By Grace through Faith

 Read Ephesians 2

Let’s set the playing field.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  That’s a true statement and the fruit of that condition is death.  We were dead in our sins.

At one point, Satan could claim us as his own.  We gratified the flesh. We followed the ways of this world.  We were disobedient.

Death should have been our destiny—domed by our sin and carnal desires, yet here we are living with the promise of more life to come.  We seek more than survival.  We seek abundant life.

We were dead in our sins but because of the great love of God, we are alive in Christ.  We live because God loves us!

We deserved the wrath of God but he gave us mercy and grace instead.  We are not only saved from the condemnation that we deserved.  We are raised up to be with Christ.  We are not just surviving wrath.  We are celebrating life and life abundant and life eternal because of what God has done for us through Christ Jesus.

Jesus paid it all.  All to him I owe.  Here’s how Paul put it.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast

God did everything for us.  We are in right standing with him.  Our own works had nothing to do with our salvation.  It’s all about the love of God.

Paul adds so that no one can boast.  Think about our human nature.  If we had just a little bit to do with our salvation, our human thinking would take over.

Yeah, I did my one percent and God did ninety-nine percent.  God’s love is awesome.

A year later, we might be saying, Yeah, I did ten percent.  God did ninety percent.  That’s a really good deal.

In two years, our human nature would have us saying, I did my half.  God did his half.  It’s like a matching 401K—still a good deal.

Not much farther down the road, we would be saying, I did ninety percent of the work needed for my salvation.  God through in his ten percent for good measure.  I mean I did slip up once or twice, but otherwise, I earned my way to heaven.

Paul said get this and get it good:  You are saved by grace through faith so we know that we had no part in our own salvation.  We simply received the best gift ever and we did it by faith.

You might wonder, shouldn’t we have been required to do at least a minimum amount of good?  Shouldn’t there have been a minimum standard?  How will people know that we follow Jesus if there was no test to pass?

Consider more of Paul’s words.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Paul is telling us that we were created to do all sorts of good and great things.  We do them in response to this wonderful gift that we know as grace.  We finally get to live up to the life that God made us to live.

Do we need good works for salvation?  No.  Our good works proceed from our salvation.  They are the fruit of our salvation.

Our good works could never get us to salvation but they should abound in our salvation.

God loves us so much that he didn’t make us get fixed in order to receive his salvation.  His love did all of that for us, but now that we have received this gift, we should truly be a light unto the world so people can see our good deeds and bring glory to God.

God designed us special.  We are made to do good works.  God made us a list of things to do even before we knew that we would get to do them.

We were destined by God to do these good works and we get to do them because God loves us so much.

We are saved by grace through faith.  Our salvation is all from God and not by our own works.

Now that we are saved, let our good works be known to all so that they may bring glory to God.

Amen.