We read these verses yesterday, but they’re
so pivotal that I think they deserve a day all their own. I was raised in a Baptist church, and we frequently used vss. 8-9 to explain the plan of salvation
when we were sharing the Good News. There's very good reason for that, since
this is one of the best (if not the best) summaries of the ins-and-outs of our salvation that you’ll
read in all of Scripture.
Paul wants his readers to have a
better understanding of the grand and glorious plan of the Almighty, and the
part which we play in it. Chapter 2 starts with the ultimate “before and after”
picture of us re: salvation, and with these verses he provides a great
explanation of how God accomplished
all this.
At first glance today's title would seem to be an oxymoron. Why in the world would prepositions be important? The reason for the title hopefully will make some sense as we go on. If you get these verses down and understand how the different
prepositions relate to everything else, you’ll be head-and-shoulders above the
vast majority of Christians regarding our relationship with our Savior.
He starts out by saying we are saved
by
grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor towards us. I heard someone once
explain that mercy is when he doesn’t
give you what you do deserve, and
grace is when he gives you what you don’t deserve, and there’s a lot of
truth in that. Another great acronym I learned several years ago is grace = "God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense."
The point here is that it all starts
with his unmerited favor towards us, which he bestowed on us while we were still
sinners, enemies of his, and cosmic traitors. He certainly didn't shower us with this
grace because of anything we’d done (quite the contrary), nor did he give it to
us because of something we will do in the future. No, as we saw yesterday, he
did it out of love and for his own glory.
The next part is that we’re saved through
faith. Please please please pay careful attention to the preposition.
Strictly speaking, we aren’t saved by
faith; although Paul sometimes says
in shorthand that we’re justified by
faith. But to be more precisely
accurate, we’re saved through faith. Why
am I making such a big deal over this? What difference does it make if we’re
saved by faith or saved through faith? Because faith is not really
the basis on which God saved me; that basis is his love and grace, that which
is within himself. Faith is the means
by which he saved me. I think the best way to see it is that faith is like a
conduit. Imagine a pipe that carries water to someone who needs it. God’s grace
is the source, and our faith is the conduit by which he channels that (unmerited)
blessing down to us. I could believe in Jesus all day long, but if God didn’t
decide to initiate all this before the beginning of time, it would do me no
good.
One of the reasons I’m harping on
this is because Paul seems to go out of his way to bring the focus off of anything we do onto what God did: “and this
is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can
boast.” What is “this” referring back to? What is the gift of God? Well, some
say that it’s just referring back to God’s grace, but the Greek seems to be
referring back to everything in the
preceding part of the verse. In other words, the Lord gave us his grace and the ability to believe in Christ as
well. Jesus explicitly said
that unless the Father draws someone, they’ll never come to faith.
If I haven’t lost you already, then
we need to add a little caveat here. People love to say nowadays that “You just
gotta have faith.” Whenever I hear that, every molecule in my body screams out
to ask them: “Faith in what?! Or whom? Astrology?
Numerology? My own resources? The luck of the draw? Karma? The innate goodness of people? Politicians?” I know I've produced
this example before, but please forgive me, since I haven’t heard any better. When
you get on a plane, you’re demonstrating faith in the pilot. You’re placing
your life in his hands. You have faith that he’s sober, that the airline has
ensured that he has the skills to fly the plane, that he’s not a crazy person on
a suicide kick, etc. But if he is
drunk or not really qualified to fly the plane, then my faith in him is
misplaced, and I might pay for that faith with my life. I might have 100% faith
in him, but my faith doesn’t make him a qualified pilot. In other words, faith
is only as good as the object of that faith.
So the unspoken phrase, which we get
from various other passages of Scripture (for example see here),
is that we're saved through faith in Christ.
We place our faith in a Person, hand over the ownership of ourselves over to
him, and place our trust in him.
Now we come to something that
sometimes we tend to forget in using this passage so much in our evangelism. Yes,
we’re saved by grace, but there’s a purpose for all this. The Apostle of Grace,
the one who fought tooth and nail for the simplicity of the Good News that we’re
saved by grace through faith plus nothing,
spent almost as much time making it clear that we’re saved for a purpose, and
this purpose is not mainly for our benefit. We were created--then saved--for
good works. These aren’t good works that we come up with ourselves. For
the believer, there’s no such thing as “random acts of kindness.” No, the
changes in our lives, leading to the changes which we’re supposed to make in our world, were
planned out beforehand by our Father.
By the way, the word here “workmanship”
here is way too mundane a word. The word is poiema,
from which we get “poem.” The way it was used with artists, you could just as
easily translate it as “masterpiece.” We are God’s works of art, his
masterpieces. Each one of us is a work of art which he’s painstakingly
sculpting into the perfect image of
his Son.
So in summary, here’s why every little
bit of God’s word is so important, down to the prepositions. We are saved
·
By grace
·
Through faith
·
In Christ
·
For good works
Simple enough?
Lord Jesus, I’m in awe of your salvation
once again. I bring nothing to this except my sin and my need, and in return
you shower me with grace upon grace upon grace until my cup can’t hold any
more. Help me to be and to do what I was created for, to be about the business
of pleasing and honoring you. From beginning to end it’s all your grace.
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