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. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
It has taken me much too long to post on this passage. I’ve had trouble, because I find this passage to be at the heart of what God has done for us. Therefore, I tend to run on about it and my writings become too long. I finally decided that I needed to just add a few comments to my original Sunday School handout (my original intention) and post it. Needless to say, there is much more that could be said about this passage, so don’t think that I have exhausted the subject. Books have been written on this.
Some find this passage hard to accept, for it is here that we learn that we do nothing to save ourselves. Grace is unmerited and undeserved favor. It involves mercy, as God gives us His love and salvation; not the wrath and judgment we deserve. Our salvation is purely a matter of God’s grace. He looks upon us in love, and He claims us as His own. Salvation comes only from God, and it is not a response to anything in us or done by us. And that, is probably why so many find this a difficult passage. From the very beginning, when our first parents listened to Satan in the garden, and fell into sin, we have always wanted to have some say in what we are and what we do. It is part of our nature to want to make our own decisions and to work things out for ourselves.
God’s grace brings salvation to us as we believe. As we put our faith and trust in Him, He saves us. But, what is faith? Faith is believing God. According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, faith is the work of the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of the elect (WCF, chap. 14, para. 1). By it, “a Christian believes to be true whatever is revealed in the Word, because of the authority of God himself speaking in it” (WCF, chap. 14., para. 2). According to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
It is not our faith, itself, which saves us. That is the accomplished work of Christ on the cross, in which he took upon himself the wrath of God and paid our debt due to God for sin. Again, the Confession tells us that “faith – receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness – is the only instrument of justification” (WCF, chap. 11, para. 2). While our faith does not save us, it is the instrument through which the Holy spirit applies the accomplished work of Jesus Christ.
We do nothing to earn our salvation. Thus Paul writes “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28), and “we know that a person is not justified by works of the law” (Galatians 2:16). We are in debt to God because of our sins. As we daily work to erase that debt, we only fall further and further into debt. We need someone to pay our debt for us, and that Person has already paid. And that is the good news of the gospel. Jesus Christ came to earth as a man, lived a life of perfect obedience to the law of God, and died as the substitute for us. Thus, we were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
J. Gresham Machen, in his book, What is Faith? writes that “faith, as distinguished from the effects of faith, consists not in doing something but in receiving something. Faith may result in action, and certainly true faith in Jesus always will result in action; but faith itself is not doing but receiving” (p. 89). Again, it is not a work, for we do nothing to earn our salvation – even believe. It is not something which we conjure up within ourselves. It is a gift of God. We cannot even boast about our faith. We can only, with the father of the boy healed in Mark 9 said, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Now, while our works do nothing to assist in, or add to, our justification, they are an integral part of our Christian life, and they grow out of our salvation. As James teaches in the second chapter of his epistle, faith without works if dead. In his Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Martin Luther wrote, “it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly.”
Let’s look again at the Westminster Confession of Faith as it speaks to this subject. “Faith … is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love” (WCF, chap. 11, para. 2). “These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the Gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life” (WCF, chap. 16, para. 2). “Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ (WCF, chap. 16, para. 3).
In conclusion, our justification is completely by the grace of God, and we receive it simply through the faith which God gives to us. We do nothing to save ourselves, for in ourselves is nothing good. We do not understand God, and we do not desire the things of God. When God removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, we desire to do the things of God, and those things of God include good works which he has prepared for us.
