By Grace Through Faith

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Almost everyone who claims to be Christian knows this verse well. You're told to ask Jesus into your heart,  make him your Lord and Savior, or dedicate your life to the Lord. And often times you're told that happens when you say a prayer...the infamous sinner's prayer. And, after you've said that prayer you might feel good or you might feel nothing. You might even shed a few heart-felt tears. And then, you go about your life just believing, blindly, that it worked because a preacher or your parent or a friend told you to just believe. Then they quote you this verse. I was quoted this verse many times. I was told, so many times in sermons growing up that by grace, through faith, I've been saved. It would take me 20 years to see this verse in context before I actually understood it though.

By grace:
What is grace? According to the Strong's definition, it means.... grace. Well wasn't that helpful?! That is the first definition because apparently, no one told Mr. Strong that you can't define a word with the word itself. But, luckily he gave some more. Grace is goodwill, loving-kindness, or favor. Basically, grace is a gift and it appears it's a gift to those who don't deserve to be gifted anything or who lack the means to repay the kindness.

So what does this mean for salvation? It means that by God's gifting us salvation are we saved, but deeper than that, by the gift itself. Salvation is the gift, a gift to the spiritually underprivileged.  

Through faith:
We talked about faith and belief a bit last time. Faith isn't just believing in that broad "I believe in Jesus" kind of way. Faith goes beyond simple head thought. The words "faith" and "believe/belief" are close relatives in Greek, meaning trust, reliance, faithfulness, entrust, and adherence. It's this idea of trusting in something so much that you devote yourself fully and continually, that you lean on it constantly, that it drives you to act in obedience.

So in regards to salvation, we aren't saved just by our thinking we are saved; rather we are saved by trusting fully the message that Christ preached to the point that it drives us to action, to obedience. We entrust ourselves to his command to the point that we obey it.

Ephesians 2 context:
So now let's look at the context in Ephesians 2. This is a letter written to the church, not to unbelievers so it's not to tell us how to get saved; but rather how to stay saved. The assembly in Ephesus started back in Acts 19 when Paul ran across 12 men who were considered disciples (literally "learners"). He asked these 12 men if they'd received the Holy Spirit since they believed. They informed Paul that they'd never heard of a Holy Spirit and that they'd only been baptized in water according to John's baptism. Paul preached the truth to them, baptized them again now that they had heard the truth, and then laid hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost/Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. 

The letter to the church in Ephesus has a few themes. The surrounding text to our verse in question is about the unity of the body. In the King James Version of the bible the word "one" shows up 15 times in the six chapters of Ephesians, "together" is in there six times, "unity" twice, "joined" twice, and "body" eight times. 

Paul starts off this chapter (though there weren't chapters when he wrote it) by reminding the Ephesian church that they were once dead in sin but have since been made alive in Christ. 

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

This is the first time we are introduced to the concept of salvation being by grace in this chapter.  Paul is reminding the church that God made us alive WHILE we were dead in sin. That's why salvation is an act of grace. We weren't made alive while we were being obedient to the law. We didn't have to get our lives together first. We didn't have to stop sinning first. We were dead then, by undeserved favor, we were made alive.

6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

So Paul goes on with this idea of unity by saying that Jew and Gentile are raised up together (if they are in Christ) so that God can one day show others his grace and kindness toward us. Then....the verse. This is another one of those verses, that taken out of context, people use to say they don't need baptism or to receive the Spirit to be saved. But we want to be "rightly dividing the word of truth" so we're going to look at the context. We have to look what comes after too, however right  now we can tell that this verse is going to continue this idea of going from death to life while we were still dead.

So, by grace (unearned, undeserved gifting) we are saved, through faith (full confidence, trust, reliance), and we didn't do it to yourselves, God did it. We didn't earn it by works of the Jewish law (remember he's talking about the unity of Jew and Greek in Christ) and, therefore, we have nothing to brag about. This verse, again written to the already saved church, doesn't say there's nothing we have to specifically do to be saved, it's just reminding us that the salvation itself comes from God and that it is unearned because we didn't become good first or master obeying the law first. On the contrary, we were saved while we were still in sin. And it's letting us know we didn't do anything that we can brag about, no works of the Jewish law saved us. Let's go on.

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Paul said we didn't have any works that saved us, but once we are born again, there are good works we are supposed to do.

After this, Paul talks a bit about how the circumcised and uncircumcised are joined together in the same body and made one with Christ and how Christ broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. 

Therefore, taking the whole context into account, Paul is reminding the church that Jew and Gentile are the same in Christ. We're saved the same and we are called to the same good works afterward. Any obedience we had to God's 613 commands of the Old Testament didn't save the Jew or the Gentile, it was full confidence in the word of Christ and undeserved favor that saved us. 

Now, like Paul asked those 12 men of Ephesus, I want to ask you a very important question. Have you received the Spirit since you believed? How do you know? Next time, we'll take a look even more about the Spirit, especially here in the book of Ephesians. Drop your comments and questions below and stay tuned. <3