God's Grace Through Christ Alone

Introduction

Good morning church! It is my delight to bring the word of God to you this morning on Reformation Sunday - the day that we commemorate Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, kicking off the Protestant Reformation 506 years ago. What spurred Luther to write his theses was an event that would have appeared to have been relatively uncontroversial at the time - a Dominican friar named Johann Tetzel was preaching to the people that a letter of indulgence purchased from Rome would serve as a means of the forgiveness of sins, either for the person purchasing the indulgence or for one of their dearly departed relatives who was languishing in purgatory until their suffering for their earthly sins was complete. Luther recognized that this was an unbiblical approach to forgiveness, and as he searched the scriptures he began to recover the truths that had been taught by the Augustine and the other Church Fathers - that our salvation was not a synergistic mixture of the grace of God and our good works, but rather that it was exclusively the the work of God through Christ. From these 95 theses would spring the Protestant Reformation, which would later come to be summarized via the five “solas”. This construction was not developed by the Reformers themselves, but the framework helps us to understand and articulate the key teachings of the Reformation:

Sola Scriptura - “Scripture alone” - theology must be scripturally grounded as its main source. Only Scripture can be authoritative for our theology - tradition and history may be helpful, but ultimately we must defer to Scripture for theological concerns.

Solus Christus - “Christ alone” - theology must be Christ focused - Christ is the main point of the Bible, and the whole Bible testifies to Him and His work.

Sola Fide - “Faith alone” - theology must be driven by faith - without faith, it is impossible to please God. By faith, we believe and receive what God has promised to us through Christ.

Sola Gratia - “Grace alone” - our theology must be saturated with grace. We are saved not by works, but by grace alone. God’s generosity lavishes upon us what we do not deserve - it is entirely his work that saves us.

Soli Deo Gloria - “To the glory of God alone” - our theology must be dominated by God. Our salvation is brought about so that God might be glorified, and in all that we do we ought to glorify Him.

Reformation Sunday is an opportunity for us to get “back to basics”, to take the time needed to meditate on the timeless truths of the gospel and the manner of our salvation. That is my plan for this morning. This morning our sermon will focus on two of these “solas” - Grace alone and Christ alone (though, to be honest, we will actually see four of the five in the course of our passage). I have the privilege today on preaching from one of my favorite chapters of Scripture, Ephesians 2. My hope is that as we dive into Ephesians 2.1-18 we will gain a deep appreciate for the incredible grace of God that He has lavished on his people through his Son, Jesus Christ. Please open up your Bibles with me to Ephesians 2.1-18 and join me in reading along:

Ephesians 2:1–18 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Let’s pray.

Gracious God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you that you have given your Scriptures to us that we might search them and in so doing that we might come to better know you and better understand the work that you have done for us. As we look into this passage in Ephesians today, we pray that your Spirit would illuminate these words in our hearts, that we would grow in our knowledge of who you are and of what you have done for us, that we would see that the depths of our own depravity are swallowed up by the depth of your kindness and grace towards us through the sacrifice of your Son. Help us to rejoice in the nature of our salvation, help us to plumb the depths of your marvelous grace and love for your people, and above all let us respond in thankfulness for how you have rescued us out of our sin and despair and have brought us into right relationship with you. Amen.

In our passage today I want us to focus on three main points:

Our need for grace (v.1-3)

The source and power of grace (v.4-10)

Grace as Jesus Christ (v. 11-18)

So first, let’s begin by focusing on our need for grace.

Our Need for Grace

The first three verse of Ephesians 2 are some of the most individually damning words in Scripture. The cut directly to the heart of our spiritual condition apart from Christ:

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

What does it mean that we were dead in our trespasses and sins? It means that we were fundamentally unable to save ourselves. It means what it says, that we were completely and totally dead. Not only “mostly dead” as Magic Max might describe Wesley in the Princess Bride - completely and totally dead. We may very well continue to live our lives as though nothing is wrong, but we are fundamentally unable to come to grips with the state of our dead souls. That is why we find ourselves following the course of the “prince of the power of the air”, Satan. This takes many different forms for many different people.

For some, it is incredibly obvious to outsiders that this is what they are doing. They may find themselves slaves to drugs or to violence, to theft and debauchery. It’s easy to pick out those who are obviously following the paths of evil. But it can also be more subtle. Three weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to India for work. I arrived very early in the morning (around 2.30am), and after making my way through immigration and finding my way to the driver who would take me to the hotel I settled in for a long drive through Bangalore. It occurred to me after a while that there seemed to be a lot of people on the streets at 3 in the morning. I asked the driver if that was normal, and in response he pointed out a giant statue of the Hindu god Ganesh that was being towed on the bed of a truck next to us. “It’s a festival season,” he explained. “They are going to throw these statues into the river as an offering, in hopes that Ganesh will bless us for the upcoming year.” It struck me that this is one such example of following the prince of the power of the air - instead of placing their trust in God, they were placing their hope in an idol made with human hands.

But aside from these maybe more obvious examples, spiritual death can also manifest itself in less obvious, more every day ways. Maybe it manifests itself in the way that someone looks to their financial success as their source of security. Maybe it manifests as someone obsessively focusing on living healthy. Perhaps it shows itself in the way that we think that our own good deeds are surely enough to get us into heaven. The truth is that you can go to church every week, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, care for abandoned animals - do all the things that society would expect a “good person” to do - and still be spiritually dead, following the ways of the world. The “passions of our flesh” don’t have to refer to sex and drugs and gluttony, the “desires of the body and the mind” can be much more subtle than those obvious things. At the end of the day, the way that we live our lives is function of where we have our hope and our trust. We can be “good people” and still have our hearts fundamentally misplaced. We can show many signs of being healthy and alive when we are in fact dead inside.

This spiritual death cuts to the core of our being - it’s not even that we are actively rejecting a Savior, it’s that we don’t have any idea that we need one! That is what it means to be spiritually dead. That is why so many people can go about their lives having heard the gospel multiple times with it never actually permeating their darkened hearts. They don’t know that they are in need of a Savior because they have something else that they have placed their hope in. They are incapable of realizing their need for Jesus.

Without some sort of intervention we would simply continue our lives chasing after our own idols, whatever they might be. And because of this, because of this misalignment of our hearts, because we have placed our trust elsewhere, Paul reminds us that we are “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”.

Those seem at first like such harsh words! How can we be subject to wrath when we are incapable of recognizing our own estate? Isn’t it unjust for God to be wrathful towards us? The truth is, this is the consequence of sin. It is because of our sin that we are spiritually dead. And our sin is such an affront to a holy God that it must be dealt with. It would, in fact, be unjust for God to leave our sins unpunished. It would be unjust for him to not make us the subjects of his wrath. Sin and evil are antithetical to the character of God. They must be dealt with because the two cannot co-exist. Sin must be paid for, atonement must be made.

Friends, I hope that these first three verses of our passage today help to drive deeply home the wretched state that we find ourselves in apart from Christ. If this was the final word, there would be no hope. We would simply be subject to the eternal and immeasurable wrath of God towards our sin, and we would deserve every ounce of it! And because we are spiritually dead, there is nothing that we can do about it. What is dead cannot will itself back to life. It cannot change unless it is acted upon by something external to it.

And that brings us to the glorious beginning of verse 4: “But God...”

The Source and Power of Grace

There’s not enough that can be said about those two glorious words. When we look at verses 1-3 grammatically, it’s like the grammar serves to underscore the seriousness of our condition apart from God. Verses 1-3 form a complete and coherent thought. While the original Greek of scripture can often be characterized by what we would recognize today as run-on sentences, the beginning of verse 4 is not simply the continuation of what comes before. Verses 1-3 form a complete and distinct statement and thought - there is a clear grammatical break between verse 3 and verse 4. And I think Paul intentionally did that. He wants us to take a moment to stop and think about the implications of our sinfulness. He wants us to pause and consider what it means that we are by nature children of wrath. He wants us to ponder the depths of our hopelessness apart from Christ.

But after we have taken a moment to do that, he provides us with the hope that we so desperately need: “But God”.

These words cut to the heart of any assumptions on our part that we can contribute in some way to our restoration and our salvation. On our own, we can do nothing - as we have already seen, we are completely and totally dead in our sins. This was the realization that Martin Luther had come to - he had heard the teachings of the church at the time that salvation was a combination of both God’s grace and our effort, but he understood at a fundamental level that if there was any part of salvation that was dependent on his own effort that he was in deep, deep trouble. He felt the constant weight of his own sin and knew that despite his best efforts, he could not measure up to the standard of righteousness. He was in constant fear for his soul, constant worry that at any moment he could commit a sin that would cast off the grace of God and would condemn him for eternity. Ultimately, it wasn’t our passage today that illuminated the truth of the gospel to him, it was Romans 1.17:

Romans 1:17 ESV

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

From that moment, though, Luther immediately changed the way that he understood his relationship with God. He no longer needed to strive with his good works to accomplish his own salvation - he only needed to rest in the finished work of Christ on the cross. The essence of the Christian life was to live by faith - through this faith, the righteousness of God is applied to us. And faith, faith has an object - Jesus. Without the work of God through Christ, we remain without hope in the world. Let’s turn back to our passage:

Ephesians 2:4–10 ESV

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Friends, the source of our life, the source of our hope, the source of our regeneration is God himself. Apart from him, we would still be held captive in our sins, we would still be slaves to the powers of this world, we would still be subject to the curse of spiritual death. But God has seen fit to reach down into this fallen world to redeem and to restore a people for himself. In his great mercy, in his great love, he has seen us, and through an act of his incredible grace has made us alive again in Christ.

Friends, I want you to take a moment and to think about your own salvation. What was it that brought that understanding and recognition of your state before God? What was it that helped you to understand your need for a Savior? Whose words cut to the core of your being and helped you to realize the depths of your sin and despair and your need for redemption? One of the wonderfully beautiful things about salvation is that it is brought about in so many diverse ways. Perhaps for you it was a friend or a family member who preached the gospel to you and led you to Christ. Perhaps someone gave you a book that you read that opened your eyes to your helpless estate without God. Maybe you heard the gospel preached on a street corner from an itinerant preacher who would be there one moment and would be gone the next. In any case, there was someone who spoke the words of truth to you and through those words the Holy Spirit brought to life your dead heart.

I mentioned earlier my trip to India a few weeks ago. One of the things that I have found about leaving the United States is that it really drives home for me the fact that so many people need to hear the gospel. I think we can so often take for granted that people have the opportunity to hear the gospel on a regular basis in this country. But the truth is that is not the case in many other places in the world. While there are certainly faithful Christians in India, they are often few and far between compared to the Hindu and Muslim voices that will be heard by the population on a much more consistent basis. It became abundantly clear to me that there were a multitude of people there who might never have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel. And that made me think more deeply about my willingness to share my faith with others. If we truly believe that only God can bring our dead hearts to life, then we must take what opportunities we can to bring the gospel to those who have not heard it. It is, of course, true that God is sovereign in all aspects of salvation; it is equally true that he uses the words and the works of his people to bring his gospel to those who have not heard him. Friends, I hope and I pray that we do not take this charge lightly. Salvation belongs to our God - that much is certain - but he uses our words and deeds to awaken sinners to eternal life. Let us seek out opportunities to make him known, and let us never take lightly the charge that we have been given to spread the gospel to the far corners of the earth!

Having said all that, I want us now to focus on the fact that our salvation comes entirely from God. He is the one who loved us with a great love, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. He was the one who spoke life into our dead hearts and has made us alive together with Christ. Paul makes it abundantly clear that God’s great love for us is the reason that he sent his Son to be the atonement for our sins. It is God’s grace that has saved us fully and completely. At the same time, I also want us to consider what God has done for us positionally. The passage says that he has “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. I want us to take a moment to consider what verses 1-3 had to say about our condition before the grace of God. We were following the course of this world, we were slaves to the prince of the power of the air, we were living only in disobedience. But in verse 6 we see how our position has been changed. We have not been left to the powers of the earth, but we have been raised to become citizens of heaven, seated in the heavenly places of honor along with Christ that we might see the immeasurable riches of the grace of God. Friends, when God saves us, he saves us completely. We are brought out of the domain of sin and death and are brought in to the presence of the King of Life. And all of this is an act of God. All of this is an act of grace. All of this is completely unmerited on our behalf. We could strive for lifetimes to be accepted by God, but we could never do what is required in order to be righteous. But thanks be to God that he has sent his Son to do what we could not!

Friends, the source of our salvation, the source of all grace, is God himself. He is the source of our salvation. He is the source of grace. He is the one who has given us everything that we need.

And this grace from God we receive through faith.

“But wait!”, you might say. Doesn’t the fact that we receive this grace through faith imply that we do something in order to get it? After all, we need to have faith in something, right? And faith is believing - and so therefore, we actually do have something that we contribute to our salvation. We have to believe, we have to have faith. If we don’t, then we can’t receive God’s grace. Well, it does seem like that could be the case, right?

At this point we need to examine verse 8, because it is a wonderful example of how Scripture helps us to understand what is really going on. Verse 8 tells us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”. The key for us here is to understand what “this” is referring to in the second half of the verse. At first glance there are three possible conclusions: it can refer to the noun “grace”, the verb “saved”, or the noun “faith”. But when we look at it grammatically, “this” doesn’t actually match up directly with any of them - the pronoun in the text is the neuter gender, whereas “grace” and “faith” are both feminine and “saved” would be masculine. As Hoehner recommends, the best way to understand the pronoun is that it is referring back not to one of the three specific ideas in the preceeding verses, but to the entire section itself.

And if we stop and think about it for a moment, the fact that it refers back to the entire section strongly impacts our own understanding of the text. It’s not a question of which of the three is a gift of God - it becomes clear that they ALL are a gift from God. The grace that he freely gives to us, the faith that is necessary to believe, the salvation that results - they all have their genesis in God himself! They are all a wonderful gift of his grace. He is the source and the power of this saving grace.

And why does he give us this grace? Well, that brings us to one of the other solas that we are only going to touch on very briefly this morning: Soli Deo Gloria - for God’s own glory. Look with me at Ephesians 2.10:

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

First, see that God actually takes ownership of us - he calls us his “workmanship”. It is God who has done the work in bringing us to salvation and raising us up into the heavenly places with Christ. At the same time, God is also the one who has prepared beforehand the good works that we should walk in now that we have been raised with Christ! From beginning to end, we see that this is all an act of God. Even the good things that we do are orchestrated through his sovereignty! And so as we look at the whole sweep of salvation, we see that it is exclusively for God’s own glory. He has done all of the work. He deserves all of the credit! His name will be magnified and glorified by the works that we do because he has prepared them already for us to walk in.

Friends, I hope that verses 4-10 have been liberating for you. These verses free us from the fear and trepidation that we are not doing enough to secure our salvation by showing us that it is absolutely true - we are not doing enough to secure our salvation because we cannot! But because God is rich in mercy, he has done everything that needs to be done. He has given his son as the perfect sacrifice to make atonement for our sins, dealing with the problem at the core of it all. He has awakened our spiritually dead hearts back to life through his marvelous grace. He has given us the gift of faith that we might see Christ and believe in his atoning work. And he has prepared for us good works to do in response to his great mercy. If there’s one thing that I want us to take away from verse 10, it is that we should delight to do the work that God has set before us. The same God that brought about our salvation has prepared these things for us to do - we have tasted and seen already how he is good…how much more should we now step out in faith in response to his call to follow him and to walk in his ways! These works should not be a burden to us. They should instead be a joy.

Grace as a Person

The last thing that I want to turn our attention to this morning is the message of Ephesians 2.11-18. Paul has taken the time to explain to us the nature of our condition apart from God. He has shown us the depths and the riches of God’s mercy in the grace that he has lavished upon us so that we might through faith take hold of the accomplished work of his Son. And in these last few verses of the chapter, Paul takes the time to help us understand what that accomplished work looks like. As we close out this morning, I want us to take some time to examine what that accomplished work of the Son looks like. I want us to see that the single, best manifestation of God’s grace is the incarnation of his Son, Jesus, for without his life, death, and resurrection there would be no salvation. We see the grace of God most clearly in the person of Christ.

Turn with me to verses 11-18:

Ephesians 2:11–18 ESV

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Paul begins by drawing a distinction here between the Jews and the Gentiles. The church in Ephesus would have largely been of Gentile origin, hence the fact that he reminds the readers that they are Gentiles in the flesh. Over the course of the next few verses, Paul helps us to understand the actions that Christ takes as part of delivering grace to us. Let’s take those actions one at a time.

As I mentioned, the first distinction Paul draws is between Jew and Gentile. This was an important distinction in the early church, and was in fact one of the sources of the first church controversies - how were the culturally Jewish believers to understand the addition of the Gentiles to the family of God? Paul points back to the ritual of circumcision, which would have produced a sharp distinction between your average Jew and your average Gentile. Undergoing circumcision was no trivial matter. It truly set the Jews apart from the rest of the world and it served as a sign that they were a people of Yahweh’s possession. By drawing attention to the fact that the Gentile believers were not circumcised, Paul is re-emphasizing the points that he has already made in verses 1-3. The Gentiles were dead in their sins, they were separated from God. They weren’t even privy to the special revelation of Himself that Yahweh had provided to the Jews! As such, they had absolutely no claim to God and no claim to his Messiah either. Paul is completely correct in saying that they were “having no hope and without God in the world”.

But when God’s grace appears in the form of Jesus Christ, all of that changes:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

Friends, the blood of Jesus brings us into the family of God. It even brings those who never had a relationship with God in the first place into the family of God! And all of this serves to underscore the point that Paul was making in v. 4-10 that this salvation is entirely of the grace of God. It’s one thing for the Jews to be saved - theoretically they would have at least had some understanding of Yahweh and the demands that he placed upon his people. Particularly pious Jews could even conceivably argue that they had done everything that they could to keep the Law as God had demanded of them (even though that is impossible). But a Gentile would never make that claim. A Gentile wouldn’t know about or have anything to do with Yahweh in the base case. A Gentile would have absolutely no reason to seek reconciliation with the God of Israel.

Have you ever done “cold call” evangelism where you randomly talk to people in the street about their need for salvation? If you have, you’ve probably encountered just this kind of thing - you might talk to someone about how they are a sinner and they need to be reconciled with God, but they will completely reject your premise. “I’m not a sinner,” they might say, “I’m a good person! I do the right things, I don’t get in trouble with the Law, I’m kind to others! I don’t need to be forgiven!”

It is only after the blood of Christ has already brought us near that we can understand our need for salvation and can call upon the name of Jesus. Because Christ is the one who brings us near, it drives home again that this salvation is entirely of grace - without Jesus, we would still have no hope and be without God in the world. But through his atoning death on the cross, Christ himself has brought us near.

Second, we see that Christ has fulfilled the demands of the Law for us. Consider Ephesians 2.14-16:

Ephesians 2:14–16 ESV

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

Complete obedience to the Law is what Yahweh demands of his people. The Law shows us what it means to be righteous - but the sad truth is that despite our best efforts we are fundamentally incapable of obeying the Law. Paul himself reminds us of this in Galatians 3.10-11:

Galatians 3:10–11 ESV

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”

There is only one person who ever lived who has completely and utterly obeyed the Law - Jesus. He tells us himself in Matthew 5.17:

Matthew 5:17 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

When we cast our faith upon Jesus, we acknowledge that we are unable to live up to the demands of the Law. We acknowledge that our own righteousness is insufficient to save us. We admit that we need someone to stand in our place, someone to fulfill the demands of righteousness for us. This is exactly what Jesus does! And again, I hope that you can see how it leaves us without any argument at all that we have any role to play in our salvation - we need to rely on someone else to fulfill the demands of the Law for us! And in fulfilling the Law, Christ has ultimately abolished its power over us. His righteousness is imputed to each and every saint who believes in his finished work. When God looks at his redeemed, he does not see our own feeble efforts to fulfill the demands of the Law - he sees instead the perfect obedience of his Son. It is only through the finished work of Jesus that we can be reconciled to God.

Finally, Jesus brings peace between us and the Father through his finished work. If we think all the way back to verse 3, we are reminded of how in our natural state we are children of wrath, subject to the infinite wrath of God because of our sinful natures and active disobedience. But in the death of Christ on the cross, that infinite wrath is satisfied. It has been placed on the only one who could truly bear it: Jesus. And as a result, our debt has been paid. Our sins have been forgiven. We are no longer on the outside looking in, for Christ has bound us to himself and has brought us into the heavenly places. Through the cross, he has brought peace to both those who were far off and those who were near.

In the context here, “far off” and “near” refer to the Gentiles and the Jews, respectively. But I think there is another way that we can understand that phrasing as well. When we acknowledge that there is nothing in our own efforts that can bring about our salvation we can come to a deeper understanding of what it means that Christ brings together both those who are far off and those who are near. It’s easy sometimes to look at those who we consider “good” people and think that they must be the kind of people who are near to salvation. The kind of people who, even though we know and admit that no one deserves salvation, we still might deep in the back of our minds think that they have some sort of leg up. They might seem to “get it” more. They might seem to be closer to what we would expect of a Christian. So it maybe doesn’t surprise us as much when someone like that comes to faith in Christ. After all, it seemed as though they were almost there in the base case!

But friends, I want to leave you today thinking about those who might seem “far off”. To the first century Jew, this would have been every single Gentile out there. They knew nothing about God and his revelation. They were not expecting his messiah. They lived their lives as though the God of Israel did not exist, that he was unimportant. And yet, God saw fit to draw them near.

I know that we all have a friend or maybe a family member that feels beyond all hope. Maybe they are caught up in the desires and the passions of this world. Maybe that have something else that they have devoted their hearts to in worship. Maybe they have a complete and total disdain for anything to do with Jesus, the Church, or the Gospel. The truth is, though, that the fact that our salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone means that no matter how far off someone may seem, they are not beyond the reach of God’s grace. The fact that our salvation is not our own work and comes through Christ alone can give us hope that no one is truly beyond hope. We may have done everything that we can think of to drive God away, but his grace is irresistible. Let us never cease to pray for our loved ones who may seem to be far off - because it is true that if they needed to gin up the faith themselves they might never come, but we believe that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and that it is not of ourselves, but it is a gift from God. And when we believe that, there are no limits to who might one day be numbered among the redeemed.

Let’s pray.

Gracious God, we thank you for the truths of the Reformation. We thank you for the recovery of these core doctrines that help us to better understand the nature of our faith. We pray that as we ponder the mystery of our own salvation that we would rejoice in the fact that it is entirely external to us, knowing that without your enabling grace we could not have received through faith the finished work of Christ. We pray that this realization would humble us, that it would remind us that despite what anyone has done there are none who are outside the reach of your marvelous grace should you choose to redeem them. Father, help us to pray fervently for our loved ones who do not know you - help us to be bold in sharing the gospel with them, and above all help us to marvel at the incredible finished work of Christ that reconciled sinners such as ourselves to you. Father, we were indeed without hope in this world, but through your sovereign grace and power you have brought us near and have reconciled us to you through the blood of Jesus. We pray that all that we say and do would be colored by your grace, and that we would rejoice in knowing that you and you alone are the fountain of our salvation, and in so doing may we praise you more and more each day.

Amen.