is not of ourselves. It comes to us from God.

You might be tempted to think that because I believe, well, God ought to be impressed with that. I mean, what a good boy am I? I saw my way through to believe in Jesus. I think what Paul is pointing out here is that even this faith—this is how gracious our salvation is—even this faith through which we receive Jesus is itself a gift of God. Now this is standard teaching in the Apostle Paul throughout his writings. No man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God. This teaching that faith is a gift is standard fare in the New Testament. We find it quite often. I think that’s what he’s getting at here. So gracious is God in this salvation that not only does he give us Christ, who does all the work, and not only does he say it will come only as a gift, the very means by which we receive that gift is itself a gift of God. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Again, there’s a sense in which we’re spectators in our salvation. It’s my faith. It’s my faith. Make no mistake about that. We must believe and we must tell people that in our evangelistic work: you must believe or you’ll be condemned. You must trust in Jesus Christ. The fact of the matter is we are so dead in our trespasses and sins and so lost that we never will believe unless God enables us to do so. So Paul is driving this idea of grace.

But there’s another denial. Verse 9: “By grace you’ve been saved through faith. This is not your own doing; it’s the gift of God. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Not of works. Now again, it seems that Paul has already said this several times over. Why does he see it necessary to say it again, that this is not of works? Of course, the point is, we need to be told it again. We are just likely to find some place where we take credit for this salvation that’s ours. So Paul stresses, we are saved by grace through faith. That’s not of yourselves. It’s a gift of God. It’s not of works. You notice Paul doesn’t qualify the works. He doesn’t just say, “not of religious works” (might be other kinds of works). Or he doesn’t say it’s not of morality, those kinds of works—just no kinds of works at all.

Now this becomes extremely important in understanding the gospel. Paul ran into this in the church at Galatia, in his letter to the Galatians. You remember the famous incidents where Paul is having to argue against the Judaizing tendencies in the Galatian church where they’re telling us that we are saved—you remember the added condition? Circumcision. What’s interesting there is that the Apostle Paul is not having to argue with people who disagree with him about Jesus—that he is God come from heaven, that he’s the Savior, that he died as a substitute. He’s not having to argue on that level. These people are not saying, “Paul, we don’t believe any of that gospel you’re preaching.” What they are saying, in essence, is, “Paul, you’re right. We are saved through Jesus Christ by grace, through faith, and, in their case, circumcision.”

The difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism is right here, that little word: and. By grace, through faith, yes, yes, yes; by Jesus, by grace, through faith, yes, yes, and baptism, penance, whatever it is. Now it doesn’t matter what follows that word and. Once you add it, you’ve ruined the gospel. And Paul is driving that here. We are saved by grace through faith. That’s not of your own doing. It’s a gift of God, not of works. He can’t say it more clearly, can he? That this is God’s doing. It comes to us through grace.

Let’s look at one verse quickly in Romans chapter 11. We’ll just be there a second. Romans chapter 11, where the Apostle Paul says this in such a clear way: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” It’s one or the other. You can have a whole ocean of grace. You add a teacup of works, it’s no longer grace. You’ve ruined it. It’s one or the other. These two are mutually exclusive. Don’t talk about salvation by grace and anything you do.

God’s Overriding Purpose

So Paul gives us these two important terms, grace and faith. Grace is a gift of God, unmerited favor received through the instrumentality of faith, resting in Christ to be for us what God requires of us. To say the same thing from the negative standpoint, he says it’s not of yourselves, it’s not of works.

Now the next point: the overriding purpose in all of this. God’s overriding purpose, the end of verse 9: “not a result of works so that no one may boast.” That is to say, God has established the way of salvation precisely so that no one else can take credit for it. We saw this before. Paul speaks of it famously in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, that God saves only in such a way that only he receives the credit for it. We’ll see it again later in chapter 2, we’ll see it in chapter 3, that God has set out to glorify himself in the salvation of rebellious humanity and he will save them only in such a way that that is the result—that he receives the glory for it.

If there were any point along the way in our salvation where it hinged on us—you know, if you know anything about your heart, you know you would turn around and pat yourself on the back for it. “Well, at least I, I, I…” And God would not be honored by it. So he says, “My God’s purpose in this is to save in a way that he receives the glory,” and he will not be robbed of the glory that is rightfully his by making a way of salvation that allows room for any kind of human boasting. Well, this then becomes a real test case for us. If you can give your testimony in such a way that brings the attention back to you, if you can find some means in your testimony that you contributed something to this equation, you don’t know the first thing about grace.

Final Explanation

Now we come to verse 10, and Paul gives us a final explanation. He’s given us two key terms, two important denials, and he’s told us God’s overriding purpose in it, and now a final explanation. And here we have the Apostle Paul saying all the same thing over again, but pushing it a little bit harder.

Verse 10: “For we“—notice the first word, “for,” it’s an explanatory conjunction. He’s explaining it again, what he’s been saying. “For we”—how do we know we are saved by grace through faith alone, Christ alone, and all that? “Because we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Now, the word—it’s hard to translate it in this way to make smooth reading—but the fact is, in the original here, the Apostle Paul throws, for emphasis, that little pronoun, “his,” right up front. “His workmanship we are.” Just for emphasis. So, salvation requires works after all. But who did the work? God does the work, and notice how he says it: “we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” That is, through Jesus, by means of Him, God has done the work of salvation. But we are His workmanship. It is a work of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. We saw that in chapter 1. This word workmanship—”for we are what He’s made.” That’s the idea. We’re His workmanship. We’re what He’s done.

And just in case you don’t get the point of that, notice the next way He describes it: “We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” It’s nothing less than a work of creation. These words, both of them, are used in the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament referring to God’s original work of creation. And now this is nothing less than a new creation that God has done. He’s made us. He’s created us. How? There’s our phrase again: “in Christ Jesus.” Take that in some kind of an instrumental sense. By means of Jesus Christ, God has saved us. We’re His workmanship. He’s still hammering away at the same basic point that salvation is of God. Well, what else could it be? We were dead in trespasses and sins.

Still there’s more. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” For good works. Or, if you have the older translation, “unto good works.” That is, good works are not the cause, they’re the result. Not the cause, but the effect. We’re created in Christ Jesus—we’re His workmanship, made in Christ for good works. It comes as a result of what God has done for us. Now, if we have to say that we are saved for good works, not because of good works, then is there any way we can trace our salvation back to ourselves in any sense?

In fact, even those good works that we do after conversion, we find in the next part of the verse are the result of divine grace as well. He keeps pushing: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works… which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” He’s ordained this from eternity. Even this is a matter of divine decree and divine grace. Even the works after conversion are the result of divine grace. God has provided that exactly every step of the whole plan will be His doing, so that in the end, He receives the glory for it. At every step, salvation is the work of God.

Well, there we have it, a summary of all that He’s been telling us and how it comes to us. How are we saved? Answer: by grace, unmerited favor, received with an open hand that can only receive what has been done for us by Jesus Christ. And even that faith—and nothing about this is of ourselves—it’s a gift of God, not by works of any kind, because we are His workmanship, created anew through Jesus Christ unto good works which he ordained long ago that we should walk in.

And this, in short, is the Gospel. The Gospel does not come to us and say, “Do! Do! You must! You must!” The Gospel says, “Done!” God has done, through Jesus Christ, this work. And let me say it again, this explains those watchwords of the Reformation that capsulize so well the gospel of the New Testament. It is by Christ alone. Precisely because it is by Christ alone, it comes to us by grace alone. Precisely because it is by grace alone, we can receive it only through faith—through faith alone. So that in the end, God alone receives the glory.

I remember one time walking into a friend’s house. They had a thing on the wall, a decoration, and I went and looked at it. It was just the strangest thing. It was a bunch of nails nailed into a piece of wood. Another piece of wood was routed out on the edges, and it was pretty and all of that. And the heads of the nails were all painted, so it looked like a flower. I thought, that is the most interesting thing. I picked it up off the wall. I help myself to these things. Took it off the wall, and I held it and looked at it. Well, here’s the skyline of New York City. All the nails were in different depths, and it’s a fascinating thing.

Now, what happens when you see a piece of art like that, a beautiful painting or whatever? You don’t just admire it. You end up admiring the artist, right? And this is Paul’s point here—that we are saved in such a way that in the end we all say, “Glory to God, look what He has done.” Amen.

Let’s pray.

Our Father, surely there has never been a grace like this anywhere else. We can’t imagine how such a holy and such a majestic God as you are could give loving attention to rebel sinners. And then to go to the lengths that you have gone, giving us your Son to do for us all that you require of us, to go to all of these lengths to bring us into fellowship with yourself—surely it is a testimony to your great grace. We love you for it. We thank you for it. Father, encourage our hearts in this, this week we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.