Faith, Not Works

Ephesians 2:4-10

Our Scripture today, taken from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, is a familiar passage to many people.  Many have memorized the salvation verses in verses 8 and 9. Let’s take a few moments to look at these verses together.

In the verses right prior to our passage, Paul was telling his readers how, before they came to Christ, they were deep in sin, following the desires of their flesh. Their path and life, and ours too, was all bad news. Then as verse 4 picks up we see the word, “but”. But God loved us, had mercy on us, and sent His Son to save us (vs. 4-5).  God takes bad news and turns it into good news. All of the bad in our life, the mess and sin, He changes.  That “but” turns the bad news into good.

We might wonder why God would save us.  We wonder what can we do to receive God’s love and mercy?  What can we do to get to heaven? So many believe that it is by merit that we are saved.  They have a check-off list of things one should do to merit heaven - being baptised, go to church, read the Bible, give a good amount in the offering, say special prayers, maybe even teach Sunday School.  Add to that being good to the family, neighbors, and the community at large. Maybe even if the opportunity arises doing some brave, heroic deed. Then also not doing certain things, such as murdering, adultery, cheating on the taxes, etc.

That is not what God’s Word says.  God makes it very clear in verses 8 and 9 that it is not by anything that we do that we are saved. Salvation is a gift from God to us, which we receive by grace through faith.  We cannot earn our way to heaven. If we could, then we would have something whereof we could boast. We could go around heaven boasting about all of the good works we did to get there. We could brag about all of the money we gave to such and such a church. We could brag about how we helped this little old lady out, and that poor dog we rescued. In reality, though, there is nothing we could possibly do to earn our way to heaven.  God is holy, perfect, and righteous, and even one sin is enough to keep us out of His presence. He says that all of our righteousness, that is our “good works”, are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).  None of us have enough righteousness to earn heaven (Romans 3:10). That is why He sent His Son, Jesus, the only sinless One, to die in our place. That way all of our boasting must be of Him.

So where does good works play into the picture, all of those good deeds and nice things that we know we should do?  In verse 10 we read that once we are saved, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works. We are not saved by our good works, but once we are saved, God wants us to walk in good works.  This is when our helping others, giving to our church, and other deeds step in. If we are saved and love the Lord, we will do good works in His Name, not to earn His love and heaven, but because of His love for us.

Verse 10 tells us that we are God’s workmanship.  Are we living our life for Him? If so, then we can be assured that He is building something wonderful out of our life, something beyond our understanding.  God will use all that we’ve been through, the good and bad, to construct His masterpiece if we trust and allow Him. In God’s hands the mistakes of our life can become His masterpieces.

In addition to becoming one of God’s masterpieces, we read in verse 6 that, if we have become God’s children through salvation in His Son, we are seated with Christ in heavenly places.  We are kingdom people. Instead of looking at our problems from an earthly perspective, we should look at them from a heavenly perspective - God’s perspective. If He loved us enough to send His Son to die for us, and to seat us with Him in heaven, surely He will take care of any problems we have here on earth.