Grace, Faith, and Good Works (Eph 2:8-10)

Grace, Faith, and Good Works: Eph. 2:8-10 Pray & Intro: [prayer: grasp with our mind and grip our hearts] Do you have a working knowledge of what grace, faith, and good works mean and how each impacts your life on the daily basis and for all eternity?  Grace, faith, and good works are of God and all about God. [Our goal this morning, as is the case every week in carefully pouring over His word, is to get a glimpse of who God is. And this truth today is so central to who God is that I have prayed fervently, desperately, that we not miss this—that you will wrap your head around it and that it will squeeze your heart. If not, this will feel and sound like you’re being buried in a barrage of biblical theology that is senseless and useless.] (Read Passage: vv. 1-10) I. You have been saved (rescued) A. Once dead; now alive. Once dead in sin; now alive in Christ. – Made new in Christ and through Christ. At once rescued (from death) and transformed (to new life). B. By grace through faith means no human merit!  The work of salvation is completely God’s work. Paul clarifies this with the two “not” statements that follow (8b&9): 1. Not from yourselves; it is the gift of God a. The antecedent of this, grammatically, is the whole—by grace you have been saved through faith. (grace and faith are both feminine; the pronoun is neuter) b. Not by human initiative  Two things: Gifts are free; otherwise, it’s payment (Rom. 6:23). If it were up to us, we’d be choosing to walk in sin. Try convincing a pig to leave the mud he baths in and the slop he eats b/c you intend to turn him into a man, clean him up, dress him in a white tuxedo, and invite him as a guest of honor to a wedding feast. 2. Not by works, so that no one may boast - Nor have we done some kind of good work to be rewarded by God. We therefore have NOTHING to boast in… except in the gift of grace given in Jesus. a. Not by works of the law (for Jews) – Rom. 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Rom. 3:28 For we hold that one is justified [counted righteous] by faith apart from works of the law.  Nor by works [human effort] in general (for Gentiles) – Rom. 11:6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. b. Any boasting in self would be to boast in the flesh (body and mind) – What did we just discover about the flesh (in this chapter)? It’s reflective of our captive and condemned state. Now there’s something to brag about. – 1 Cor. 2:14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 3. Salvation is through Faith – Faith is trusting completely because God is completely trustworthy. It is the human response of receiving salvation. Grace is the ground and faith stands on it (appropriates it). [faith has no human merit – it is a God-enabled response to what God has done and will do]  God draws him (John 6:44, dragging net). If he didn’t, we would never come. Our mind and will are hostile to God (Rom. 8:7). So God acts on our behalf to enable us to trust Him (Phil. 1:29). Which we do and we must, for we are accountable. Commanded to believe – Nicodemus, John 3 4. Salvation is by Grace – (unmerited favor and enacting power of God) a. Grace means that by no credit of my own, God was pleased to act. God did it, does it, and will finish it. Faith means that he has opened the eyes of my heart to trust only in his truth that Jesus is Lord – and he brings me into his covenant relationship as his adopted child (FOREVER). Grace means that he continues to hold me secure. (Grace means it’s about his glory after all.) Good works means that God is up to displaying his unmerited favor (grace) in me and through me for his glory because he wants to, because he can, and because it’s what he does as a radiant display of who he is. b. A living tree – without grace, there is no seed, no soil, no sun, no water; therefore no roots, no trunk, no branches, no leaves, no fruit. That’s why we can’t take credit for being rescued out of sin’s captivity and punishment into Christ’s life and righteousness any more than we can take credit for good works accomplished by the grace and power of God in us. II. We are his workmanship A. This is not a verse to make you feel better about yourself since you’ve been created in the image of God. (you are valuable to God and beautiful in his sight, but that’s not it) 1. His workmanship (this creation: a work of art, masterpiece) actually means: God is beautiful. God is glorious. God is powerful. God. 2. It also means that “Christian” is not what you do it is who you are—in relationship to God. You do Christ-like things when you live by what Christ has done.  We are sons and daughters of God: The privilege is the responsibility. The new creation has new attitudes and behaviors through the enabling of the Holy Spirit. [fireman, etc.] B. Created in Christ Jesus for good works – These good works cannot be the basis for our salvation nor the grounds for boasting b/c they are the goal of salvation, all accomplished by God (and for God). 1. With clarity of purpose: for good works – walking in them is a contrast to what we were and how we walked (vv. 1-3; and 4:1,17 & 5:2,8,15) – consequence/fruit: the second half of Paul’s letter here! New creations who reflect God’s own beauty and glory, God’s own character and activity.  This is life-giving, life-altering grace! 2. Prepared beforehand  Demonstration of the grace of God for His glory from all eternity… (v. 7) In love he predestined us for adoption (1:4) to the praise of his glorious grace (1:6,12,14), to that end when we were dead he made us alive 2:4-5, and now to that same end in 2:10. 3. That we should walk in them – We don’t get credit for the good works nor do we even accomplish them (achieved by his power). But we are called to walk in them. a. Every moment that I do not walk in his good works is a moment that I am not overwhelmed by the “immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness in Christ Jesus.” (v. 7) I have taken my eyes off God and put them back on me. – I am an unworthy recipient to be sure. But I am a grateful and changed recipient. My mission re-established. – “No turning back.” I have been rescued, to follow Jesus. There’s nothing back there. But before me is God. b. We walk in them so that “he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” I have been saved to display his glory, and I have been given good works to live out to display his glory by being a testimony of his skill and a trophy of his grace—his unmerited favor and enabling power. III. Grace, faith, and good works are of God and about God. God has graciously brought you in on it (what grace means), but the grace that forms the foundation, and the faith that appropriates it, and the fruit that springs from it… are all God’s doing and are all about God.  To be in on this the way God wants you to be, you have to get that. God’s grace is the enacting of his glory, which is the radiant display of his goodness. Grace is about God being good. Faith is about God being good. And good works are about God being good.  But God… by grace. C. H. Spurgeon, the great Baptist pastor, explained it this way (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Pilgrim Publications], 61:474): I ask any saved man to look back upon his own conversion, and explain how it came about. You turned to Christ, and believed on his name: these were your own acts and deeds. But what caused you thus to turn? … Do you attribute this singular renewal to the existence of a something better in you than has been yet discovered in your unconverted neighbor? No, you confess that you might have been what he now is if it had not been that there was a potent something which touched the spring of your will, enlightened your understanding, and guided you to the foot of the cross. Spurgeon tells how he came to see these truths for the first time (Autobiography, 1:164-165): When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man—that I had made progress in Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth of God. One week-night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”