The How of Salvation

A Sermon on Ephesians 2:8-10

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

The Apostle Paul here is preaching a truth to us that he himself knew only too well, namely that the grace of God is the fountain of Salvation, and Faith is the channel through which it flows to us. But just as Grace is the unmerited gift of God, as the word itself implies, so too we must understand that Faith too is a gift of God.

Paul had been an enemy of Christ and his church. Paul was more than just an enemy, he was working tirelessly to destroy the church by hunting down the faithful and doing all that he could to ensure that the name of Jesus Christ was stamped out. But Jesus, took Paul and he changed his heart. Christ the Creator did a marvelous act of recreation in him, he took Paul a fallen man, whose heart was black and wicked, a man spiritually dead in his sins, and in an act of singular mercy he made him spiritually alive.

Paul was born again, and through the gift of faith, he came to believe in the same Christ whom he had been persecuting. So Paul knew from his own experience the truth of what he wrote to the Ephesian church "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins"

Paul was on the road to Damascus, going there to persecute the believers in that city when he had his fateful encounter with Christ. But in another sense, Paul was on the Broad road, the broad way that leads to destruction. I myself was traveling by that road at one time, and I know from speaking with many of you, that many of you are familiar with that particular highway.

We sometimes forget, how wide the broad way is, and how many multitudes of people there are who travel by it, as Jesus told us in Mark 7:13 "wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it."

But for all of those travelers the destination will always be the same, destruction. That is unless, just like He did in the case of Paul, God intervenes in our lives and sets us on the narrow way, the road that leads to life eternal.

But how do we get on that path? Faith! Through faith in Jesus Christ.

God changes our hearts and gives us the gift of faith, whereby we hear the Gospel preached and it doesn't just bounce off us as it does so many other people. No you believe the good news of the gospel and you trust in Jesus Christ and Him alone for your salvation, and as soon as that happens you are saved. Your eternal destination is forever changed, as it says in Romans 10:8-11

"But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." (Romans 10:8-11)

Think on that last statement "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame", your salvation, once obtained can never be lost. That is why the Apostle says, "You have been saved." Not "you shall be," nor "you may be"; but "you have been saved." He doesn't say, "You are partly saved," nor "on the way to being saved," nor even "you hope you will be saved"; but "by grace you have been saved"

Lets be as clear about this as Paul was. Lets also never rest till we know that we are saved. At this moment we are either saved or unsaved. Either in the Broad Way leading to destruction, or the narrow path that leads to life. That's clear. Which way are you walking today? My hope is that, by the work of the Holy Spirit, you may be so assured of your safety in Christ that you can truly sing as we did last week, "Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see."

Now, if we can say of any man, or of any set of people, "You have been saved," we have to preface it with the words "by grace." There is no other present salvation except that which begins and ends with the grace of God. Among those who call themselves Christians, we can find many who do not believe that.

There are many people who do not believe what are sometimes called the doctrines of grace. But their hope is not really in the reality of a present salvation. Possibly they trust that they may be saved when they die; they half hope that, after years of watchful holiness, they may, perhaps, be saved at last; but, to be saved now, and to know that they are saved, just isn't possible for them, and they think the truth that Paul preached to be presumptuous.

Why is that the case? Well, many are depending on their works for salvation. Their hope is that at the end of their lives, they will have done enough good works to be found worthy of heaven. In fact some people maintain that we have to preach that salvation is at least partially through our works, otherwise what motive for doing good works could we possibly have?

But the idea that we could be saved entirely or in part by good works is false and absurd. The scriptures are abundantly clear on that point, in this very text Paul tell us "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

In Titus 3:4-7 we read "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

Salvation must be by grace. If man is lost in sin, how can he be saved except through the grace of God? If he has sinned, he is condemned; and how can he, of himself, reverse that condemnation? Let's suppose that he is capable of doing what no man other than Christ is capable of doing – Let's suppose that he is able to perfectly keep the law all the rest of his life, he will then only have done what he was always supposed to have done, and he will still be an unprofitable servant.

What about the past? How can old sins be blotted out? How can the division between a holy God and sinful man be repaired through our good works? According to Scripture, and according to common sense, salvation can only be through the free favor of God.

There is a wonderful story that brings this truth home so well in Corrie TenBoom's Christian Classic "The Hiding Place". [Explain Corrie's aunt Tante Jans, someone who had depended on good works having 3 weeks to live, then read p.33à ]

Salvation to be complete must be by free Grace. The saints, when they come to die, never conclude their lives by hoping in their good works. Those who have lived the most holy and useful lives invariably look to free grace in their final moments. For instance, the last recorded words of J. Gresham Machen, a godly theologian and pastor, were "I'm so thankful for [the] active obedience of Christ. No hope without it." The nearer men come to heaven, and the more prepared they are for it, the more simply and completely do they trust in the merit of the Lord Jesus, and the more intensely do they abhor all trust in themselves.

If that's the case in our last moments, when the good fight is almost over, how much more ought we to feel it to be so while we are in the thick of the fight?. While you still mourn over sin that dwells in you, while you have to confess innumerable shortcomings and transgressions, while sin is mixed with all you do, how can you believe that you are completely saved except by the free grace of God?

A present salvation must be by grace, and salvation by grace must be through faith. You cannot grasp salvation by grace by any other means than by faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation means deliverance from guilt, ruin, death and destruction and that deliverance cannot be laid hold of by any measure of good works, since, as Paul has made clear to us, sinners are not in a condition to perform any nor do they have any inclination to do so.

Suppose for a second that I had to preach that you as sinners must do certain works, and then you would be saved by grace; and suppose that you could perform them; such a salvation would not then be altogether of grace; it would be a just payment for work performed. If that were the case, then we would have something we could boast about, contrary to what Paul says in verse 9 of our text.

But Salvation by grace can only be gripped by the hand of faith – the attempt to lay hold upon it by the doing of certain acts of law would cause the grace to disappear. As Paul writes in Romans 4:16: "Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace." And Romans 11:6 "And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work."

You cannot lay hold of the grace of God through ceremonies or through joining the church. You can come to church every Sunday of your life and still be a complete stranger to the grace of God. Indeed, sad to say, in many a church the grace of God is never even preached.

You cannot grasp salvation by grace through your feelings. It should be self-evident that most if not all of the people who are walking on that broad way don't feel that they are walking on a road that leads to destruction. In fact if you ask them, most who believe in heaven feel that they will go there when they die even if they can't tell you why or how. The devil delights in blinding us to the true nature of our peril and making sure we feel safe and comfortable until it too late. Add to that the fact that we love to delude ourselves, and you'll see why we can't trust or depend on our feelings in this regard.

Only by Faith in Jesus Christ can we lay hold of the free grace of God to sinners. And that faith is not something we worked up in ourselves. While it is true that as far as faith in concerned, we are the ones who must believe (God doesn't believe for us). That very ability to believe in Jesus and the inclination to do so, is a gift of God and a direct result of the work of his Holy Spirit in us. We don't earn faith. Our first life is always a wandering away from God, and our new life of return to God is always a work of undeserved mercy, given to those who greatly need, but never deserve it.

We don't gain faith because we suddenly become smarter. You can take an unregenerate man, and educate him to the highest level; but he remains, and will forever remain, dead in sin, unless divine power comes in and saves him from himself. If a man believes, it is the result of the implantation of divine life within that man's soul by God Himself.

Even the desire to be saved by grace, through faith is not of ourselves, but it is the gift of God. True, men ought to believe in Jesus. It is our duty to receive him whom God has sent to be a propitiation for sins. But man will not believe in Jesus; he prefers anything to faith in his Redeemer, unless the Holy Spirit convinces his judgment, and constrains his will, man has no heart to believe in Jesus for eternal life.

I ask those of you who are saved to look back upon your own conversion, and explain how it came about. You turned to Christ, and believed in his name: these were your own acts and deeds. But what caused you to turn? What sacred force was that which turned you from sin to righteousness? Do you attribute your renewal to the existence of something better in you than in your unconverted neighbours? No, I'm sure that like me you'll confess that you might have been what they now are if it had not been a powerful force which touched the spring of your will, enlightened your understanding, and guided you to the foot of the cross.

Salvation by grace, through faith, is not of ourselves, and none of us would dream of boasting in ourselves from our conversion, or from any gracious effect which has flowed from God.

So that is the how of Salvation. But that must lead us to ask why have we been saved, or for what, and we'll talk about that more 2 weeks from now as we unpack what Paul tells us in verse 10.

But for now notice, that we have not been saved merely to remain as we once where. While good works where not the cause of our salvation in any sense, they are what we have been recreated by God to walk in.

Fruit trees were created by God to bear fruit, and in the same way sinners are saved by God to bear the fruit of good works. Good works are an essential sign of a true living Christian. So much so that Jesus is able to say in Matthew 7:16 in telling us how to distinguish between true and false teachers "You will know them by their fruits."

So therefore as you meditate on that fact, ask yourselves, is the fruit of good works present in my life? If not, why not? Ask yourselves also, do I know today that I am saved? The scripture is clear - you can have that certainty, but you can only have it through faith in Jesus Christ you cannot have it by any other means. So if today you are laboring to obtain salvation any other way, I beg you leave off your work, it will profit you nothing in the end. Instead flee to Christ, trust in His perfect merit. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame."

 Home |  Visitors  |  Sermons  |  Essays  |  Search  |  Links  |
 Members | Feedback