Ephesians 2:8-10
Date: November 10th, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Ephesians 2:8-10
Exegetical Outline
MIT: Salvation is an act of God’s grace, even the faith necessary to believe, so that he alone receives the credit.
2:8a: Salvation is an act of God’s grace accomplished through the faith of the individual.
2:8b-9: This faith is not a work of the individual, it is a gift of God, so no one can take credit but God.
2:10: Even if it was, every good work is God’s work, because that is what he created us to do.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: Salvation is solely the work of God as he gives us the faith necessary to believe.
Faith is the only means by which God saves.
Faith is not a work of the individual.
Even if it was, all good works are credited to God.
Introduction:
One day a father and his 4 year old son were riding in the truck. The son was looking out the window, not saying much so the father was content to listen to the music and drive.
Suddenly, the son turns to the father and asks a question, as kids do. “Dad, what holds up the world?”
The father, thinking a detailed scientific explanation was beyond his Son says, “A turtle.” The son is quiet and the father is pretty proud of himself for dodging the difficult question.
Then the son says, “What holds up the turtle?” The father is stumped. He thinks, well I guess the turtle needs to stand on something, so he responds, “A giraffe.” The son is quiet and ponders what his father has told him.
A few minutes go by, and the son asks, “What holds up the giraffe?” The father, beginning to feel exasperated by his inability to give his son a sufficient answer picks the biggest animal he can think of. He answers, “An elephant.”
And as his son pipes up one more time, the father interrupts his son and says, “It just elephants all the way down.”
This funny little story is actually a philosophical illustration of infinite regress. Meaning, our tendency as human to offer an endless line of explanation without any foundational principle or idea. There must be an ultimate cause.
For this whole semester, we have been thinking about the ultimate cause of salvation. Paul has been teaching us how salvation works. I am excited about this sermon, because it is one of those last pieces that helps us understand what he has been teaching us. Let’s read Ephesians 2:8-10 and consider how we are justified by faith alone.
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The main idea of our sermon this morning is this: Salvation is solely the work of God as he gives us the faith necessary to believe. Paul has been building a careful argument from the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians. He has been arguing that salvation, from beginning to end, is God’s work and God’s work alone. We contribute nothing to our salvation, other than the sin that made it necessary.
In Chapter 1, we saw that from eternity past, God freely chose and predestined to lovingly adopt a definite number of people through his Son. He then sovereignly superintended all of history so that his eternal plan would come to completion. And, he has guaranteed a future inheritance for that people by sealing them with his own Spirit that dwells inside of him. Chapter 1 is about this great, cosmic story that God has been weaving that frankly is beyond our comprehension. It is an epic, reality defining narrative.
In Chapter 2, it becomes far more personal. Paul begins to explain how each one of God’s people experiences that epic story within their everyday lives. A couple weeks ago, we saw the beginning of that personal story. We were all dead in our trespasses and sins. No seeks after God. No one wants God. No one is good. We were all in love with the world and an enemy of God.
Last week, we saw that salvation is a work of God’s grace alone. He initiated and accomplished the work of salvation by uniting us to the life of Christ, to his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and session. Simply said, the mode by which we are saved is that we are united to the Son by the Father. So that salvation depends on the grace of God, alone.
This week, we will see the role faith plays in salvation. Paul is going to teach us three things about faith.
The first thing that Paul teaches us about faith is that God saves by faith alone in such a way that the faith is the means of salvation. Now you might think, “wait, I thought you just said that God saves by grace alone? How is it that he also saves by faith alone?” In this first point, we will think about the difference between the mode and means of salvation. Mode is the manner or way that something is done. As we saw last week, the mode of salvation is that God brings us from death to life by uniting us to the life of his Son. God’s grace is the mode of salvation. Means is the instrument by which an end is achieved. As it relates to salvation, faith is the means by which God accomplishes salvation in our lives, so that salvation is by grace through faith. So the first thing we need to see is that faith is the means of salvation.
The second thing that we will learn about faith is that faith is not a work of the individual. This is a challenging thing to understand, because faith must originate in the will. To believe requires the individual to make a free, conscious decision to put their personal trust in Christ. Nobody can do it for you. You must make a conscious and free choice to follow Jesus, and yet, Paul is saying that while it is your faith, it is credited to God, not to you. In fact, even faith is an act of God’s grace as he makes you believe. It is not as if grace does 99% of the work and faith is that last thing that pushes salvation over the edge. Very clearly, Paul says it is not your own doing. It is a gift of God. So, we will consider how salvation requires a conscious and personal choice to trust Jesus but it is also something that originates with God and that he does in us.
Finally, the third thing we will learn about faith is that even if faith was a work, and it is not, all good works are credited to God and to God alone. Paul’s argument goes like this. Faith, as in a personal, free choice to follow Jesus, is necessary to be saved, and in fact, salvation is by faith alone. But, he says, faith is not a work of the individual, it is a free gift of God. And, to avoid all doubt, he says, even if faith were a good work that originated in the individual, it would still not be credited to the person, because all good works belong to God. He created us for good works, he lays out the good works that we are to accomplish, therefore, from beginning to end, salvation is God’s work. He alone gets the credit and the glory for each and every salvation.
If you have ever wondered how God is sovereign over salvation and yet we are required to make a free choice to follow Jesus, this is your day. Paul has been pulling back the curtain on how salvation. Today, we will clearly see that salvation is God’s work from beginning to end, even as he gives us the faith necessary to believe.
Faith is the only means by which God saves.
Let’s discuss the first thing that we need to see about faith, namely, faith is the only means by which God saves. Look at the very first sentence in Ephesians 2:8.
Ephesians 2:8a
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith
Now, this is very similar to what Paul said in verse 5. Look up at verses 4 and 5.
Ephesians 2:4-7
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Notice in verse 5 that Paul uses practically the exact same words as in verse 8 with one small addition. “By grace you have been saved, through faith…” Paul is furthering the argument in verse 8, beyond what he has already said in verses 4-7.
So let’s review what we have seen about salvation so far. Paul told us that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Not just passively dead, we were actively dead. Meaning, we were born spiritually dead, into a world of death, and all we desired was to do the things of death. It is like we were white water rafting through life. We were caught in the rapids current of this life as it flowed away from God toward ultimate destruction and we were rowing as quickly and recklessly as we could to get there. Us and everyone we know in our boat just paddling our hearts out trying to get to the end of the river, not knowing that destruction was the end to which we were headed. We were completely enslaved by our own nature, our own desires, and by the course of the world and not only couldn’t escaped, we didn’t want to escape.
Salvation is the process by which the Father overcame that rebellion by uniting us to the life of his Son. When the Father of life connects you to the Son of life, you have no choice but to come alive. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the Father connected us to the life of the Son and our dead hearts came to life. The word we use for this is grace. The free, unmerited, undesired kindness of the Father that made the work of the Son effectual in our lives. Salvation by grace alone means that it is all God’s work from beginning to end, from top to bottom, it’s just grace all the way down. This is what we saw last week.
If last week credited 100% of the work of salvation to the Father, this week raises the question, than how are we not robots? If we are completely passive in salvation, how do I make sense of the fact that I made a choice? As we all think about our salvation moment, we all remember walking the aisle or praying the prayer. We were ask to put our trust in Jesus and we did. We made a free, conscious decision to turn away from our sins and depend on Christ.
So it is appropriate to ask, “What role does faith play in salvation?” As if to answer this implicit question Paul gives us an answer, he adds a very simple prepositional phrase, through faith. “By grace you have been saved, through faith…”
To understand what Paul is saying about the roles of grace and faith in salvation, I want to introduce you to the concept of modes and means. One single action has a mode and a means. The mode of an action is the manner in which the goal is accomplished. It is the “what” of an action. The means is the instruments by which the goal is accomplished. It is the “how” of the action.
Let me give you an example.
If my goal is to go from College Station to San Francisco, I would need to pick a mode of travel. Let’s say that I think San Francisco is pretty far and I have the resources so I choose the mode of air travel. Instead of a car trip or a really, really long hike. I choose to by a plane ticket. The means that I use to get there could be United, Southwest, or Delta, and more specifically, the exact plane that one of those airlines provides to get me there. So the mode of going from College Station to San Francisco would be air travel, but the means would be the specific plane that I board to get me there.
As it relates to salvation, the mode of salvation is union with Christ, as we saw last week. The Father graciously unites our dead spirit to the life of his Son and we go from death to life. The what of salvation is the Father unites us to the Son, and the way that he does, the how of salvation, is that he makes us cling to the Son in faith.
We are not united to the Son by our good works. We are not united to the Son by the sacraments of the Church. We are not united to the Son by baptism. The only way that we are united to the Son is by clinging to him in faith as our only hope in life and death.
Faith is not a work of the individual.
At this point, we are in danger of making a very common mistake. If the mode of salvation is being united to the Son by God’s grace and the means of that union is our free, conscious decision to trust him and put our hope in him, it would seem that we earn our salvation. We were a man drowning at sea, someone through us the lifesaver ring of the Gospel, and we, of our own free will, grabbed onto the ring and saved ourselves. We would not use this language, but we believe, or have been taught, that faith is a work that we do because we are the ones making the choice to follow Christ.
Paul would disagree with this line of thinking. The second thing that Paul teaches us is that faith is not a work of the individual, it is a gift of God. Look at the second half of verse 8 and verse 9.
Ephesians 2:8b-9
And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
As soon as Paul tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, the very next thing he says is faith is not your own doing. As if he knows us. He knows the mistake that humans are prone to make, namely, we are prone to make ourselves the center of the universe and take credit for the things that God does, especially when it comes to salvation. If faith is something that originates with us, we can take a little of God’s glory for ourselves and we can look around at our neighbors still lost in their sin and feel just a little bit vindicated that we made the right choice.
But Paul says that faith is not our doing. Which is kind of mind boggling. We already have said that faith is a free, conscious movement of someone’s will to make a personal decision to follow Jesus. If a decision that I personally make is not my own doing, what is?
The problem here is that we do not understand freedom. When we say that we have free will, what kind of freedom do we have? One way of thinking about freedom is absolute autonomy. This is typically referred to as libertarian freedom, although you do not have to remember that term. Absolute autonomy is the freedom to choose otherwise. When presented with a choice, A or B, you are totally free and unencumbered in your choice. You can freely choose between any option presented to you, A or B, or you could reject all options, not A or not B. Nothing constricts or influences your will in choosing, and in retrospect, you could always have chosen otherwise. You are completely free to make your choice.
The problem with libertarian freedom is that it is unbiblical. No one has that kind of freedom, not even God. God cannot choose things that are inconsistent with his nature, like evil or non-existence. He is good and he is self-existent. He could not choose otherwise. But God is free. And he made us in his image. The Bible teaches us that we are free, because it presents us with choices. We are free creatures. Therefore, we must have a different way of understanding freedom.
When Paul was explaining our deadness in sin, he said that we were by nature dead and our desires and the thoughts of our mind were only for evil. As dead creatures, we thought about and desired only dead things. Our desires were a product of our nature.
Think about an earth worm. What do earth worms desire? Earth. It’s what they eat. It’s where they live. An earth worm doesn’t want human things, it only wants wormy things. It would never choose a Ferrari. It would never choose a steak dinner. It doesn’t even like to get out and enjoy the sun on a warm summer day. It is perfectly happy crawling through the dirt, and it only wants things that are consistent with its nature, so it would only ever choose things that an earth worm is designed to want.
Nature constrains our desires and our desires constrain our choices. That’s why we call the faculty to make a choice our will. To will is to want or desire. And here is a universal fact, it is impossible to make a choice that you do not want to make. Think about that. It is impossible to make a choice that you do not want to make.
I have attempted to explain this concept of freedom on many occasions. Typically, I use an illustration about ice cream and I say that your dislike of certain kinds of ice cream prevent you from choosing that ice cream. Meaning, if you hate mint, you will never choose mint chocolate chip. But one smart young lady once challenged me and said, even if I don’t like mint, I would choose mint chocolate chip ice cream just to prove to you that I could.
She taught me something in that moment. I was actually confusing appetites and the willing to choose with my illustration. She could choose mint chocolate chip, just to spite me, but she had to want to spite me. The reason that she chose an ice cream that was contrary to her appetite was because she wanted to do so. She actually proved my point for me. Our nature supplies our desires and our desires govern our choices.
So to understand freedom, we must understand nature. The Bible does not teach that we are absolutely autonomous. It tells us that we can choose things that are consistent with our nature.
And what has Paul taught us about our nature prior to Christ? We are dead. What do dead people want? The things of death. Therefore, can a dead person ever choose life? No, not because they are stubborn or resisting God, but because they don’t want life. God is life and no one that is dead can want God. So the Gospel of life is not sweet and attractive to them. It is disgusting and repulsive. In 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, Paul says:
2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.
To the living, a Christian smells like Christ, sweet and beautiful and attractive. But to the perishing, we smell like death, because we smell like Christ.
So what must happen for us to freely choose God? We need a new nature, and that’s exactly what Paul tells us happened. God made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. The gracious act of God is that he gave us a nature of life. And when we received this new nature, it came with new desires, new wants. For the first time we saw our need for a Savior, and we saw the free offer of Christ, and we freely chose what we now, for the first time in our life, actually desired. God’s grace does not make us robots, it makes us new creatures.
Let me wrap up this point with a final explanation. Pretend that a building is on fire. In this building, there are bones scattered in every room. Those dead bones are not aware of their peril. They don’t have eyes to see, ears to hear, or even the muscles necessary to respond if they were aware. They are dead. So dry they have become disconnected and scattered throughout the house.
Salvation is the process by which the Father brings a complete set of bones together, he puts flesh back on them, and he breathes the breath of his Spirit into its nostrils and gives that new person life. In the same way that he formed Adam from dust, he forms us by his Spirit. It is totally and act of his grace. And when this new creature feels the heat of the fire with their new nerves, and see the blazing flames with their new eyes, and hears the crackly creaking beams with his new ears, and smells and tastes the smoke for the first time with their new nose and mouth, for the first time, they are aware of the great danger of the all-consuming wrath of God. And the Spirit turns this person’s head toward the exit, and says there is the way of escape, there is Christ. And with the new legs that the Father gave them they freely run out of the house.
Who wouldn’t make that choice? What other choice is there to make? The Father has given them the capacity to believe and he has given them the desire to believe. So who gets the credit for the choice that person made to cling to Christ? Would any rational person say that this individual saved themselves? God gave them the life. God gave them the perception of their danger. God showed them the exit. And God gave them the legs to run.
Even the faith necessary to believe, even the free choice to cling to Christ, is an act of God’s sovereign grace. God is not cooperating with our faith, God’s grace is our faith. He does 100% of the work, including the faith necessary to believe, so that our faith is not our work but his.
Even if it was, all good works are credited to God.
The final thing that we need to see about faith is that even if faith was our good work, which it is not, but even if it was, we would not be able to take credit for it, because all good works come from God. Look at Ephesians 2:10:
Ephesians 2:10
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Why does Paul talk about good works here? It seems an odd addition. Right at the end of a long, detailed explanation of salvation, where Paul’s main point is that from beginning to end salvation is a work of God, why does he bring up good works at all?
Two reasons: to make his point that faith is not a work and to teach us that, while salvation is by faith alone, faith is never alone.
First, verse 10 makes Paul’s point that faith is not a work. This is how the logic works. Faith is not a work, because not even good works that we do after salvation are our works. In short, it never depends on you. Neither your salvation nor your sanctification depend on you. It is all God’s creative work of grace.
Consider a child. What child decides to grow? Eat your vegetables so you’ll grow big and strong is bunk. The reality is that genetics, design, how we were created to be, has far more to do with our size, and our strength, and our intelligence than what we eat. Now of course children need good nutrition, but growth is something that will happen regardless of whether we eat all the vegetables on our plate or not. Because that is what we were designed to do.
Why would it be any different in our spiritual maturity? We were made to grow, and we do grow through doing good works. In fact, the New Testament has a lot to say about growing, and working out your salvation, and we could say a lot more, but the basic point Paul is making is that faith is not a work, but even if it was, it would still be something God does because all good works are something God does. He prepared them beforehand that we should walk in them.
The second things to understand about good works is that salvation is by faith alone, but faith is never alone. Listen to James, in James 2:14-17:
James 2:14-17
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
How do you know that an apple tree is alive and healthy? It produces apples. This is James’s point. He is not arguing that works regenerate us or that works cooperate with grace to save, as the Roman Catholics believe. He is saying the same thing as Paul in Ephesians 2. You know a baby has been born because it gives signs of life. It cries, and hungers, and thirsts. It does the things of life. Justification is by faith alone, but faith is never alone, it comes with good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.
So if someone says they are a Christian, but they do not understand the Gospel and they do not live a life that looks like Christ, you should not believe them. No matter what they say with their mouth, because words do not make a Christian. How shallow of a view of salvation do we have? This is the problem with our world today, especially our town, there are so many people that say they are Christians, and we just believe them. They show no fruit and we agree with them. We even contribute to their delusion by accepting them into our fraternities or our student orgs or our churches and officially sanctioning their faith when there is no evidence. Easy believism is inoculating millions of people to the Gospel and the Church is administering the vaccine.
We have to fix this, and it begins with a right understanding of how salvation works. You can know, with a high level of certainty, whether someone is a Christian or not, because what God has done in their heart will be evident in their life. Salvation is by faith alone, but faith is never alone.
Conclusion
Salvation is solely the work of God as he gives us the faith necessary to believe. He saves by uniting us to Christ and making us cling, in hope, to the finish work of Christ on the cross. This is not our doing because he gives us a new nature and new desires. And then he makes us grow by giving us good works, prepared beforehand, so that we can walk in them. Salvation is from beginning to end God’s work. It is grace all the way down.
As we close this morning, I would like to read Romans 10:8-15:
Romans 10:8-15
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Brothers and sisters, God saves by grace alone through faith alone through the Christ alone. If they do not hear about Christ, they will not believe. So go and tell them of the one that saves.
Let’s pray.