Saved by Grace Through Faith

Please turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2 and we read from verses 1 to 10. Ephesians 2 verses 1 to 10. And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world. according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. May the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. In Ephesians 2, verses 8 to 9, Paul uses three key words that give us what is probably the clearest statement in the Bible about the essence of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. The word saved tells us what God has done for the Christian. The word grace tells us why He has done it, And the word faith tells us how he has done it, how he has imparted this salvation to the Christian. So let's start with the word saved, with what God has done for the Christian. Well, he has saved us. It's a glorious word that means to rescue or preserve something. In a loose sense, we speak of saving money or goods for a rainy day. We save them from misuse so that when we really need them, we may put them to good use. But in its primary and biblical sense, of course, it refers to the rescuing of sinners from the danger of eternal destruction that sin has brought to the world. In Jude 23, the writer exhorts us to save sinners by snatching them from the fire, that is, the fire of hell. Now, what exactly is this frightful predicament from which we desperately need to be saved as sinners? And for the answer, we go back to verses 1 to 3 of chapter 2. This is everybody's spiritual condition before they are saved. Now, the phrase, you he made alive, in verse 1, you will notice is in italics because it is not in the original manuscript. The idea of being made alive does not come until verse 5. So chapter 2 should begin, and you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked or lived according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom We too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. It's a pretty pessimistic view of mankind, and it includes religious people like the Apostle Paul, who was a very zealous Pharisee before he was saved. It's true that Paul begins with the words, you were dead in trespasses and sins, referring to the Ephesians who were worshippers of idols before they were converted. But notice he goes on in verse 3 to include himself among them and say, among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh. He changes from you to we. He is the sinner with them. Now, this is the biblically inspired description of the spiritual predicament from which we all need to be rescued. In God's eyes, the great danger we are all in is threefold. In the first place, we are spiritually dead. The New International Version reads, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. Now, this is not a figure of speech, and obviously not a diagnosis of our physical condition. Rather, the Apostle Paul is making a factual statement about the spiritual condition of all human beings. True, the human spirit cannot die. It is immortal. It cannot cease to exist. It is dead, however, in the sense that sin has cut it off from God, who is the only source of eternal life, the life of pure and absolute goodness. And this is confirmed in Ephesians 4, verse 18, where Paul describes our spiritual condition as being alienated from the life of God. And therefore, notice, past feeling. For we have no love for God, no concern for His glory, no sorrow for breaking His holy law, and no gratitude for all His goodness and blessing toward us. We are past feeling. We are as unresponsive to God as the corpse is to those who are still alive. Life cut off from God, I say, is a living death. Indeed, our condition is even worse than that, for although we are unresponsive to God and all that is good, we are fully responsive to the world, to the flesh, and to the devil. And so secondly, says Paul, we need to be rescued because we are all morally enslaved. We may not always be aware of the hostile spiritual forces that hold us captive. We tend to think that we are just doing what we want to do. But in reality, you know, We are unconsciously submitting to the prince of the power of the air, as Paul calls the devil. And I hope we all believe in a personal devil who opposes God in every purpose of God. It's sheer folly not to believe in a personal devil, because so much in life is inexplicable without him. Paul further describes him as the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Because every sin you and I commit is at the instigation of the devil or one of his cohorts. He is the one who gets us to adopt the values and standards of the world. So Paul says in those verses, we walked according to the course of this world. which is Paul's term for secular society who has no regard for God at all. People without Christ have no mind or will of their own. They are the slaves of a lifestyle that is dictated by the world, by mass media and ungodly company. Now, is everybody like this, or just a few? And Paul in verse 3 says, we are all morally enslaved, among whom we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind. So, without God, no one is really in control of their lives. Thirdly, we then need to be saved from the condemnation of God. Verse 3, the end. And were by nature children of wrath just as the others, or the rest, of mankind. And the wrath Paul is speaking about here is, of course, the wrath of God. And God's wrath is his perfect, righteous, settled, implacable hatred of evil. God is so pure, says Habakkuk, that he cannot look on evil. How then could he not condemn your sin and mine? But please note that we are the objects of God's wrath, not just because we choose to disobey Him, but because it is inherent in our nature to do so. We were by nature the children of wrath. We are born into this predicament in which we are alienated from God, enslaved by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and under divine condemnation. Right from the very beginning, the Bible tells us that when our forefathers opened their hearts to evil and to disobedience, we, their sorry children, were alienated from the life of God. And of course, left to ourselves, we do what comes naturally. We always do what is pleasing to ourselves and not what is pleasing and glorifying to God our Creator. Now, that is the dreadful predicament, spiritual predicament everyone is in. And that is what we all need to be rescued from. We cannot save ourselves. We are like a drowning man or woman in a deep, fast-flowing river. It's no good giving them instructions on how to swim because they can't even keep their head above the water. They need to be rescued by someone else. Likewise, there's no point in telling a human being to get their act together and to start living to please and serve God, because we can't. It's in our nature to please ourselves rather than God. We have no real desire to obey God because, as Paul says, we are enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we try in our feebleness to keep God's law, we only succeed in convincing ourselves of the utter hopelessness of that task. Now, that is exactly what the Apostle Paul found. He was a man who, because he had a Bible and he had a church or a synagogue, he knew what was right and what was wrong. And Paul tells us in Philippians 3, he tried his best at keeping God's rules, but he found it a hopelessly demoralizing task that caused him eventually to cry out, O wretched man that I am, who will not rescue me from this body of death? So sinful men and women need to be saved. We need someone to rescue us, like a lifeguard who jumps into the river and saves us, or like a fireman who rescues somebody from a burning building. Good advice to a sinner is not enough. There are plenty of people who offer you good advice, but good advice is like throwing a drowning man both ends of the rope. We need God to take the initiative and save us. So that's the first key word we need to grasp if we are to really understand what Christianity and salvation is all about. And, you know, it's all there in the tense and the mood of this verb, saved. Take the mood of the verb, which is passive. You have been saved. The apostle is not talking here about something that we have done for ourselves. If that were so, the mood of the verb would be active, but it isn't. It's passive. You have been saved. God has had to intervene in our desperate situation and rescue sinners because we could not save ourselves. We were spiritually dead, but Paul says, God has made us alive together with Christ, verse 5. So whereas formerly we were totally unresponsive to God, God has quickened a new responsiveness within us to do his will. He has made us new creatures in Christ with new spiritual life. Whereas formerly we were the slaves of our flesh and the world and the devil, God has intervened and liberated us from that enslavement. And whereas we were formerly under the condemnation and wrath of God, he has pardoned our sins and made us the objects of his love and favour. Not only that, Because God is the agent in this rescue operation, we can be absolutely sure of our salvation. The verb, therefore, is not only in the passive mood, but in the perfect tense. You have been saved. And the perfect tense, saved, is meant to emphasise two things. That salvation has occurred, And now that it has occurred, we continue to enjoy it. The perfect tense clearly indicates these two things. The Apostle Paul, when he says, by grace you, Ephesians, have been saved, is certain that they have not only experienced salvation, but that they will continue to enjoy it. The Christian doesn't have to worry the rest of his life whether he will make it to heaven or not. For in saving us, God has not left us to fend for ourselves. He has united us to Christ in an eternal union or bond that nothing can separate. And we are more than conquerors. through him who loved us. The question then arises, why should God have done such a thing? What possible motive could he have had in rescuing rebels who don't deserve to be rescued? And that brings us to the second key word on salvation in our text, and it's the word grace. For by grace you have been saved. And it's the word that tells us why God has done this for the Christian. Now, the word grace, just like the word saved, has different connotations in our normal usage that are not relevant to the Bible. For example, we can use the word grace to describe something that is charming and elegant about a person's demeanor, or we can use it to refer to a short prayer of thanksgiving before a meal. In the Bible, however, its basic meaning is that of undeserved blessing freely bestowed on sinners by God. It's undeserved. Because sinners are estranged from God, they are alienated from God, and cannot claim favourable treatment from God as a right. And it is free, because salvation is offered even though God is not under any obligation to show his favour to sinners. Yet his giving is uncoerced and it is unsought. It's free. Nothing impresses Paul more in this paragraph than the fact that what prompted God to save us was not something in ourselves, but something in himself. It was not because of some supposed merit in us, but because of the unselfish, spontaneous, boundless generosity of God to sinners in spite of their demerits. or to be more explicit, grace is God loving the unlovely, revealing himself to them, quickening their willing response, pardoning their sins, adopting them as his children, and overcoming every obstacle in the way of bringing them ultimately into the full fellowship and enjoyment of himself. And Paul is so impressed that he uses four words to describe this unsolicited favour of God. First, in verse four, he speaks of God who is rich in mercy. God's favour to sinners, you see, is an expression of His mercy. And then he describes it in verse four again as His great love with which He loved us. He shows favour to unlovely sinners only because his love is great. And third, verse seven, God's favour stems from the exceeding riches of his grace. And fourthly, it is an expression of his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Mercy, love, grace, and kindness are all synonyms for the undeserved, unmerited favor that God has shown to sinners through His Son. But why has God done this for the Christian? Verse 7 gives the answer. We don't often refer to it. It's a crucial verse. God has done it, says Paul. In order that, in the ages to come, he might show to everyone in heaven the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. In other words, he has done it because he wants us, saved sinners, to be exhibits of this matchless grace in heaven. And because it is all of grace, Paul insists in verse 9 that it cannot be of works. It is not a reward for anything that we have done. It is a free gift of God. And yet, you know, most religions in the world are built on the idea that salvation is a reward given to those people at the end of life whose good works outweigh the evil things that they have done. An awful lot of people think like that today. But besides the fact that we have no good works because we are the slaves of evil, there is another reason for rejecting this idea. And so Paul says, it is not of works, lest anyone should boast. If salvation could be achieved by works, then we would get the credit for it in heaven and not God. Our achievement would be a ground for pride. And friends, pride is a sin. Pride in the presence of God is a most objectionable sin. It is the first in the list of seven things the Bible says God hates. If salvation could be achieved by works, it would then create sin and not rescue us from sin. That is why in His good providence it is solely the gift of God and not of works. You know, only humble people are going to be in heaven because we will all know who get there that we don't deserve to be there. And only in that way will our salvation in the ages to come show forth the exceeding riches of God's grace. I say it is a cardinal truth of our salvation and that is why the Apostle emphasizes it twice in verse 5 and again in verse 8. He wants to hammer it home by grace You have been saved. Which brings us to the third key word in verses 8 and 9, the word faith. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And it is a key word because it tells us how God saves people. God saves us, says Paul, by means of faith. But we must be careful here. There are many people who interpret these words saved through faith incorrectly. They see salvation as a kind of transaction in which God contributes grace, and we contribute faith, and the two contributions together make salvation. But that is not what Paul is saying. To state that we are saved by grace through faith is just another way of saying that we are not saved, even in a little way, by ourselves. Grace, as we have already seen, is an undeserved rescue operation to which we can contribute absolutely nothing. We are like that drowning man or woman in the middle of a deep, fast-flowing river. Now, of course, we would love to contribute something. A non-contributory scheme of salvation doesn't really appeal to anyone at all. I mean, we consider ourselves to be fairly decent and respectable, and we really don't like to be treated like paupers who depend entirely on the charity of heaven, do we? No, Lord, we say, please, please let me have a tiny share in my salvation. Don't let me feel so beggarly and useless, but God won't have it. We are willful lawbreakers who deserve nothing, so we can contribute nothing. I love the words of William Temple in his readings from John's Gospel. The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed. That is all. I contribute nothing. It's the gift of God. What role then does faith play in receiving this gift? Well, it certainly can't be regarded as a good work that contributes to our salvation in any way at all. For again, we enter the boasting game. In getting to heaven, we would then be able to say about our faith, well, I am here because I was wise enough to make the right choice. Those down there are in hell. because they made the wrong choice. And in that way, you see, now faith would become an object of pride and God won't tolerate it. No, faith is not to be thought of like that. How then are we to think of it? We are to think of it as Paul does. A gift of God. A gift that quickens us. to receive the grace of salvation. Now, those who disagree with this view of faith which I hinted at earlier, they say that the gift Paul is talking about here is not faith, but the gift of salvation. And we could argue that, but actually if you go back to see what the verse says, Its precise meaning is that the whole process of salvation through faith is by grace and it is the gift of God. And so, lest anyone should think that his or her faith is the thing that determines their salvation, Paul quickly goes on to say And this is not from yourselves. When God gives faith to a sinner, it's like throwing a rope, I say, to a drowning person. To grab hold of that rope does not confer any virtue upon you, nor does it save you. Without a strong person on the other side holding the rope and pulling you to safety, the rope of faith would be of no help at all, would it? You see, it's the sight of God at the other end holding the rope that quickens my faith to grab it and to be rescued. Well, think of it like this. The Bible also describes faith not only as believing but as receiving. And in John 1 verse 12, faith is equated with receiving Christ. He came to his own and his own received him not, but to as many as received him who believed on his name he gave the right to become children of God. So faith is like a beggar taking hold of a gift. It is like a starving soul eating the bread of life who is Jesus Christ. There is nothing meritorious about a beggar taking a gift which is held out to him. Here are some words of Gresham Mason, the principal founder of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, that put it so well. The faith of a man rightly conceived can never stand in opposition to the completeness with which salvation depends upon God. It can never mean that man does part while God merely does the rest. For the simple reason that faith does not consist in doing something, but in receiving something. To say that we are justified by faith is just another way of saying that we are justified not in the slightest measure by ourselves, but simply and solely by Christ in whom our faith is reposed. For Christ died on the cross of Calvary to rescue us from these dire consequences of our sins. He bore the wrath of God in his own innocent person so that we might be pardoned and spared the affliction of that wrath. And He rose again from the dead and sent His Spirit to free us from enslavement to the world and to the flesh and to the devil. And friends, I say again, to see that is to believe it, and to believe it is to receive it. Where then is there any room for boasting in ourselves? There is none. Absolutely none. Human pride will never raise its ugly head in heaven. In heaven we are going to forget about ourselves and we are going to become engrossed with the exploits and the praises of our Lord Jesus Christ. Heaven is going to be filled with the exploits of Christ and the praises of God, not the exploits and praises of man. But even now, If you are ever to enter heaven, you will have to humble yourself and come with empty hands to receive Christ's free gift of eternal life. Without His free offer of forgiveness for your sins purchased at infinite cost by His atoning sacrifice at the cross of Calvary, you are doomed to eternal death. It is rank folly, I say, to go on resisting Christ's saving grace. It is what we all need, what none of us can merit, and what He alone can give. And I would say to you with all my soul and with all my heart, Do not let pride prevent you from coming to Christ this morning and saying, Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress, Helpless look to thee for grace, Foul I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die. I beg you, be saved. while there is still time. God's promise is, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Call upon Jesus now, I beg you, for those who remain graceless in this day of opportunity will be speechless in the day of judgment to come. Let us pray. O God, our Heavenly Father, we pray that the Holy Spirit has winged these words of Scripture home to our hearts so that Christ is exalted and magnified as the mighty Savior of lost and helpless sinners. so that Christians may be strengthened and built up in their most holy faith in Him, and have a new and a better vision of all that He has done for them that they so little deserve. And we pray, Our Father, that those who are still strangers to this grace who are here in your house, who have come seeking, who have come with a longing in their heart for something and they don't know what, we pray that your Holy Spirit will wing these words to their heart. Open it like a flower so that they may give heed to the things that Paul has said and be saved. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen.