Order Matters

  • Jake Chambers
  • May 2, 2010
  • Series: Ephesians

Ephesians 2:8-10

 

Today’s passage is absolutely crucial for us to get right if we are to live free, humble, joyful and attractive lives shaped by a gospel of grace. If we get this twisted, distorted or backwards we will be miserable, proud and hypocritical believers of a false gospel. So let’s ask God to speak to our hearts, minds and hands today so we may clearly believe, understand, and apply these truths to our entire lives. Amen.

 

“For by grace you have been saved through faith.” What are we saved by? Grace. We must not twist this or get this backwards. We are not saved by faith but saved by grace. Grace is a gift of God. So many people have despair, frustration and doubt because they believe they are saved by 'faith through grace' and not 'by grace through faith.' What is the big deal? Grace is all about a free gift we have not earned, deserved, won or merited being given to us. It is about what God has done. Being saved by faith turns it back to us. We then doubt our salvation when our faith is feeling beat up, weak or smaller than others'. Or, we get proud when we feel like our faith is stronger than others. It leads to a vicious cycle of comparison, which leads to pride or despair. But grace is what has saved us, not faith. Grace is poured out on us through faith. Faith is a conduit or pipeline for grace.

 

But we are saved by faith? Some of you may be thinking, “but what about church history?” What about “Sola fide?” the reformers cry that we are saved by faith alone? The reformers cried out exactly what this passage is crying out. They cried out “sola gratia” by grace alone and “sola fide” by faith alone. I want to explain this.

 

  1. “Sola Gratia.” The power that saves us is grace. Righteousness is a free gift of grace. Also called “gift righteousness” or “imputation.” Christ’s righteousness is “imputed” to us. Or what Martin Luther called “the great exchange.” All of Christ’s righteousness is imputed or given at once to us so we are just in his sight. Meaning, we would be judged perfect because our judge would see Christ’s perfection instead of our imperfection. This is not perfection we earned, but solely a perfection that was gifted by God. Solely grace. It is by this imputation that we are saved.

 

  1. “Sola fide.” By faith alone does not mean, then, that our faith has earned us righteousness. What the reformers meant by Sola fide is what Paul means in this verse here in Ephesians - that is it solely a belief in the gospel, an acceptance of this grace that makes us recipients of this saving grace. It means that it is not faith plus tongues, faith plus offering, faith plus chastity, faith plus anything that makes us recipients of this saving grace. It is by faith alone. This is why Paul repeats, “this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God.”

 

We must understand by what we are saved. We must understand how we are declared righteous before God. Listen to Galatians 1:6-9... Paul highlights the absolute importance of the one gospel. Listen to Martin Luther hundreds of years later when referring to the article of justification, how we are declared just and righteous before a holy God:

 

“The article of justification is the master and prince, the lord, the ruler and the judge over all kinds of doctrines; it preserves and governs all church doctrine and raises up our conscience before God. Without this article the world is utter death and darkness. No error is so mean, so clumsy, and so outworn as not to be supremely pleasing to human reason and to seduce us if we are without the knowledge and the contemplation of this article.”

 

I want to echo Paul and echo Luther in repeating the absolute importance of us understanding the gospel that is preached in scripture, a gospel that declares us just before God, not by our own good deeds, but solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ.

 

Now some of you may be thinking: “We get it Jake, what is the big deal? We understand that we are saved by grace and not works. Can we move on?” … No not so fast. I want us to look at a story in scripture to see just how enticing a distorted gospel can be. To show us how we must be on guard of this works-righteousness, this grace-plus-something mentality creeping into our hearts. Let’s look at Galatians 2:11-16.

 

In this story we see Cephas (Peter), slipping into a grace-plus belief system. There he is, chilling with the gentiles, fellow brothers saved by grace and enjoying life with them, when the Judaizers roll into town. And Peter “slinks away” because he is afraid of what his racist Jewish friends will think of him believing the gospel and hanging out with gentiles who believe the gospel. He falls into a trap of believing he is justified by grace plus following some Jewish rituals, and therefore should have no part with the gentiles who are not “circumcised” and following all the same rituals of the Jews. This is Peter people - the dude who walked with Jesus for three years! The dude who first brought the gospel to gentiles after God gave him some crazy visions about how the gentiles too could be saved and saved by grace through faith and not by Jewish rituals and works. The same Peter who is a leader in the church, planting churches and preaching this scandalous gospel of grace everywhere.

 

Don’t you see how easy it is to slink back into believing you are better because you have grace “plus something?” Don’t you see how a distortion of the gospel has a radical communal impact? Even Barnabas falls into this hypocrisy. And now they are separated from God’s people. Division leaks in because they add to the gospel.

 

And look what Paul does. He calls Peter out. Here is Paul “the least of the apostles” confronting the “big man” Peter. And he does it in front of everyone. And this is love! And how does he confront him? Does he call him a racist? Does he call him a coward? No he points out the folly of his ways and then brings him the gospel. We need to point each other back to the gospel of scandalous grace. That we are not under law, we are not under works but are free to fully believe a gospel that justifies us by the works of Christ.

 

Peter withdraws from community and pride is the main factor in his withdrawal. What are ways we withdrawal from one another? Where has pride creeped in to separate us? We must see how a gospel of grace unites God’s people. A gospel of grace creates a community that is on the same ground no matter what race, previous religion, education, status etc. We are all sinners in need of grace.

 

“Not a result of works so that no one can boast.” The doctrine of salvation by grace alone is an incredibly humble and missional doctrine. Salvation by works damages community and destroys mission. Look at our story above. They fell into hypocrisy. Salvation by works will always lead us to compare our works to others' works. This will always lead us into either pride or despair. As the community, we are supposed to love unconditionally. This now becomes a ground for competition, comparison, slander and boasting. We will have to puff up ourselves and demean others. It becomes the middle school playground all over again where everyone is insecure and fighting for survival. This is joy stealing and creates a community full of hate, hypocrisy and separation. It is no wonder so many people look at the church and find it appalling.

 

A works based salvation also drastically changes our message in mission. We now tell a watching world not to look to Christ but to look at me. Not 'follow Christ' but follow me. The message becomes “aren’t I great, be like me and God will love you.” Don’t you see the absolute pride and stench of a false gospel? This is not true Christianity but an entirely different religion. This is what Paul is talking about. There is Christianity, formed by a gospel where salvation is one hundred percent by God’s grace, and there are a myriad of other religions that may sound similar, use the same language, even use the same bible but they are “accursed” if they add anything to our salvation besides the grace of God bestowed on us by belief in the work of Jesus Christ. Any religion that distorts this is as Luther says in “utter death and darkness.” As Paul says, if even an angel tells you otherwise do not believe it. Believe this gospel alone.

 

Listen to how the great puritan Jonathan Edwards contrasts this statement, “The redeemed have all their good in God. We not only have it of Him and through Him, but it consists in Him, He is all our good.” What does this leave us to boast about? God. We cannot believe this statement, this 100% grace gospel, and boast in ourselves. We can only point to God. This pointing is mission.

 

You see how this gospel of grace, if believed, will produce two responses from us. One, it creates a humble people. Christians should be marked by humility because we are not saved by anything we have done. We should be the most humble of people because we do not compare ourselves to others but to a holy God. John Calvin expands on this thought as seen throughout scripture, “Hence that dread and amazement with which, as scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and secure so quaking with terror, that the fear of death takes hold of them, nay, they are, in a manner, swallowed up and annihilated, the inference to be drawn is, that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.”

 

We boast in the works of this holy God and not of our own works. We can truly see how insignificant our greatest works are when we compare them to God. It becomes very silly to boast in our own works and pride becomes very silly when we realize who God is and who we are.

 

Salvation that comes completely by God’s work of grace and not of any of our own works produces a humble yet confidant people, people that humbly boast in Christ. Works salvation creates a proud and insecure people. CJ Mahaney is a great pastor of pastors and he wrote a book called “Humility - True Greatness” that I highly recommend everyone read. In this book he says there are no humble people only proud people who pursue humility. We should be a people who pursue humility and I want to suggest ten ways that we should do so. I adapted this list of ten things from a sermon by my pastor in Seattle titled “The Rebels Guide to Joy in Humility.*

 

  1. Constantly be reminding our self and each other of the true gospel, a gospel that saves us by the great work of Jesus Christ and not by our works.

  2. Invite and pursue correction and counsel from God’s people.

  3. Learn from everyone including your enemies and critics.

  4. Repent quickly and thoroughly, addressing the sin and not dressing it.

  5. Seek and celebrate God’s work in others.

  6. Laugh. Laugh at yourself. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

  7. Cultivate an attitude of thankfulness.

  8. Exalt the name of Jesus in all you do. Not about us it is always about him! We are ambassadors of Christ living to boast in Christ.

  9. Listen to scripture more than yourself.

  10. Sleep like a Christian. Proud people don’t sleep they are too worried about what others think to rest. Humble people sleep and rest well. They can take a break, they can Sabbath because the world is not in their hands but in God’s.

     

The second thing this gospel of grace produces in us, is we become a people who do what we were created to do. We become a people who do good works. We do not do good works so that God would give us grace, so he would love us, but we have God’s grace and are loved by God, so we obey his commands and do good works. Our identity is formed by a God, Jesus Christ, who did good works for his own joy and pleasure and so we live out of that same identity and now do good works for our own joy and pleasure. We become the very people we were created to be. A people who do good works because they bring us joy. Again we cannot get this backwards or else works will not give us joy but pride or despair. You see, without grace we are incapable of doing good works properly because we would always be doing them to earn or merit some favor from God. We would be doing them to get something and not out of the joy of just doing what we were created to do. We would do them to prove we are good people or so people would like us. But if Christ already loves us and we are already accepted, then we can once again do good works not out of compulsion or duty but out of delight and our new identity. We do them because they are the very thing we were created to do and doing what we were created to do brings us joy. But if works are properly motivated by a gospel of grace they will produce in us an increasing joy.

 

In addition, this is a massive theological statement, as Paul is declaring, there is no basis for justification by works because even the works we do, God himself prepared for us to do. So all good works are initiated and prepared by God. God initiates and we respond. We do not initiate a good work for God to then respond to us with love but God initiates the good work for us to do to show our gratitude to all he has done for us. A community formed by the gospel is a community that loves to do good works as a response of thanksgiving to all that God has done to love us, accept us, forgive us and bring us to him self. So Paul does encourage us to be a people of action. But we do this for our own joy. We serve, give, love, help, teach, sacrifice, counsel and share because it is what we were created to do. And doing what we were created to do will bring us the most joy. We are all searching for what we were created for. Looking for the job, hobby, activity or what not that will give us joy and show us the meaning of life or our purpose. Our purpose is to believe the gospel and do the good works God prepared for us to do. This will bring us joy.

 

Now as we close I realize for a lot of us we may in our head agree with this doctrine of grace theologically. We may even be motivated to work with our hands as a result of this belief. But doesn’t this just betray our hearts? Don’t we all deep down know that our salvation is a result of works. Don’t we all deep down in the pit of our hearts feel like we need to do just a bit more to earn God’s favor and deep down feel like we are just not good enough to earn God’s favor? Well this is true. Salvation does come by works and that is why this grace stuff is so hard for us to rest in. We do need to work perfectly to get to God and we all have failed at this but our fighting to prove our self. We all deep down know works are needed.

 

Well here is the good news. John 19:30 “It is finished.” Your heart does not betray you - a life of works did need to be completed and Jesus Christ lived that life. He cries out on the cross, “it is finished.” Jesus did all the work. And it is gifted to us completely by grace. We cannot add or subtract from our salvation because our salvation rest completely in Jesus Christ. He lived our life of perfect works and died our death - deserved for imperfect works. He did all the work and we get all the credit. And this credit is salvation, gifted to us completely by God’s grace. So yes, good works needed to be done, but an even greater yes is that Jesus already accomplished all the good works set before him and he accomplished them for us. This is the gospel. Believe it! Amen.

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