"The Gift of God"

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV)

Most Christians who attend Bible-preaching churches are familiar with Eph. 2:8- 9. Unfortunately, that is all that many of us know about Chapter 2, and there are so many more wonderful truths about our Heavenly Father in these 22 verses.

Paul starts in verses 1 and 2, telling all new covenant believers that “you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formally walked…” There is not much wiggle room there; none of us could look at our lives and say we were not as bad as that guy because what difference does it matter how bad we were? We were all DEAD. You see, we are taught all throughout scripture that we have no hope in this life without Jesus. We were dead, and we were not seeking God; we were dead, but God sought us out, not the other way around.

These first verses of Chapter 2 set us up for verses 8-9: “For by Grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” How can a dead person do any works of righteousness anyway? We could not. Paul is showing us that salvation has nothing to do with our efforts but only what God did through Jesus. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive 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.” All I can say to this truth is WOW!

It was God who sought us out; it was God who reached down with His grace and made us alive; it was God who gave us the faith to accept His gift of salvation. This salvation that God has given us is not just for eternity, and to only benefit us after we cease to breathe this earthly air. But it is to change our lives here and now. We are no longer dead walking according to the course of this world; we now have been made alive into a new life. We are now free to live a life that will honor and bring glory to the Father through the Son.

So often, we forget to read verse 10 when we read verses 8 and 9: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” You see when we were dead, we could not do good works, but now that we are alive, God, being rich in mercy, reached down to us, touched our hearts, and made us alive in Christ. Now, we can and should walk in the good works that God has prepared for us.

Paul continues in this chapter to explain that Christ’s death tore down the dividing wall that separated the Jews and Gentiles (see Digging Deeper). Because of Jesus, there is no longer separation of any group of people from God. Remember, the dividing wall was a wall in the Temple courtyard that separated Gentiles from the Jews, and if a gentile crossed that barrier, they would be put to death. If you remember, that is the charge that the Jews leveled on Paul, that Paul brought some Gentiles that were traveling with him, that he took them past the “dividing wall.” This was the start of Paul’s imprisonment of 4 years toward the end of his earthly ministry.

The removal of this dividing wall was a very big deal, and the good folks in Ephesus would have understood its importance. Again, Paul declared that Salvation through Jesus Christ is now open for all, Jew or Gentile. God’s mercy and grace have been extended to the entire world.

Grace is not just a concept that brings us out of walking in death and into a newness of life in Jesus for eternity; it also changes our hearts from trying to work for our salvation to working for the one who saved us and learning to live in the Gospel of God’s grace here and now.

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” Anne Lamott

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"