By Grace You Have Been Saved
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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.
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
What is a grace saved person?
List Adapted by CHIP DODD in“Voice of the Heart”
A grace saved person no longer lives in resignation, but finds acceptance.
No longer practices hopelessness, but lives in hope.
No longer lives in demand, but lives in expectation.
No longer lives in lust, but lives in passion.
No longer manage, but have faith in mystery.
No longer helpless, but recognize our powerlessness.
No longer defensive, we establish a healthy identity.
No longer live in worry, we live in faith.
No longer live in judgement, we live in discernment.
No longer live in pride, we live in confession.
No longer justify ourselves, but seek forgiveness.
No longer live in penance, but hunger to change.
No longer survive, but have a full life.
>>>Sin is parasitic in that it cannot create anything… sin has to take something good that God made and distort it into something less beautiful and less helpful… Sin distorts what is good and distorts it in a way that will lead us to destruction<<<
>>>God made this world and us and called it good! And God is reuniting us to himself<<<
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
There’s something about the grace-saved person that results in change —> results in transformation.
And it’s the kind of change that isn’t calculated or manipulated… there’s no posturing or pretending.
Rather it’s a change that occurs because of love. It’s a surrender to divine love!
The Greatest Gift of All (v.8)
“For by grace you have been saved”
Grace
Wayne Grudem writes, “Grace is God’s goodness toward those who deserve only punishment.”
This is really the heart of the matter… Paul is writing this letter with this message in mind: “God is bringing dead people back to life. God is mending broken hearts. God is healing wounded souls.”
But God’s framework is based on a different set of rules. You and I live in a merit-based world.
We are rated on everything.
Amber and I went to my daughter, Stella’s, Kindergarten parent teacher thing the other day — and they have this graph that showed her reading and math level based on the average… seems like she already get’s her math skills from me, lackthereof
But in kindergarten she is already being evaluated based on herskill, based on her ability, based on her works.
And so it’s very easy for us to base our worth on how much we accomplish.
It’s easy for us to identify with what we do rather than who we are.
Think about that… I mean on one level it makes sense… we need to be productive to survive. Without competent people, we wouldn’t have doctor’s, technology, vehicles, so on…
But when our competency gets enmeshed with our self-worth, we are working from an entirely different worldview than the one we see of God in the Bible!
And thank God for this!
HOW are you doing?
That’s the question we ask, right?
That is our culture’s social greeting.
HOW MUCH? HOW WELL? HOW SUCCESSFUL? The very makeup of the question lends itself towards an evaluative response.
So rather than cultivating relational intimacy, we find ourselves judging, comparing, boasting, gossiping, jealous and resentful.
This is the opposite of GRACE. This is the opposite of goodness toward the friend or foe who deserves only punishment.
“Okay, so they have more than you. They said something that offended you. They didn’t invite you to that party. Youkeep reaching out and they don’t seem interested. They aren’t caring for you. Maybe they stole from you, did something that was really wrong and mean-spirited.” What would grace do in those circumstances? How would grace respond?
Am I saying we are never to stand up for ourselves? Or never get angry? Or never confront? Or never be hurt? Absolutely not.
What I am proposing is a simply question, “but were we filled with grace towards that person?!”
Because friend no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done God’s very nature is one of grace towards YOU!
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
a grace saved person is changing to be a person of grace.
Saved
“For by grace you have been saved through faith”
Do you know you NEED saved?
The famous hymn starts:
“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind but now I see”
Do you notice the acknowledgement and awareness of lostness, blindness, wretchedness…
Non-Christian:
The Christian worldview teaches that we are all broken by sin and in need of something to change us.
All of the brokenness in the world points to the fact that we are in need of mending and redemption.
Fortunately, Jesus makes our restoration possible by doing all that needed to be done… he chose to take our sin as his own and give us his righteousness as our own.
So Christianity is an invitation to relationship with God which ultimately leads to the flourishing of all other relationships.
Christian:
PROBLEM: “I am in need before Christ and then after I am a Christian, I am now responsible for fixing my life and other’s through my own effort and willpower.”
The problem is that this is only a partial truth.
And I will try to remind us of that more this morning...
“This is not your own doing”
Christianity uniquely teaches, “you don’t fix yourself. It’s not self help. It’s not that only good people who work hard enough receive grace.”
“It is a gift of God”
Have you ever met a bad gift receiver? I am a fairly poor gift receiver… and typically, you know why people struggle to receive gifts? PRIDE.
We have all experienced this… “you give someone a gift, maybe it’s simple: you buy someone’s lunch… “oh, no yoou don’t have to do that, I’ll pay you for it. I will send you money. I will buy the next meal. I can’t receive this.”
A gift is something given as a result of NO work, NO meriting, NO deserving… a gift is something received based on being cared for and loved by someone else for who you are!
Not A Result Of Works, So That No One May Boast (v.9)
Not a Result of Works
The theologian R.C. Sproul writes about this, thinking about the context of the reformation several hundered years ago:
“Rome was very careful to insist that the giving of alms, in order for it to be pleasing to God, had to be done in the right spirit and not in the spirit of a crass, commercial transaction, by which the person was trying to buy for himself certain influence with the Almighty, or buy forgiveness for sins. So what was going on in Germany was, in fact, a corruption of what the Roman Catholic Church had actually taught with respect to indulgences.
When (Martin) Luther sought to correct this corruption of the idea, he began to explore the whole concept of works of satisfaction. He noticed that Paul in Romans and here in Ephesians dashes to smithereens any claim to merit by the believer before the Living God... That is what the Reformation was all about: whether our justification is accomplished through a mixture of faith plus works, or by faith alone.”
Sproul writes, “The Roman Catholic formula for justification was this: faith plus works equals justification. The Reformation view of it was this: faith which leads to works equals justification.
That is, if a person is justified, he is not justified on the basis of the works, by the works or through the works, but he is justified to the works. The performance of works are the result of faith and the fruit of justification.”
Sproul was then reminded of the old hymn, “I love that line from Augustus Toplady’s great hymn, Rock of Ages: ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling.’ The only merit that can get me into heaven is the merit of Jesus Christ.”
The posture of a Christian should be often about learning to receive than to give.
Hear that again, we need to better learn how to receive good gifts from God.
When we don’t know how to receive from God, it ultimately negatively impacts our relationship with God.
We turn into doers rather than communers.
What do I mean?
Prayer life: Most people think prayer is about saying a lot of words to God. We show up thinking God will love us more if we spend more time saying more words to God. Somehow God is in need of our attention and so we show up and say a lot of words to God… or we show up in prayer asking God for lots of things, requesting that God would give us all teh desires of our hearts.
This isn’t bad, don’t hear that… if you do this keep doing it
My point is that if this is ALL your prayer life is, I would bet two things: (1) you struggle to pray (2) your prayer lacks transformative power...
I think PRAYER is mainly about being with God!
For prayer to be transformative, we have to be reminded that we aren’t changing God, rather we are being changed by God.
Prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind. Prayer is about us being changed to the mind and will of God!
Prayer is also, most importantly about communion! Relationship!
So a more helpful approach in prayer is to show up anticipating to receive… and to do so, we should set aside time to simply listen.
Listening means silence.
Listen means to pondor on where you are and where God is
Listen means to let the truths of God’s Grace penetrate your heart… it’s in the listening and the silence that God often does his most transformative work.
But we can’t do this if we are too busy DOING things for God.
Doing things for God is a good thing. But BEING with God is necessary to do Do things for God well!
So that no one may boast
Ephesians 2:9 “not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
So think about it for a moment?
What are you boasting in?
Where is your validity derived from?
Where is it that you find meaning and purpose for your life?
What does it mean for you to be a follower of Christ?
are your interactions with God merely transactional?
do you have relationship?
Is it a transaction or is it realtional… “I do this and God does this...”
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
We are God’s Workmanship (v.10)
Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Created in Christ Jesus
We are God’s workmanship! We are created in Christ!
God is creator. We are his creation.
Our life can only be found in his life
We cannot derive our hope from the created world. We can only find hope from the creator.
And we cannot work to measure up to the creator. We cannot surprise or manipulate the creator.
God is creator! We are created. We are to be humbled and found in his life.
And what is beautiful about this is the reality that GOD LOVES HIS CREATION!
Genesis 1:31 “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good...”
We are created in Christ, we are created as a byproduct of God’s goodness!
For Good Works
Faithlife Study Bible says, “Salvation is not based on works, but the good works Christians do are the result and consequence of God’s new creation work.”
This is good news!
God is doing a new work in the soul, body and life of the Christian!
We are being renewed.
We are being trasnformed.
We are changing.
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
We are being made into the character and goodness of Christ!
Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
There’s a transformation that is taking place in the life of the Christian.
Which God Prepared beforehand
Peter O’ Brian puts it this way, “Believers are God’s work, and the good deeds which he has purposed for us to walk in, which are achieved only through his enabling power, can be thought of as already prepared in his mind and counsel from before eternity. His plan from of old was not simply to introduce his sons and daughters into a relationship with himself through his Son, but to bring us fully to glory.”
God is bringing us into into the way of his beautiful life in grace!
We are his workmanship! We are his creation! We are in Jesus. We are made by his goodness for his goodness! This is a part of his plan, to change us by his grace!
That we should Walk in Them
O’ Brian writes, “But now because of God’s mighty salvation in which a glorious change has been effected, we are expected, through the agency of his Holy Spirit, to demonstrate a changed life-style. Our attitudes and behaviour are to show all the hallmarks of the new creation.”
When we think of God’s grace, it should really blow us away!
We are loved in Jesus! We are loved in Jesus. You are loved in Jesus!
Christ’s grace really points to the new heavens and new earth!
The Bible gives us this picture of the Garden of Eden in the beginning of Genesis… this place of perfect peace with God!
God’s grace has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God — and in Christ we are headed to that kind of destination!
The garden...
Perfect peace!
The enjoyment of God and all that God made!
Imagine perfect goodness, perfect joy, no sorrow… not more aching hearts… no more tears! No more loss!
May God grant us with the vision of that beautiful reality so that we might live fully in Christ now!
May God awaken our hearts to believe!
That we would live with the fresh aroma of grace!
The Christian life isn’t meant to be a slog!
The Christian life isn’t meant to be a burden, a dregery of do’s and do not’s!
God’s way is the way of joy, my friends!
God’s way is the best way! God’s way is the way of freedom and hope and flourishing!
Big Idea: You are saved. By grace you are saved. A grace saved person is a changed and changing person.
Let’s ask the Lord to give us that vision this moring and to renew us to this reality!
PRAYER
Pray against pride
Pray for forgiveness
Pray for ability to listen to God and others
Pray for presence
Pray against finding other things for beautiful than Jesus
Bring this grace to life