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Saved By Grace Through Faith
Ephesians 2:8-10
In the three verses we are looking at this morning, we have a summary of
everything the apostle has been trying to argue up to this point, and perhaps a
summary of most of the book. It is a cluster of verses that have often been usefully
committed to memory, and if you have not committed these to memory, I would
strongly suggest you do so. In fact, if you just committed about six or seven
different verses to memory, you would have enough to lead almost anyone through
the plan of salvation. I’ve put those there in the bulletin for you.
What makes these verses so memorable is because they speak so plainly
about being saved. Saved is a buzzword that we hear and use a lot. In fact, we hear
it so much that we take it for granted that other people know what we mean.
Growing up, I heard about getting saved and asked, “Are you saved?” and
wandered when it was going to be my turn to “get saved.” It wasn’t until I was in
high school when I had to share a locker with another guy who wasn’t a Christian
that I realized not everyone understood the term. He would ask me (not really in a
inquiring way, but rather in a skeptical way), “Why to you talk about getting
saved?” To him it was about as literal as being saved from getting hit by a bus. I
think in his mind saved meant that you need to be physically saved at some point, as
though to become a Christian you need to stupidly risk your life in some way,
survive it, and then tell everyone that you’re saved. It’s probably more
misunderstood than we think. When I was in the youth, I remember a mother of a
girl who had visited several times sending word to the preacher to stop talking to
her daughter about getting saved. She had been saved when she was six years old
when she fell out of a tree. For some, having been saved from physical danger is
the evidence of personal salvation. If salvation means putting yourself in harm’s
way in order to make it out alive, then we Baptists are in trouble because we are
some of the most straight-laced people in the world.
So let’s approach our text in search of some needed clarification and better
insight as to what we mean by being saved.
Read Text
We’re going to examine this text by asking a few questions. First, we’re
going to ask, “What does it mean to be saved?” Our text centers upon this
word saved and the Bible uses it as the central idea of being a Christian.
Understanding it means understanding what makes us Christians. Second, how do
we come to be saved? We see here that it is solely by the grace of God which is
given to us. Third, what is denied to those who are saved? We see that we are
denied all boasting.
I want to stop and say how much I appreciate those of you who come with
a longing in your heart to hear from God. You come to a text like this which many
of you have heard several times—you come with fresh hearts ready to receive it as
if it were all new to you. Praise be to God that there are still many who hunger for
more of God. But to you whose hearts have grown cold and bored by this, you
should know how much it grieves us, and even grieves the very heart of God that
you could sit before perhaps the plainest explanation of a life with God and not be
moved or affected at all. Paul said, “My hearts desire and prayer to God for them is
that they may be saved.” And he was grieved by it because they were his
countrymen. And you too are our countrymen, and we too pray that you would be
saved.
I. What does it mean to be saved?
Well, the Bible uses the term a lot. One instance is in Acts 16 where Paul
and Silas are spending the night in a Philippian jail. They spend the night praying
and singing, no doubt causing a different kind of atmosphere than normal in
prisons. And God sends an earthquake about midnight that breaks open the doors
and breaks loose the bonds of all of the prisoners. The jailer, knowing his death
would be eminent, takes up his sword to kill himself, but Paul intervenes and says,
“We’re all hear. Don’t hurt yourself.” And it says, “The jailer called for lights and
rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, and said,
‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’” Now, what kind of ‘saved’ do you think he’s
talking about? Saved from the earthquake? No, he has already survived the
earthquake. Saved from death at the hands of prisoners? No. He has gotten
confirmation that they are still there. If that’s all that saved means, he could have
stood up and said, “I’m saved!” But even after all of that, he still has need of being
saved. What was it?
The answer in found in why he was trembling. Have any of you ever been
so scared that you trembled? I’ve been scared enough that I’ve been shook up. We
never watch scary movies at our house. The last one we watched was Signs, and
that was eight years ago. I barely slept. But I don’t think I trembled. And I have
had several close encounters on the road with other vehicles that has scared me
pretty good, but never to the point that I trembled. Trembling is something that
happens in your soul. Trembling is what happens when you are unnerved right
down to your very soul. And the only time I can recount trembling was as a child
when I had the very real feeling that if something didn’t happen I was going to be
abandoned by God forever.
The Philippian jailer could have said or asked a lot of things, but the reason
he asked about being saved was because he knew he had just had an experience of
God that scared him to death. There are many who talk about being saved, getting
saved, and claim that they are saved, but do not talk about and have never
experienced this trembling. It is sad that we have made getting saved so mechanical
that a person can get saved and never be shook or moved or changed in any way.
A saved person is first of all a person who has had their life seriously
affected by the one true God. To some of you, and especially those of you who are
young still and accepted Jesus when you were a child, and now you are starting to
be challenged, I’m afraid that God does not affect you like this. And it troubles me
and it should trouble you. A saved person is someone who has went from death to
life. He has been saved from wrath and hell and death and sin. A saved person is a
Christian, and a Christian is a saved person. If you have not been saved, you are
not a Christian.
II. How do we come to be saved?
Our text answers that in verse 8. We are Christians entirely and solely by
the grace of God. Let us remind ourselves what grace means. Grace means
undeserved, unmerited favor. It is God giving you something good you didn’t ask
for or deserve. So salvation is something that comes to us entirely from God’s side.
And what’s more, it comes to us in spite of ourselves. In other words, it is not God
response to anything in us. There are many who seem to think that. But if it can be
won or achieved or deserved in any way, it ceases to be grace. In fact, the whole
point of the chapter to this point has been to show that far from being earned,
salvation is something that come to us in spite of ourselves. We deserved wrath
and punishment, but instead we received grace and mercy. We are Christians
entirely and solely by the grace of God. That is the inevitable conclusion. I don’t
see how anyone can come to this chapter and draw any other conclusion except
that.
Now the means by which we receive this grace is through faith. And here is
where I’m going to have to pricking at the area that we Baptists have protected so
well. Nothing I have said so far has been new to you and has probably not moved
you. But here is where we have to be challenged. The annoying thing about
Christians is how they act in the matter of faith and treat it as if it were a virtue, in
fact, the only virtue. We criticize others over their works religion and they criticize
us over our loose living. And we act as though everything is fine for us as long as
we believe. If we believe, that makes us a good person. And it really doesn’t matter
how much we believe, or how faithfully we believe, just as long as we had that
moment of belief somewhere in our lives. In that one act, there is enough virtue to
overshadow all of the sins we have ever committed. And in doing that we become
very blind to just how bad we really are.
Here is a hard to learn truth: You will never know how very bad you are
until you try very hard to be good. Those who feel the worst about themselves are
the ones who have tried to behave the best. Paul accused himself of being the chief
of sinners, a title I doubt anyone else would ever give him.
When I was in college, after feeling rather frustrated about my own
faithlessness, I determined that I was going to will myself not to sin. How hard
could it be? If I felt the urge to do something I knew in my heart I shouldn’t do, I
would just obey my conscience. I determined very sincerely that I was not going to
willfully sin that day, only to finish the day feeling very dejected and full of guilt.
And the irony is that I probably behaved myself better that day than I ever had,
and at the end felt worse about it than I ever had.
If you don’t believe that you are by nature dead and a child of wrath, I
challenge you for one week to live as good and well-behaved as you possibly can. I
challenge you to be as sweet and nice and helpful, as prompt and organized, as
forgiving and good-tempered and prayerful and different as you possibly can be,
and come back to me and tell me if you feel better or worse about yourself.
I think the apostle Paul wrote this without a doubt of how he had been
saved. It had to be only by the grace of God. He was much better person than all
of us, and what else could he say at this point except, “I am what I am by the grace
of God”? If, when you get alone before God, you cannot see that you are nothing
apart from the grace of God, you have a tragically defective sense of your own sin
and a shallow view of God’s love. A person is saved entirely and solely by the grace
of God.
III. What is denied to those who are saved?
You know, sometimes I get up here and forget who I’m talking to. I start
to argue with somebody who isn’t here. Sometimes it’s hard to preach a sermon to
people who already agree with you. So when we come to v. 9, we Christians have
to come to it with a motivation towards self-examination. It’s v. 8 restated in a
negative way. If v. 8 is true—if we are saved by grace alone—then it is true that we
have no grounds whatsoever for boasting about our salvation.
Let’s examine ourselves for a moment. What is your idea of a Christian?
How is it that you became a Christian? How do you compare to other Christians?
Does your idea of how you have become a Christian give you any grounds
whatsoever for being proud of yourself? Does it in any way reflect credit upon
you? If it does, then according to this verse, you are not a Christian. If you
understand the gospel correctly, you know that you have nothing left to be proud
of in yourself. You were dead. God made you alive. Should you gloat over the
other dead people?
I have a book on pasturing written by a guy in the 17th century called The
Reformed Pastor. In it he talks about how he preached as simply and as fervently as
possible for years. But then he started to make visits to his congregation and he
says, “Some who seemed avid listeners for years hardly knew the basic truths about
Christ. When I explained the gospel they seemed astonished as if they never heard
it before. I have found that many are more deeply affected by God’s Word after
half an hour’s personal instruction than from ten year’s preaching.” That makes me
worry that much of what I say here doesn’t stay with you. And many times when I
do talk to you individually about some pressing need or problem you are having, it
generally comes back to this: If you are in any way struggling with pride, selfesteem, or depression, you are struggling with works religion.
The most obvious thing that is forbidden here is boasting about works. If
there is anything that someone boasts about, it is his works. In this case, it is his
moral and religious works. If anyone has reason to boast here, it is Paul. And prior
to becoming a Christian, he did boast. Good, moral, religious people are the most
prone to boast and trust in their good works. This is what made the Pharisees the
greatest enemies of Jesus. Is it going too far to say that it is always more difficult to
convert a good person rather than a bad one?
We know that there are many Christian religions that emphasize works.
Anything that causes us to trust in anything other than in Christ alone, that is
works and it must be put aside. So if you are from one of these religions, or if you
deal with one, don’t do it in a proud or haughty way, but you may humbly and
respectfully show them from this verse that works do not save us.
But let me make one point very quickly about something we are guilty of.
We may not boast in our works, but we do boast in our faith. We say in a proud
way, “I believe.” And in doing so we turn faith into a work. What that does is turn
faith into the action that saves us. It is the one good work. And the symptom of
that is when you constantly look back at that time when you first believed to justify
your salvation. If your faith gives you reason to boast, it’s not saving faith. If you
can boast, “I’m saved because I believed and they’re not saved because they’re too
stupid or mean or stubborn headed to believe,” you are boasting in your ability to
believe. We have to be very careful that we do not take credit for things we didn’t
do. Faith does not cause salvation. Christ is the cause of my salvation. Belief does
not save me, Christ saves me. Whatever it is, if it causes you to boast, reject it.
Believe, yes, and give God the credit for your believing.
As I close, I don’t want to give you a quick step by step formula to
believing. Faith isn’t about following steps, it’s about following God. I think a good
challenge for you would be to commit to pray this week, “Lord, help me to
believe.”
As for you Christians, I think a good challenge would be for you to commit
these verses to memory, and go home and look up words like grace, faith, and
saved, and know very clearly what those mean. And make it your goal to know it
well enough