Ephesians 2:8-10 | How God Saves Us
Let’s open the Bible to Ephesians 2. We’re going to look at verses 8-10.
Today we’re going to think about one of the most important questions in all of life: how is one saved? Thankfully, God has not left that question open. There is an answer, and it can be found throughout the Bible. We’re going to look at one place the question is answered in Ephesians 2:8-10.
Some background is helpful as we fly into these verses. Ephesians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the ancient church. In the first chapter, Paul introduces himself and talks about the immense spiritual blessings we have in Christ. Flowing from that, as he opens the second chapter of Ephesians, he takes the first 10 verses to explain the greatest spiritual blessing of salvation in Christ. In verses 1-6, he tells us what happens when God saves: God brings us from death to life. In verse 7, he tells us why God saves: so that in the coming ages God could show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. And verses 8-10, he tells us how God saves, and that’s what we will focus on today.
Let’s read it now. Ephesians 2:8-10:
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.
Introduction
Remember the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty? An evil witch curses a princess into a deep sleep and nothing can wake her but a kiss from her prince.
Indulge me for a moment and imagine you’re the princess and you’ve been awakened from a deep sleep by this kiss. You know everyone watches everything to royal family does, and they’ve been following this story. All the news outlets want an interview, and you agree to a press conference, and the first question they ask is, “How was the curse broken?” What would you say?
You couldn’t say, “Well, I just thought about it and decided, ‘It’s time to wake up!’” You couldn’t say, “Well, I just claimed the victory for myself.” You also couldn’t say, “I asked the prince to come and he came.” You couldn’t say any of that. You were asleep! You were cursed!
So what would you say?
You’d say, “I didn’t break the curse. The prince did. You’ll have to ask him that question.”
Well, in a way, we are the princess and Jesus is our prince. Although it’s not only a curse of sleep but the curse of sin that incapacitated us. What Paul is saying in Ephesians 2:8-10 is the answer to the press’s question. How did we break the curse? We didn’t. God did in Christ. It was the Prince’s kiss. But, to make the story even more remarkable, we weren’t a sleeping beauty. We were a lifeless corpse. God had to make us alive, not just wake us up.
Let’s consider that kiss of grace verse by verse.
God saves us by grace through faith in Christ (v. 8)
God saves us by Christ’s merit, not ours (v. 9)
God saves us by making us a new creation in Christ (v. 10)
First, God saves us by grace through faith in Christ
Look at verse 8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
Two words stand out in this phrase: grace and faith.
What is grace? Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is God’s kind disposition toward sinful people who can't get their act together and can’t obey and can't find their way to him. Grace is God’s consistent provision for his people who can’t provide for themselves. Grace is God’s activity of good to those whose activity is bad. Grace is not grading on a curve—bumping a letter grade to a student who tried really hard. Grace is giving an A to a student who rarely showed up, who never passed a test, who never got any question right. Grace is being good to the undeserving. It’s not adding sprinkles to a wonderful cupcake. It’s making a stone into a cupcake. Grace is an outpouring of good when only wrath is deserved.
The theme of grace runs throughout the Bible. When Adam and Eve sinned, they saw with new eyes how far they’d fallen. They were afraid so they ran and hid. Before they were naked and unashamed, but after they covered themselves with fig leaves. God came to speak with them, and what did he say? Yes, there is a word of consequence for both the man and the woman, but their judgment isn’t the end of the story. In a great twist of grace, God said he would crush the serpent’s head by the seed of the woman. Don’t miss it: the offspring of the sinners would crush the serpent’s head. They sin and God makes promises of salvation. Then he clothes them, covering their newfound nakedness, replacing their tattered fig leaves with animal skins. That’s God’s grace. It's as big as crushing Satan’s head and as small as a pair of pants. It's God’s kindness and care bringing life where death reigns. Grace is Jesus saving the undeserving. Grace is what we’re saved by.
So, what about that other word, faith? If grace is the basis of salvation, faith is the instrument of salvation. Faith is what lays hold of grace. It’s the hand that reaches out and grabs. It’s proof that grace has come. Faith is both trusting God will crush Satan’s head and the action of putting on the pants God provides.
Faith is not a leap in the dark, where we don’t know what’s on the other side, and we just hope it’ll turn out ok. Faith understands that though God is invisible, his promises are certain, because we’ve seen them in Jesus Christ. Faith is the rock-solid surety of God’s promises based on God’s character. It’s looking to God and trusting that his grace is sufficient to save because it always has been. It’s believing that God has never once failed one man or woman who has trusted him and he’s not going to start with me and you.
Now, look at the last phrase of verse 8, “And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Here’s what Paul is saying, and it’s what the entire New Testament says, the totality of our salvation is God’s gift. The prime mover in our relationship to God is God. Nothing inside us compels God to save us. God saves us because God wants to save us.
Here’s how this is good news. If your salvation was up to you, you would never have it. You can’t muster up enough faith apart from God’s grace to believe. You can’t receive grace without God giving it. Grace, by definition, is unmerited favor. How can dead people merit anything?
Some people will say it’s up to us to choose, and that’s true—those who take hold of grace by faith do choose God. But how do we choose God? Ephesians 2:1-3 says we can’t choose God and we won’t choose God on our own. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2:4-7 says God must make us alive to him first. God must do something in us before we can make any move toward him. Before God acts in our hearts, we don’t want him. We are led by the Devil and by our own sinful passions. To want God, we need to be alive to God. That’s what God’s grace does. It grants life so that we can have faith. When the Holy Spirit gives us a new nature, we then naturally do what our new nature wants: we come, we believe, we repent, and we trust God.
God’s grace comes before faith, not the other way around. God must grant the gift of faith by grace. Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” A few verses later, Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” We are completely unable to bring about our own salvation. We are totally dependent on God to do it. We are like Lazarus in the tomb. We need Jesus to call to us, “Come out!”
Do you ever wonder if your faith is strong enough to save you? Do you wonder if there’s a point at which God is just going to write you off? There’s sin in your life you haven’t beat. There’s a past you can’t get over. There’s a future that seems too uncertain. Here’s what Jesus says about that, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). Maybe you feel weak in faith, but if you’ve come to Jesus, you’ve come to safety. You don’t need to worry about the amount of faith you have. The amount of your faith is not the key; the object of your faith is. You don’t need to worry if your faith is strong enough to save you, you just need to worry if Jesus is strong enough to save you. And Jesus is very strong. He can hold you up when you can’t hold yourself up. He knows what you need before you need it. The faith that endures is the faith placed in Jesus for safekeeping. Jesus won’t cast you out. He can’t. He was cast out for you.
By grace you have been [past tense] saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. If you’re in Christ, you are as secure as Christ is. Your sin can’t kick you out of God’s love because your righteousness never put you in it. God saves by grace through faith. It’s a gift. All you must do is receive it.
Second, God saves us by Christ’s merit, not ours
Look at verse 9: “not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
There’s a story from the 20th-century pastor Pastor Harry A. Ironside that illustrates this verse. He tells of an older Christian who was asked to give his testimony. The old man told how God had sought him out and found him, for God had loved him, called him, saved him, delivered him, cleansed him, and healed him—a great witness to the grace, power, and glory of God.
After the meeting, another Christian took him aside and criticized his testimony. He said, “I appreciate all you said about what God did for you. But you didn't mention anything about your part in it. Salvation is really part us and part God. You should have mentioned something about your part.”
The older Christian responded. “Oh, yes, I apologize for that. I really should have said something about my part. My part was running away, and his part was running after me until he caught me.”
That’s the story of every Christian. There are no self-made men or women, only God-made men and women. God saves us by Christ’s merit, not ours. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Now, why does Paul say this—that it’s not a result of works, so that no one may boast? Because in every other religion and in nearly every other area of life, what you do is what you get. You work hard, and you’ll get promoted. You pay your dues and you’ll be accepted. But in Christianity, it’s completely different. No one has ever become a Christian by their own effort. The only way we become Christians is by the work of Christ on our behalf. If you want to think you’re saved by works, that’s fine as long as you realize it’s not your works that saved you; it’s Jesus’s works. We can’t boast in ourselves for something another accomplished.
Paul is warning of the danger of pride because often it's not our badness that keeps us from God; it's our goodness. The sinners flocked to Jesus. But think of the Pharisees. They were model citizens. You'd want them as role models for your kids. But they killed Jesus.
We must never forget our deadness to God before his life-giving grace. It’s so easy for us to believe we had some part in our salvation but the truth is we just didn’t. We want to be winners. So we’re tempted to lift ourselves up on the stilts of pride, but the gospel knocks those stilts out from under us. Jesus doesn’t just save the world’s winners. He saves the world’s losers. He saves those completely unable to save themselves.
Paul knew the stilts of pride are still in the garage of our heart and we’re tempted to take them for a spin around the block. But you must not do it because it’s a false view of things. You’re not really that tall. You didn’t lift yourself up. Jesus did. He deserves the glory.
And this helps us in our evangelism. Our message is not one of self-accomplishment but of total salvation by God. You don’t need a certain amount of goodness for God to save you, he works only with deadness. The gospel is good news we hear, not a task list we accomplish. The gospel is the good news that though we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, God has saved us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Where is our part in that? The sin that made it necessary, but that’s it! So how can we boast?
This is good news for you and for your neighbor who doesn’t believe. When an unbeliever asks, “How does God save?” your answer isn’t, “become like me.” It’s, “look to Jesus.” If you made yourself a Christian, your neighbor must become like you to be saved. But salvation is not based on works, so you can’t boast. This knocks the feet out from under all classicism, all racism, all forms of superiority. The gospel makes beggars of us all. It shows us we’re all equal. No one does good; no, not one. The only way any of us will ever make it to God is if God in grace comes to us.
Our works can’t overcome our sin. Only God’s grace can. All praise goes to him. When we accept that with the empty hands of faith, we enter a new reality so different from our past that the only way to describe it is a new birth, which leads us to verse 10.
Third, God saves us by making us a new creation in Christ
Look at verse 10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2 starts with us walking in our trespasses and sins. This great section ends with us walking in the good works God has prepared for us. Do you see the radical change? God saves us and recreates us in Christ. We are born again. By God’s grace, we go from darkness to light—not as a result of works but for works. It’s all of God. We are his workmanship. The word Paul uses here for workmanship is a word that denotes art, it’s where we get our word poem, for example. Every Christian is a work of art created by God in his image.
Great art is always incredibly intentional. For example, when Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he went to great lengths to get it just right. In fact, he was so concerned about getting it perfect that he never actually finished it. He was still working on it when he died. He kept it with him, moving it from city to city, never giving it to the man who commissioned it, because he was never done perfecting it. He painted undergarments no one would ever see so the right texture was visible on the outer garments. He found corpses and studied lip muscles to get her smile just right. He didn’t consider it “done” until the painting attained a specific and intentional character.
Here’s the point. God is doing that with you. You are his workmanship. He’s telling a story through your life with every stroke. He knows what he’s doing.
Even more, God is telling a story about himself through you. Art always says something about the artist. The Mona Lisa tells us about Leonardo. Redeemed people say something about God. You are not just something nice God wants to hang on his wall. A good painting is never displaying only a picture. It’s saying something beyond the picture. It’s saying something about the world of the artist and about the artist himself. Every good piece of art is a message beyond itself. It’s a portal into another world.
You are God’s message to the watching world of what God does to sinners by grace. As you do the good works God has prepared beforehand, you’re a message of how God raises the dead and brings life into the world. You’re a message of what redemption looks like. You’re a message of God’s goodness and grace. Even if you don’t feel like it today, you’re a message of the faithful follower. If you’re suffering, you’re saying Jesus is better than suffering. If you’re joyful, you’re saying Jesus is the cause of joy. Whatever you’re facing, your walk with God is a message to the world that whatever it is, Jesus is better.
Every Christian is a new creation in Christ, a masterpiece of God’s redemptive story. We don’t boast in our good works. How could we? God created them. We’re just walking into what he created. He’s telling his story through every Christian—a story of grace and mercy, of making dead people alive again.
Conclusion
Let me close with this. Do you know how valuable the Mona Lisa is? We don’t exactly know because it’s not for sale, but in 1962, it was insured for $100 million, the highest at the time. In today’s money, that would be somewhere around $700 million. That’s an insane price tag for a canvas and some paint.
As far as we know, the Mona Lisa is still in the shape it was in when Leonardo left it. It has no slashes, no major injuries. It’s old, but still intact. But none of us is that way. We’re all slashed by sin. We’re all a little smudged here with a gash over on that side and a wound that won’t heal on its own. Maybe we started out as priceless originals but look at us now. Far from mint condition. What could we possibly be worth?
The gospel gives the answer. Marred as we might be, we’re still God originals. God isn’t throwing us out. He’s coming to redeem and restore. But it’s costly. Every restoration is.
Jesus is God’s purchase price. The price was not American dollars. Because of our sin, it was the blood of his only Son. The only way to restore dead sinners is for the sinless one to die. There is no higher price God could pay.
It wasn’t an easy price to pay. Do you remember how the prince of Sleeping Beauty got to the princess? The evil witch kidnapped him. He had to fight his way out. He had to take the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue and fight the evil witch now turned into a huge fire-breathing dragon. He flings the sword and pierces the dragon’s heart, killing her. In his victory, he pursues the princess, finds her, and kisses her awake.
That’s a fairy tale. But Christianity is the true fairy tale. Jesus allowed himself to be kidnapped in flesh, making himself like us, yet without sin. Satan constantly harassed him, and on the cross, he was tied up, nailed, and hung to die. He didn’t fight for his life. He fought for yours. The fire-breathing dragon did his best, but the dragon’s victory didn’t last. The sword was thrust into his heart at the resurrection.
The surprising twist of the gospel is that the triumph was a cross. Death was the only way to life. And on that first Easter, the Holy Spirit broke the stone holding death in place, and Jesus walked out in victory. Where did he go? He went to find you. He went to wake you up. He went to kiss you with grace and wed you to himself. You didn’t break the curse. Jesus did. And now you’re utterly changed from the inside out. You’re his, finally and fully and securely. And he’s making you into a bride fit for him. You’re his workmanship.
This story is far more than a children’s fairy tale. It’s the true story of the real Prince who came to the wrong side of town to find his bride and wake her up and take her home.
Let’s pray.
