Chapter 5
Salvation By Grace Alone
Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved . . . in order that in the coming ages he might show the imcomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved. EPHESIANS 2:4-8
The second chapter of Ephesians contains one of the best known passages in the Bible, and rightly so. It contains the best news that any woman or man can ever hear. With the exception of John 3:16 and possibly Psalm 23, it is probably the Bible passage that has been most memorized by Christians. John wrote, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (3:16). Paul, in Ephesians 2:8-9, said the same thing though in more theological language: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."
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The verses have three parts.
Part one tells how God saves us. It is "by grace," the theme of this book.
Part two speaks of the channel through which the grace of God actually comes to us individually. It is "through faith."
Part three, a contrast, tells how God does not save us, and it explains why. It is "not by works, so that no one can boast."
Ephesians Chapter 1 and 2
Verses 8 and 9 are part of a great chapter, and the way to understand them, as well as to understand how we are "saved by grace," is to view them in this wider context. And part of that is to see chapter 2 in the context of the entire book of Ephesians.
A few years after I came to Philadelphia as pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, a committee met to review our Sunday school curriculum. We were unhappy with what we were using and also, for the most part, with what else was available. Either the curriculums were strong pedagogically but weak theologically, or else they were strong in Bible content and theology but weak in teaching. Chiefly we were disappointed by their failure to teach the great doctrines well. The result of our meeting was that in time we produced our own Sunday school material for the early grades. It followed a three-year cycle, repeated three times.
In the first year of this cycle basic doctrines were covered: sin, salvation, Bible study, prayer, and the Christian life.
In the second year the same areas were covered but from the perspective of the church and in terms of personal relationships. In this year, instead of talking about God providing salvation, we talked about the church, how one becomes a part of it, and how one is to act as a Christian.
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The third year focused on God's view of history and the place of today's believers in that plan.
I mention our curriculum because there is a sense in which Paul does the same thing we did as he moves from the first to the second chapter of Ephesians, and later to the third and remaining chapters. We have already looked at Ephesians 1 in the last chapter, seeing how Paul presented the grace of God in salvation from the point of view of God, showing what each member of the Godhead did to save us: the Father chose us in Christ, the Son redeemed us from sin, the Holy Spirit applied that redemption to us by calling us to personal faith in Jesus. That is the picture in its grandest dimensions. Its goal is God's glory.
In chapter 2 this changes, for now Paul describes salvation from the perspective of the individual Christian. He shows what we were before the Holy Spirit called us to Christ, what God did for us in joining us to Christ, and what we are to become and do as a result.
The remaining chapters tell how Christians are to function in the world.
Here is another way of looking at it. Chapter 1 gives us the past, present, and future of God's great plan of salvation. Chapter 2 gives us the past, present, and future of the persons Jesus saves.
Speaking of past, present, and future reminds me of one of Harry Ironside's most delightful stories. Ironside was a Bible teacher, later pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. On this occasion he was riding on a train in southern California on the way to a speaking engagement. While he was sitting in the passenger car a gypsy came down the aisle offering to tell people's fortunes. She stopped at Ironside's seat, saying, "Cross my palm with a silver quarter, and I will tell your past, present, and future."
Ironside asked in an amused tone if she was sure she could do that, pointing out that he was of Scottish ancestry and did not
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want to part with a quarter unless he was sure he would get his money's worth. But she was very earnest. "Oh yes, sir," she said. "Cross my palm with a quarter, and I will tell you all."
Ironside told her this was not necessary because he already had his past, present, and future written down in a book. The gypsy was amazed. "In a book?" she queried.
"Yes," Ironside replied. "I have it with me." He pulled out his Bible and turned to these verses. "Here is my past," he said, reading Ephesians 2:1-3: "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath."
The gypsy did not want to hear this. She began to pull away.
"Wait," said Ironside. "That is only my past. You haven't heard my present. Here it is." He began to read verses 4-6: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus."
At this point the gypsy was literally struggling to get away because Ironside had put his hand on her arm to hang onto her. "No more," she said. "I do not need to hear more."
But the preacher was not ready to quit. "You must hear my future too," he continued. He read verses 7-10: "in order that in the coming ages he might show the imcomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus . . . For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
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By now the gypsy was heading rapidly down the aisle where she could be heard muttering, "I took the wrong man."
The Christian's Sad Past
Ironside was exactly right, of course. For the second chapter of Ephesians does give the past, present, and future of the Christian, showing how we have been brought out of a dismal past into a glorious present and bright future by the grace of God.
How are we to assess the Christian's past condition, that is, before he or she became a Christian? Paul says four things about it.
1. The sinner is "dead in . . . transgressions and sins."
In the entire history of the human race there have only been three basic views of man apart from God's grace, namely, to use three easy-to-understand terms, that man is: (1) well, (2) sick, or (3) dead.
The first view is that human beings are basically all right. It is the view of all optimists, which includes almost everyone today, at least where an evaluation of human nature is concerned. Optimists may vary as to how well they believe human beings are. Some would argue that people are very, very well. Others would admit that they are not as morally healthy as they may perhaps one day be. After all, there are still many problems in the world: wars, disease, starvation, poverty. But they would still say that the world is getting better and better, and the reason is that there is nothing basically wrong with man. He is evolving upward.
The second view is that man is not well. He is sick, even mortally sick, as some would say. This is the view of realists. They reject the optimistic view because they observe rightly that if people are as healthy as the optimists say, then surely the wars, disease, starvation, poverty, and other problems we wrestle with should have been fixed
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by now. Since they are not, they conclude that something is basically wrong with human nature. But still, the situation is not hopeless. Bad perhaps, even desperate. But not hopeless. People are still around, after all. They have not yet blown themselves off the surface of the planet or committed suicide by destroying the ozone layer or poisoning the world's oceans. Where there's life there's hope. There is no need to call the mortician yet.
The third view, the biblical view, which Paul articulates in classic language in this passage, is that man is neither well nor sick. Actually, so far as his relationship to God is concerned, he is dead, "dead in . . . transgressions and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). That is, he is exactly what God had warned he would be before Adam and Eve's fall. Like a spiritual corpse, he is unable to make even a single move toward God, think a right thought about God, or even respond to God — unless God first brings this spiritually dead corpse to life so he can do it.
This is exactly what Paul says God does do in this passage.
2. The sinner is actively practicing evil.
There is something even worse about the biblical view of man, according to this passage. Human beings are spiritually dead, according to verse 1. But this is a strange kind of death since, although the sinner is dead, he is nevertheless up and about, actively practicing sin. What Paul says about him is that he "follow[s] the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air . . . gratifying the cravings of [his] sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts."
To put it differently, the sinner is indeed dead to God but nevertheless very much alive to all wickedness.
Some years ago I heard John Gerstner, a former professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, compare Paul's description of our sinful state to what horror stories call a zombie. In case you are not up on zombie literature, let me explain that a zombie is a person
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who has died but who is still up on his feet walking around. It is a pretty gruesome concept, which is why it is in horror stories. But it gets worse. This upright, walking human corpse is also putrefying. It is rotting away. I suppose that is the most disgusting thing most people can imagine. But it is a fair description of what Paul is saying about human nature in its lost condition. Apart from Jesus Christ, these sinning human corpses are the living dead.
3. The sinner is enslaved.
Another way to speak of our active sinful state is to point out that men and women are enslaved to sin, so that they cannot escape from it. This seems to be another part of what Paul is describing in these verses. Enslaved to what? Well, there is a tradition in the church that identifies the Christian's three great enemies as the world, the flesh, and the devil. Paul seems to be saying here that in our natural state we are enslaved to each one.
We are enslaved to the world because we follow "the ways of this world" (v. 2). We think as the world thinks, with no regard for our relationship to God or our final destiny, and because we think as the world thinks, we act as the world acts, too. We are enslaved to the flesh because our natural desire is to "gratify . . . the cravings of our sinful nature and follow . . . it's desires and thoughts" (v. 3). We want what we want, regardless of God's law or the effect that what we want and do has on other people. We are enslaved to the devil because just as we follow the ways of this world, so also do we follow "the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient" (v. 2). We are Satan's playthings, and never so much as when we are unaware even of his presence.
4. The sinner is by nature an object of God's "wrath."
This worst thing of all about our sinful condition is that, apart from God's grace in Jesus Christ, we are objects of God's wrath.
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Most people can hardly take this seriously. "Wrath?" they say. "Did I hear you say wrath? You must be joking. I know people used to speak of God being angry with us because we do wrong things, but that is not the way to think of God today. Speak of God's love. Speak of mercy, even justice perhaps. But not wrath, at least not if you want to be taken seriously."
The outlook is an example of the very slavery about which I have just been writing. The world does not take wrath seriously because it does not take sin seriously. But if sin is as bad as the Bible (even this passage) declares it to be, then nothing is more reasonable that that the wrath of a holy God should rise against it. In the Old Testament there are more than twenty words that are used to express the idea of God's wrath, and more than six hundred important passages deal with it. In the New Testament there are two important words: thumos, which means "to rush along fiercely" or "be in a heat of violence," and orge, which comes from a root meaning "to grow ripe for something." The first word describes the release of the divine wrath in what we call the final judgment. The second word points to God's gradually building an intensifying opposition to sin. It is the word found most often throughout the New Testament.
The Bible says, " 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' and again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:30-31).
The Christian's Present: Saved by Grace
The Christian's past is a dreadful thing, as it is also for all who have not believed on Jesus Christ. But at this point the grace of God comes in. For having spoken of the Christian's past, Paul now speaks of the Christian's present, saying,
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"But [now] because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved." (Ephesians 2:4-8)
This great "but" has changed everything. Left to ourselves, the cause was hopeless. But God has intervened to do precisely what needed to be done. We were enslaved to sin, but God has "raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms." That means we have been set free; there are no slaves in heaven. We were "objects of wrath," but God has made us objects of his overwhelming "grace."
That is the great word: grace. Grace alone.
During the last century, in one of the worst slum districts of London, there was a Christian social worker named Henry Moorehouse. One evening as he was walking along the street he saw a little girl come out of a basement store carrying a pitcher of milk. She was taking it home. When she was just a few meters from Moorehouse she suddenly slipped and fell. Her fingers relaxed their grip on the pitcher, and it crashed to the pavement and broke. The milk ran into the gutter, and the little girl began to cry as if her heart would break. Moorehouse stepped up to see if she was hurt. Then he helped her to her feet, saying, "Don't cry, little girl."
There was no stopping her tears, and she kept repeating, "My mommy'll whip me; my mommy'll whip me." Clearly this was a great tragedy for her.
Moorehouse said, "No, little girl, your mother won't whip you.
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I'll see to that. Look, the pitcher isn't broken in many pieces." He stooped down beside her and began to work as if he were putting the pitcher back together. The little girl stopped crying. She had come from a family in which broken pitchers had been mended before. Perhaps this stranger could repair it. She watched as Moorehouse fitted several pieces together. But then, moving too roughly, he knocked the pieces apart once again, and this time she began to cry without stopping. She would not even look at the broken pieces lying on the sidewalk.
Suddenly the gentle Moorehouse picked the girl up in his arms and carried her down the street to a shop that sold crockery. He bought a new pitcher for her. Then, still carrying her, he went back to where the girl had bought milk and had the new pitcher filled. He asked where she lived. She told him, and he carried her to her house. Then, setting her down on the top step and placing the full pitcher of milk in her hands, he opened the door for her and asked as she stepped in, "Now, little girl, do you think your mother will whip you?"
He was rewarded for his trouble by a bright smile as she replied, "Oh, no, sir, 'cause it's a lot better pitcher than we had before."
This is a great illustration of the grace of God toward us in salvation! The Bible teaches that men and women were made in the image of God, as we saw in our first study. But when our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned by eating of the forbidden tree, that image was broken beyond repair so far as pleasing God by any human effort was concerned. This does not mean that there is value to human nature from our point of view. Even a broken pitcher is not entirely without value. Archeologists use broken pieces of pottery to date ancient civilizations. A shard can become an ashtray. Useful? Yes, a bit. But pottery that has been broken is worthless as far as carrying milk is concerned, just as human nature is worthless as a means of pleasing God.
But here is where grace comes in. In the story about Moorehouse,
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the little girl did not do anything to deserve the social worker's favor. She did not pay for her pitcher or hire him to help her. She did not even win over his sympathies because she was pretty or wretched or crying or pathetic. Moorehouse helped her only because it pleased him to do it. What is more, he didn't repair the pitcher. He gave her a new one, just as God gives us an entirely new nature when he makes us alive in Jesus Christ.
There is one more part of a Christian's present experience of God's grace that we need to mention here, and this is faith. We need to mention it because the text tells us that although we are saved by "grace alone," this grace nevertheless comes to us through the channel of human faith so that we can also speak of "faith alone."
At first glance this seems a contradiction. We want to ask, "How can salvation be by grace alone and by faith alone at the same time? If it is by grace alone, it can't also be by faith alone. If it is by faith alone, it can't be by grace." The problem is only a verbal one, however, and it vanishes as soon as we read the verses carefully. For what they teach — perhaps more clearly than any other passage in the Bible — is that faith is itself the result of God's gracious working. It is our faith. God does not believe for us. We believe. But we believe only because God has first enabled us to believe. Faith is there only because God has put it there. The text reads, "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast" (vv. 8-9, italics mine).
The Christian's Bright Future
Having spoken of the Christian's past and present, the apostle now speaks of our future. This has two parts. There is a distant future, which Paul treats in verse 7, and there is an immediate future, which he treats in verse 10.
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1. The distant future.
The Christian's distant future is that "in the coming ages [God] might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." We do not understand very much what this means because, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9). It is true that the very next verse adds, "but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit" (v. 10). But the context shows that at that point Paul is thinking of the mysteries of the gospel and not specifically of our future joy and blessings in heaven. What we can know is that, as God has been gracious to us here, so he will be continuously and exceedingly gracious to us in heaven forever. There is no good thing that he will ever withhold from those who are his people.
2. An immediate future.
The most interesting part of the Christian's future described here is what I have called our immediate future, which Paul refers to as doing "good works." And it is fascinating, too, because the verse immediately before this has said that it is "not by works" that we are saved. Not of works! Yet, created to do good works! Once again there seems to be a contradiction. But once again it is only an apparent contradiction. The true and important teaching is that, although we are not saved by works, being saved, we are nevertheless appointed by God to do them. If we think our good works have any part to play in our salvation, we are not saved. We are still in our sins. We cannot be saved by grace and be saved by grace plus works at the same time.
On the other hand, if we have been saved, we will not only want to do good works to please God who has been so gracious to us; we will actually do them. In fact, if we are not doing them, this is also a sign that we are not genuinely converted.
In my opinion, this is one of the most neglected, though essential,
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teachings in the evangelical church in America today. The Protestant church is proud of its Reformation heritage in maintaining that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. It repudiates the Catholic teaching that works combine with faith to produce justification. Protestants are right at this point. But Catholics are at least concerned to see works, and there are many segments of Protestantism that deny the place of works entirely. They teach that it is possible to be saved by faith alone and never produce any good works at all. They teach that it is possible to be saved but also to be utterly unchanged by that experience. What are we to say about a theology that does not have a place for works, especially in light of this important passage in Ephesians? What would Jesus think of such theology?
When we study Jesus' words, it does not take us long to discover that he insisted on changed behavior if a person was actually following him. He taught that salvation would be by his death on the cross. He said, "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). This is perfectly consistent with the fact of salvation by grace through faith alone, grace in his death and faith being our response to it.
But Jesus also said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).
He said, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? . . . The one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete" (Luke 6:46, 49).
He told the Jews of his day, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20).
When we put these texts together it is easy to see that this is not only a matter of our demonstrating a genuinely changed
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behavior and thus doing good works if we are justified. It must also be that our good works exceed the good works of others, which is obvious once we consider that the Christian's good works flow from the character of God within the Christian. When Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law ...," he meant, "Unless you who call yourselves Christians, who profess to be justified by faith alone and therefore confess that you have nothing whatever to contribute to your own justification — unless you nevertheless conduct yourselves in a way which is utterly superior to the conduct of the very best people who are hoping to save themselves by their own good works, you will not enter God's kingdom because you are not Christians in the first place."
John Gerstner, whom I referred to earlier, has called this "a-built-in apologetic" for Christianity. It is because no one but God could think up a religion like this. You and I would do it in either one of two ways. Either we would emphasize morality and end up saying that a person can justify himself by good works. Or else we would emphasize grace and teach that works do not matter, that it is possible to be saved by grace and yet be utterly unchanged. For us an emphasis on works leads to self-salvation. An emphasis on grace leads to antinomianism. But the true Christian religion, while it proclaims pure grace with no meritorious contribution from man mixed with it, nevertheless at the same time requires of Christians the highest possible degree of moral conduct.
Not for a moment can we suppose that there is anything we can do to earn or even contribute to our salvation. Salvation is truly and utterly by the grace of God alone. But if we are saved by that grace, that is, if we are who we claim to be as Christians, we will be abounding in good works lived by the new life of Christ within, works that glorify him.
