00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Please turn in your Bibles, if
you would, to Ephesians chapter 2, as we continue our series
in examining Paul's letter to the Ephesians. I'll be reading verses 1 through
10, but the focus of the sermon is going to be on those great
Reformed verses, verses 8 and 9. Let's give careful attention
to the reading of God's most holy and infallible word. And you were dead in the 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 kindness towards
us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and this not your own doing. It is the gift of
God, not a result of work, 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.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God
stands forever." Now, boys and girls, do you like to get presents?
See, I see lots of smiles, so I'm going to assume that the
answer to that question is yes. Well, I've got news for you.
Us big people like presents, too. We really do. Now, sometimes
we get presents for birthdays or special occasions, and sometimes
when you're a little bit older and you graduate high school,
you might get presents then. And sometimes, occasionally,
once in a blue moon, that means not very often, you might get
a gift just because. Just because. No good reason,
not because you did anything extra special or anything like
that. It's just because maybe mom and dad just wanted to give
you a gift. Or maybe uncle or aunt or grandma
and grandpa, they just wanted to give you a gift because they
were thinking of you. Well, giving of a gift for no
reason, or at least no apparent reason, no reason that we understand,
is a lot like what grace is. Grace in the Bible is the giving
of a gift. And that gift is the Lord Jesus
Christ. But see, in the Bible, grace
is so much more than that. So much more than that. Because
we're going to unpack this a little bit and explain why it is that
it's so much more than just simply a gift for whatever reason. Just
because God likes us. That's not really how it all
works. So we're going to look at that tonight. Now we're in
Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Paul was in prison. He wrote
this one alongside probably Colossians and even Philemon. And Paul begins
this letter not with thanksgiving but with praise. Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in
Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. And in
fact, from verses 3 to 14, it's just one big doxology. A eulogy,
a blessing. One sentence in the Greek. 202 words. Imagine trying to
diagram that sentence. But so filled with joy. over what God has done for us
in Christ Jesus. That's Paul's natural reaction. To just praise God for the blessings
that we have in Him. And then in verses 15 through
23, another long sentence. He gives thanks for the Ephesians.
He gives thanks for the work that God is doing in them. Not
only that, He prays that God would enable them to grow even
more in the knowledge of God. And He shows them the incredible
power at work in their lives by putting forth Christ. He puts
forth Christ as the one through whom He demonstrates His power
in raising Him from the dead. And that's important because
then Paul goes and reminds them that not only is it power demonstrated
in Christ, it's that same power demonstrated in you. In all of
us. All of us who believe. And we've
been unpacking the last few verses of the beginning of chapter 2.
Where we saw in the first three chapters, excuse me, the first
three verses, the depressing part. As for you, you were dead
in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked. Now the first three verses, a
lot of sadness. Because Paul reminds us of what
we once were. And this is where the gift giving
gets a little bit different. You see, God's grace is given
to us despite ourselves, when we deserve the complete opposite. the total opposite. And we've
seen in the past couple of weeks what God's love, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, as Paul
says it, he made us alive in Christ. He raised us up with
Christ and seated us with Christ. All three of those concepts are
based on three words that some commentators, James Boyce, for
instance, think Paul made up those words. compound words,
raised us up with, raised us with, seated us with, all because
of God's grace. Well, we come to verses 8 and
9. And verses 8 and 9 are a rally cry for the Reformation, a rally
cry for the Reformed faith. By grace you have been saved
through faith, and this not your own doing. It is a gift of God,
not a result of work, so that no one may boast. And what we
have in these verses is really a summary of everything that
Paul has said to this point. A summary of your salvation.
And really all Paul is going to do for us tonight is Paul
reminds us that salvation is in every respect from God's grace. Paul reminds us that salvation
is in every respect from God's grace. We'll look at this under
three headings. First of all, God's grace is
the source of salvation. Secondly, our faith is the instrument
of salvation. And then thirdly, human merit
or human works is excluded from salvation. So firstly, God's grace is the
source of our salvation. Look again at verse 8, for by
grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own
doing, it is a gift of God. Well, really what Paul is simply
doing here is going back to a little parenthetical statement, a little
side statement that he made way back in verse 5. You'll notice
that in verse 5, he was talking about even when we were dead
in our trespasses, may, that is God made us alive together
with Christ. And the ESV has a nice long hyphen
there. By grace you have been saved.
And then he goes back to his argument. Well now Paul in verse
8 is going back to that and expanding it a little bit more. for by
grace you have been saved." He's reiterating what he said in verse
5, and in fact, in the Greek, the grammatical structure points
to this. So Paul is making sure his readers
know that he's going right back to what he was talking about
there in verse 5. He's talking about it in the
words, but he's even structured his sentence grammatically to
point us that way. That's how important it is for
him. God's grace demonstrated in the coming ages. That's what
he finished verse 7 with. And he returns to that grace,
that very grace that Paul is expounding in these verses. For
by grace you have been saved. Now, the salvation that we have
in grace, the construction itself is similar to verse 5. But one
thing I want you to note, and maybe some of your translations
have this, but the ESV is not doing a great job with the translation. It's not wrong. And it may sound
like I'm being nitpicky. Well, because I am. The ESV translates this both
in verse 5 and in verse 8, for by grace you have been saved
through faith. And that is technically okay.
But this is actually a place where the old King James gets
it better. By grace are ye saved. Are saved, by grace you are,
present tense, saved, past tense. That is a unique structure in
the sense that what Paul is emphasizing here is that Paul is focusing
on your current state based on an event that happened in your
past. Your current state, you are now
saved. Saved as a result of something
that happened in your past. That's why the King James actually
gets the tense of this correctly. By grace are ye saved. And it
is a plural you. But the question then is this. Saved from what? How many people in churches out
there today speak of, you know, getting the gospel out? We've
got to get them saved. R.C. Sproul tells a story of
one time he was on a Christian college campus or something like
that, and somebody walked up to him and asked him, are you
saved? And he answered back the question, saved from what? And
the guy was dumbfounded. He didn't know how to answer. Well, I think you and I, from
following Paul's line of argument here, could understand, especially
from verses 1 through 3, we are saved from being dead in our
trespasses and sin in which we once walked, following the course
of this world, following the prince of the power of the air
that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. And Paul went
even further and said that this stuff's internal. It's in you. You're following the passions
of your flesh and it affects the mind. Every aspect of our being was
affected by sin and thus, as a result, we were, as Paul says,
by nature, children of wrath. Brothers and sisters, it is that
from which we are saved. We are saved by God, from God. That is perhaps one of the most
profound things about Christianity. Yes, we're saved from our sins.
In many respects you can say we're saved from the devil and
we're saved from hell, but remember what hell is. Hell is the outpouring
of God's wrath upon all unrighteousness. But God saves us from that. That's
salvation. Grace. This salvation is by grace. Well, grace. How do we understand
grace? Now, some of us know people who
are named Grace, and we have somebody in this congregation
now who is named Grace. But what does grace mean? Well,
one helpful definition is unmerited favor. Unmerited favor. Now, that definition is good
as far as it goes, and there's truth to that. But, for example,
one can, and notice that emphasis on can, think of the covenant
of works that God instituted with Adam as a gracious covenant
in one sense. Because Adam hadn't done anything
to merit being in a covenant relationship. So we can speak
of that being gracious. The Westminster divines wisely
called that God's condescending to Adam. Because there was debate
whether or not there was really grace there. But see, the reason
why there was such a debate is because ordinarily we think of
grace on this side of the fall. It is unmerited favor. See, the
Bible, when it speaks of grace, we need to remember that the
Bible is redemptive revelation. It is revelation of God's redemptive
plan for all people, thus, Grace is a gift to us in spite of what
we truly deserve. That's grace. That's biblical
redemptive grace. Despite what you and I actually
deserve, God saved us. He saved us. Is it any wonder again that Paul
would begin this letter with a 202 word sentence praising
God for all the spiritual blessings we have in Christ? We deserve
the complete opposite! And yet He gives us grace. He
saves us. He redeems us. He unites us to
Christ. He raises us up with Him. Unites
us to Him. unmerited favor in spite of what
we deserve. You see, we were dead in our
sins. We were under Satan's control.
We followed the lusts of the flesh and the mind. By nature,
we were children of wrath and God saved us. Because we couldn't do it ourselves. And this is what makes grace
so amazing. Because we couldn't do it ourselves.
By grace you are saved. It is by this grace that we were
chosen, redeemed, adopted, made alive, raised and seated with
Christ. All of these blessings that Paul
is unpacking for us in these verses. Grace, God's grace is
a particular attitude or disposition toward us. He chooses to show
grace to you. He chooses to show grace to you. This is God's grace. It is His
grace that is demonstrated in the coming ages that Paul reminded
us in verse 7. Age after age after age. God's grace will be demonstrated
in you. Because you are saved by grace
through faith. God did not have to save anyone. You see, that one hurts. That
smacks our pride. We like to think, well, I'm special. It's all about me. But God did
not have to save anyone. And in fact, it would have been
simpler, less costly to God if He had just started over. God's love is demonstrated in
the fact that while He could have made new disciples, new
people cheaper, He gave His Son on your behalf
and on my behalf. He could have made new people
cheaper. That is God's grace. By grace
you are saved through faith. And then this brings us to the
second point. Our faith is the instrument of
salvation. And this again in verse 8, for
by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not your
own doing. Through faith. That is actually
a very important phrase. Through faith. It is a correct
translation. Through faith. It gives us what theologians
call the instrumentality of our salvation. Faith is that instrument
by which all the benefits of Christ's redemption flow to you. You see, faith is not the ground
of our salvation, it's not the basis of our salvation, that's
Christ and His work. Christ is the ground of your
salvation. Christ's work and what He accomplished,
that is the ground of your salvation. Faith is the means, that conduit
by which those blessings flow to you. In fact, you won't find
in the Bible, a phrase such as this, you won't find that you
are justified or saved because of your faith, you won't find
a phrase that you are justified or saved on account of your faith,
but you will find that you are saved by grace through faith
or by faith. Thus, the divines, the Westminster
divines rightly called faith the alone instrument of our justification. That's in the Westminster Confession
of Faith, Chapter 11, Paragraph 2. That faith is the alone instrument
of our justification. Well, what do we mean by that?
Probably one of the simplest ways to help you understand this
is to think of faith as a pipe. A big pipe. And once that pipe
is put into place, then everything that that pipe is supposed to
serve goes through it. Like water. When you put the
pipe in its place, then the water can flow through. That's what
faith is. It's like that pipe. And once
that faith is in its place, all the blessings of Christ flow
to you. And in that sense, faith is an
instrument. But see, most of the time, we
tend to, and this is because of the Protestant Reformation,
we tend to focus on being justified by faith and amen to that. But it is not just simply justification
that faith brings us. You see, in chapter 14, of the
confession, paragraph two, it speaks of the principal acts
of saving faith. The principal acts of saving
faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone
for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of
the covenant of grace. You see, it is not just justification. It is not just you're saved and
that's it, we move on. No, it is by faith that you're
also sanctified. It is also by faith that you
rest upon Christ for eternal life. You rest upon Christ for
all of it. That's what faith is. Faith is
not a work, it is a receptive grace. where you receive and rest upon
Christ alone as He is offered to us in the Gospel. Well, what is faith? Well, there's
all kinds of odd ideas today. Maybe some of you have seen the
movie, The Polar Express, and they just have this thing, Believe.
Sometimes you see sports games, you know, football or baseball,
people hold up signs, Believe. Well, believe in what? That's
more hope, wishful hope. But really, when we speak of
faith, saving faith, there are really just three parts to this.
Knowledge, knowledge of the facts. You know what the gospel says. Then there's what's known as
assent. You believe that the gospel is
true, you know that it's true. You know, even Satan has this
kind of faith. The demons know that the gospel
is true. But the key to saving faith is
what we call trust. Trust. Where you receive and
rest upon Christ. You see, one dictionary gives
this definition of faith. Complete trust or confidence
in someone or something. And guess what? That's a pretty
accurate definition. For the Christian though, the
key is who that someone is. And it's Christ. You trust in
Him and what He's done. Faith receives and rests on Christ
and His work. This is why the divines rightly
call faith a saving grace. Because it's a saving grace. And we're going to come to this
in a moment, but it's a gift. It's a gift from God. And so
brothers and sisters, I need to ask you this question even
before we move on. Do you have this saving faith? Do you rest upon Christ alone
for your salvation? There is no other name by which
you may be saved. And those of you who may not
have placed your faith in Christ, I urge you now, lean on Him,
repent of your sinful ways, and rest upon Christ, because God
is gracious, and He will forgive those who rest on Christ. Well, we've spoken of faith as
being that instrument. But we need to understand that
faith is not a work. And in fact, our works have no
hand in salvation whatsoever. And this brings us then to the
third point. Human merit is excluded from salvation. Notice now in
verse nine, not a result of works so that no one may boast. Not of yourselves. Now, it's
important to note that it's really continuing a sentence that begins
in the middle of verse 8, and this not your own doing. This
not your own doing. Literally, the Greek reads, this
not from you. Now, I'm gonna do something here
that really is kind of violating most rules of what seminary does
for us who train to be ministers. They tell you don't get into
the Greek too much. Now, that's true, and I agree
with that because, you know, you don't need to worry about
case usage and participles and all of that. But the thing about
this is when we get to these two verses, everybody's got an
opinion. They all do. They all bring out
the Greek. No matter what kind of Christian
background they come from. Therefore, I think it's important
to understand this. This word, this pronoun, this,
is what we call the neuter. It's a neuter word. Now, some
of you who have had foreign languages, like maybe French or Italian,
know that some nouns and some words, they have both a feminine
and a masculine. Well, Greek also has a neuter.
Well, this, that pronoun, is that neuter. Neither masculine
nor feminine. Well, this becomes rather interesting,
because in the Greek, the word grace and the word faith are
both feminine words. And so you look at this and what
can this word, this, be referring to then? It can't be referring
to grace. It can't be referring to faith
because they don't match up. Their gender doesn't match up.
Well, first of all, it's not impossible that the word this,
that pronoun, does refer to faith. That's possible. It's not impossible
in Greek for that to happen. But I think it's better to understand
that what this stands for is the whole concept. Salvation
by grace through faith. All of it. This, not of yourselves. So yes, there's your free Greek
lesson for the night. Salvation by grace through faith. This is not of yourselves. Either way, no matter how you
look at it, even faith is included in this. Your faith is not from yourself. And you may be sitting there
and you're thinking, wait a second, but I'm the one who believes
and that's true. God does not believe for you.
But He gives you the gift of faith so that you can believe. This not of yourself. It is a
gift of God. Salvation is a gift. All of it is a gift. Salvation
by grace through faith. And really, if you think about
this, Paul's calling it a gift. It's just being redundant. Because
that's what grace is. Grace is a gift. Paul also, in his letter to the
Philippians, chapter 1, verse 29, in a little sort of side
comment, he basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, says, it was
not only given to you or graced to you to believe, but also to
suffer. Belief that you have is a saving
grace. It is from God. Thus, everything,
all of salvation is from God. All of it. Which is why He then
says, not from works. Hopefully you and I understand
that what Paul is saying here is not works done by you and
me. Because it is Christ's work that does save us. But it is
our works that He is now speaking of. Works done by you have no
basis for your salvation. Otherwise, grace would not be
grace. Salvation does not originate
out of your good works. Your good works is not in any
way, shape, or form the source of your salvation. And in fact, it can't be. This
was Paul's whole point in verses 1-3. You were dead in your trespasses
and sin. Dead. You were by nature children of
wrath. How could anything that you and
I do give us salvation? Nothing could work, ever. Being a good Boy Scout does not
save you. Helping old ladies across the
street does not save you. Giving half your money to some
charitable organization does not save you. God saves you. It is His gift. And Paul goes
even further, so that no one may boast. You see, God did all
in salvation, thus there is no bragging for you and for me.
None whatsoever. One of the accusations against
us Calvinists is that we are arrogant. And to be honest, sometimes
we are. Let's be honest. Because we as
Calvinists love to study our theology, we get puffed up heads,
and we do come across arrogant. But one of the things that Calvinism
ought to bear into our hearts, following the biblical principles,
is that because salvation is holy of God, there's just no
room for boasting. None. There should only be humility
on our part. Humbleness. That God would save
such a worm as me. Often times people say of us
Calvinists that, you know, it's all unfair. Well it's right. It's not fair. It's grace. God did not have to save anyone. There was no obligation whatsoever
on God's part to save any of us. And yet He does so freely. That all we have to do is turn
from our sinful ways and rest upon Christ and His work. Therefore,
there is no bragging. You see, a proud Christian is
a contradiction in terms. There cannot be such a thing.
Let's take an example of this from Israel's history. Turn to
Deuteronomy chapter seven. And this is a beautiful picture
from Israel's history about what it is, that underlying characteristic
of grace. Deuteronomy chapter seven, verses
six through 11. This is God speaking to the Israelites. for you are a people holy to
the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen
you to be a people for all, or excuse me, for his treasured
possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more a number than any other people
that the Lord set his love on you and chose you for you were
the fewest of all people. But it is because the Lord loves
you. and is keeping the oath that
he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out
with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know therefore that
the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant
and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments
to a thousand generation. and repays to their face those
who hate him by destroying them. He will not be slack with one
who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the
statutes, the rules that I command you today." Israel was saved
simply because God loved them. He chose them. But you notice that Israel still had to obey. They still had to obey God's
laws. They had to live in obedience
to His moral will. That is true for you and for
me. And in fact, I don't have time
to start a second sermon on verse 10, but this is what Paul does
in verse 10. It is true that we are not saved
by works. But nevertheless, Paul is going
to remind us in the very next words that he says, for you were
created in Christ Jesus for good works. Obedience is not something we
can just slack off and just say, well, hey, I'm saved, I can do
whatever I want, yippee! We are saved and set free so
that you and I can obey God. We are saved by grace. Not by
works, but nevertheless, God requires still good works of
us. Not to be saved, but because we have been saved. You notice
God's language to the Israelites, I redeemed you, therefore obey
my commandments. So it is with you and me, and
as we look in two weeks at verse 10, God has saved you by grace
through faith, not by works. so that now you can obey His
commands. We started by talking about gifts.
I like gifts. I like getting gifts. I become
a little kid every time I get gifts. That's not a hint by the
way, don't take it that way. But brothers and sisters, there
is no gift greater than the grace we have in Christ Jesus. And
there is nothing greater than it because we have this gift
in spite of what we really deserve from God. We are children of wrath. Once,
once we were children of wrath. But now we're His children. Adopted
into His family, saved by grace through faith. What a load off our shoulders
to know that all we have to do, as it were, is trust in Christ. Just trust in Him. Nothing else. Believe in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved. May that truth resonate with
us all this week that we are saved by grace through faith. Let's pray.
Saved by Grace through Faith
Series Ephesians
| Sermon ID | 3115230414 |
| Duration | 38:27 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 2:8-9 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.