Saved By Grace

The doctrine of salvation is one of the most important doctrines in Christianity. Think about it: we can believe the doctrine of God and who He is, but if it weren’t for the doctrine of salvation, we would have no hope of knowing that God personally. We can believe in God’s sovereignty, His holiness, the doctrines of heaven and of man — we can know them, study them, memorize them — but none of it has any real bearing on our lives apart from salvation, because all we would have to look forward to is the judgment of a holy God against whom we have sinned.

The doctrine of salvation is arguably the premier doctrine, because in it we find the most important, most life-changing, most glorious news anyone can hear. And for that very reason, it’s also one of the most debated doctrines in all of Christendom. What we believe about salvation impacts everything else about our faith and our lives.

I grew up in church. I’ve been around this setting my entire life, and I’ve watched the same people go to the altar over and over again, making professions of faith — because they weren’t sure they had enough faith the first time to “get the real deal.” Or they felt there wasn’t enough emotion. Or they committed some sin, felt guilty, and thought, if I was really saved, I wouldn’t have done that — so maybe I never had it in the first place. Year after year at camp meetings and youth events, the same people get saved again and again.

Then there are people who take a fatalistic approach: since God is sovereign and ultimately decides everything, it doesn’t really matter what they do — it will all play out the way God wants in the end. So they give little to no attention to their own salvation.

If we get the doctrine of salvation wrong, it will derail, distract, and burden every other area of our lives. What you believe about salvation changes your faith. It changes your experience with God. It changes how you live from day to day. It changes the level of confidence, hope, and assurance you carry in your Christian walk. There is probably nothing more important I could preach about this morning than what you believe about your salvation.

We’ve been studying our identity in Christ, and what you believe about your salvation will determine what you believe about your identity. In this passage, Paul is writing to clarify for the church exactly that — their identity in Christ — and to do so, he first has to clarify what it means to be saved and how salvation happens. Ephesians 2:1–10 is one of the most concise and beautiful presentations of the gospel in all of Scripture — in fact, it’s in the running for my favorite passage in the Bible.

As we walk through it, I want you to pay attention to the facts Paul presents about our salvation and the work God does in saving us. I don’t just want you to understand what Paul is saying — I want you to receive these realities into your own life, so that they change the way you think, the way you feel, the way you approach God, the way you approach evangelism, and the way you approach the whole of your Christian life.

Paul presents three facts about God’s work of salvation. By the end, I want you rejoicing in what God has done, resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and motivated to go out and embrace the Christian life God has called you to live.

Fact One: How Desperate Our Situation Was Before Christ

This has to be the starting point of any true understanding of salvation — the desperation you and I were in before the work of Christ. Look at verses 1–3:

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”

If you’re reading the King James, notice that “hath he quickened” is in italics — meaning those words were supplied by the translators to help the sentence read smoothly in English. I don’t think we need them to understand the verse. Read it without the supplied words and it simply says: “And you were dead in trespasses and sins.” Paul isn’t talking about the quickening yet — he’s just stating a fact about who we were before Christ. And that’s not a good place to start, is it?

But it’s the truth of where we all were before we were saved. If you were born to Christian parents, brought to church the week after you were born, raised up singing the songs and memorizing the verses — none of that changes the fact that without Jesus Christ, you are dead in your trespasses and sins. You are born into a state of willing rebellion against a holy and righteous God. And as we grow, we grow more capable of sin — more capable of wrong decisions, more capable of trespasses. You will never find a person who, apart from being saved by Jesus Christ, actually got better as life went on. They may change behaviors, turn over new leaves, improve their circumstances — but no one has ever been able to fix the deadness of their own soul.

Without Christ, we are not sick, not handicapped, not slowed down. We are dead. And understand this: when you are without Christ, the verdict isn’t pending. Scripture says if you’re outside of Christ, you’re condemned already — as good as judged. I don’t like the sound of that any more than you do. But if that’s the reality, I hope someone loves you enough to tell you the truth.

Paul continues: “wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world.” No matter how smart or independent you believe yourself to be, every person is under the influence of something or someone. The devil wants you to believe you have enough willpower to figure life out on your own. The truth is, if you’re saved, you’re being influenced by Christ and the Holy Spirit. If you’re unsaved, you’re being influenced by everything but Him. Paul names three influences directing us outside of Christ.

The course of this world. Society sets its own rules for the game. Ask the world the purpose of life, and — however it’s dressed up — the answer always comes back to you. Make life as big, as fun, as comfortable, and as successful for yourself as you possibly can, and if you have time left over, do something nice for someone else (which, conveniently, also makes you look good). Who resists that message? Everyone wants to be happy, healthy, successful. So we climb on board and let the world’s definition of happiness steer every decision we make — what makes me happy, what makes me upset — and we build our whole lives chasing the first and avoiding the second. That’s the course of this world, and it drives lost people straight away from the presence of God, whether or not they realize it.

The prince of the power of the air. Paul says we walked “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” — a clear reference to Satan. You may not be demon-possessed or worshiping the devil, but outside of Christ, he is influencing the way you live, the decisions you make, the places you go, and the people you spend time with. Have you ever heard someone say, “I want to break this, but it’s got a hold on me”? That’s an influence at work — acting, controlling. Paul says that same influence at work in the world around us today is the very influence that was at work in us before Christ.

The lusts of our flesh. In verse 3, Paul writes, “among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Notice he includes himself — “we all.” Paul was a rabbi, trained under the finest teachers, on track to become a high priest, one of the most religious men the world had ever known — and he says, I was exactly like this. Then comes the most incriminating line of all: we did what felt good to our flesh. We were slaves to sinful flesh, and if it felt good, if we wanted it, we found a way to make it happen — and to make ourselves look good while we did it.

We might be tempted to stand before God and say, “It was the culture. It was my upbringing. It was the devil.” But Paul strips that excuse away. Every action attributed to us in these verses is negative: we were dead, we desired the things of the world, we followed the culture, we followed the influence of the devil. Everything we did stood in opposition to God.

I don’t say this to be unkind. On the contrary — how unkind would it be to convince you of your own goodness and let you walk away without knowing the true condition of your soul? I don’t care how long you’ve sat in a pew, how much you’ve given, how much you’ve served, or how many bad habits you’ve kicked — if you have not been saved by Jesus Christ, this is still who you are today. Paul is proof that a person can sit in church and still be under the influence of the devil, the culture, and the flesh.

Fact Two: The Distinct Change Christ Brings

I’m glad the passage doesn’t stop there. After describing our desperate situation, Paul presents a distinct change in Christ. Look at verses 4–7:

“But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

Notice “loved us” is past tense — the love was there before the change ever happened. Before the foundation of the world, Christ had already set His love on you, personally. And notice when: not after we got our lives together, not after we kicked our bad habits, not after some inward change — even while we were dead in sins, He made us alive.

I once saw a photo online of a beautiful wooden cross someone had carved — a big hand reaching down from the top, a smaller hand reaching up from the bottom, meeting at the cross. It’s meant to picture salvation, with Jesus connecting us to God. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t love the image, because dead people don’t reach up. Dead people lay there — because they’re dead. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, and we were content to stay there. We may not have liked the consequences of our sin, but we had no intention of changing our sinful state on our own.

When we got saved, we didn’t reach up while God reached down. He came all the way down to where we were. Just as He called out, “Lazarus, come forth,” He called us by name — He opened our eyes, He made us alive, He gave us something that wasn’t there before. And He didn’t stop at giving us life and walking away. He raised us with Christ, out of the grave, and seated us with Him. Where is Jesus right now? Seated at the right hand of the Father — a position of both authority and honor. And Paul says that when you were saved, you were raised with Christ and seated with Him in that very place: a position of honor, authority, power, blessing, and fellowship.

That’s a staggering change from verses 1–3. There we were dead, condemned, and far from God. Now we’ve been awakened, quickened, raised out of the grave, and seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. That’s why Paul pauses mid-sentence to insert, almost as an aside he can’t hold back: “by grace ye are saved.”

And verse 7 tells us why: “that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” In plain terms — you haven’t seen anything yet. We get to enjoy the blessings of God right now, and that’s true and good, but we haven’t begun to see the fullness of His goodness, because for all of eternity, God will keep lavishing His kindness and love upon us.

If you have received Jesus Christ — if your eyes were opened to your condition, if you saw your sin and His sacrifice, and something inside you cried out, God, forgive me, save me from myself, let me be in Christ — I have good news for you: God did that work in your life. Dead people don’t say things like that. If God moved you to that place of faith, that is His work testified in you, and you can say with confidence, by grace I have been saved.

Fact Three: A Divine Transformation

The final fact Paul points out is that this whole transformation is a divine gift, not a human achievement. Verses 8–10:

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Paul has just described a dramatic shift — from desperate, dead sinners to raised, glorified saints in Christ Jesus. And before we’re tempted to take any credit for that change, he closes the loop: by grace are you saved.

Some will point out, “But it also says through faith — you have to believe, you have to exercise that gift of faith.” Read closely, though: “and that, not of yourselves.” The grace that saves you was not your grace. You didn’t earn it. And the faith through which that grace came to you — where do you think that came from? Dead people don’t have faith. It, too, was a gift from God. Not your works, not your goodness, not anything that originated in you. Everything that brought you to belief in Jesus Christ was a gift.

Paul says we are His workmanship — a masterpiece God intentionally and carefully formed so that His glory might be known. There’s no confusion in this passage and no room for false modesty: all of Him, nothing of me. I am saved this morning entirely because of His grace, and by His grace He gave me the gift of faith so that I might believe and know the glory of God.

So What Do We Do With This?

If you have never experienced the transforming, awakening work described here, you’re still living in verses 1–3. You may have prayed a prayer once. You may have spent your life doing good things for God. But if you cannot point to a moment when the Holy Spirit showed you, from the depths of your soul, how desperate your sin was, how good He is, and how wonderful the grace of Jesus Christ truly is, you’re still dead and still walking after the course of this world. What you need to do is receive this gift of faith — accept that you are dead in your sins but that He can make you alive through Jesus Christ — and cry out to Him today.

If you have experienced this, we ought to be rejoicing over what God has done. We are not who we used to be. We are no longer condemned before God. Today, we are seated with Christ in heavenly places — and that truth ought to rock your world every time you think about it.

We ought to be resting, too. The reason some people go back to the altar thirty-seven times over a lifetime is that they’re not resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ — they’re not resting in the gift of God. Instead, they keep thinking, I must be missing something. I must not have enough faith. It was never about you. It’s His gift. Rest in that.

And realizing how greatly we have been changed, we ought to go out and live to the maximum glory of God this week. Let your life be for Him, because He so wonderfully gave His life for you.

We are saved by grace. And I wouldn’t want to be anything else.