Sola Gratia

Part 2: Ephesians 2:8-10

This morning I will be continuing my five part sola series with part two going over Sola Gratia. But before we begin let us pray once more.

I am going to be going to many scripture passages today but I would like to read one before we get to far. Please turn in your bibles to Ephesians 2. Like I said this is the second message of the 5 sola series, in the first message I talked about sola scriptura, scripture alone, and this message is on sola gratia, grace alone. Lets read Ephesians 2:8–10 “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.”

Now a quick recap, Sola is a Latin adjective that means alone or by oneself and the 5 solas, or the 5 reformed alones are:

The 5 Solas

Sola Scriptura, scripture alone, or by scripture alone.

Sola Gratia, by or through grace alone.

Sola Fide, by or through faith alone.

Solus Christus, through Christ alone.

and Soli Deo Gloria, for the glory of God alone or to God alone be the glory.

If you have a very keen memory you may have noticed that is not the same order I gave last time. When thinking about these messages and talking with Pastor Isaac we both agreed that the first message had to be sola scriptura. Everything we know about God and ourselves must begin with scripture. Scripture contains the revealed word from God, and we focused last time on 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” We also agreed that the last message in this series had to be Soli Deo Gloria, because everything we do should be for the glory of God alone. So now you know were we began and where we will end up, that leaves three in the middle and the three remaining can be in any order. Grace, faith, and Christ, Faith, Christ, and Grace, Christ, grace, and faith. I know that is not every way you can say those three but you get the picture. Its not that they are unimportant, in fact it’s just the opposite, each are very important but also equally important to our belief. I changed this sermon today to cover sola gratia because I was blessed to be able to go to the G3 national conference this past September and the theme of the conference was on God’s sovereignty. I heard messages about God’s sovereignty from several dedicated and faithful men over three days each speaking about different aspects of the sovereignty of God. Those messages resonated with me and made me think quite a bit about God’s sovereign grace, and so here we are.

Reformation Recap

A few weeks ago Pastor Isaac preached a little bit on church history and spoke a good bit about Martin Luther, a great figure in the protestant reformation and in church history. He also went over what the protestant reformation was, a protest against the current Roman Catholic teaching and a desire to reform the church.

Church Formation

In the first century the Apostles, who were called directly by Jesus Christ and were also taught by Christ himself, formed the church from the direct teaching of Christ, who is the chief cornerstone of the church. The Apostles spread the gospel, planted churches, and raised up elders and other missionaries to continue the work that Jesus commanded of them, and also to all the believers, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation, known as the great commission. Matthew 28:18–20 “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” This mission was not an easy one, and still to this day is filled with dangers. It is widely believed that all of the original Apostles including Paul were martyred except John who was imprisoned late into his life and was exiled on the small island of Patmos when he received the visions and prophecy from Jesus that he recorded in the book of Revelation. These Apostles and those that they taught formed the church, and were faithful and consistent in their teachings for around 500 years.

The Deformation of the Church

Then for the next 1000 years the church, or the Catholic church strayed further and further away from the doctrine of the bible and introduced new doctrines that are not found in the bible. The office of the Pope does not appear in the bible and is a twisting of the words of Christ from Matthew 16:18–19 “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”” Catholics will say that from this passage, Jesus made Peter the leader of the Apostles and the leader of the church in total. They also go on to claim that these words from Jesus made Peter infallible and a representation of Christ on Earth. Also this ability to act on behalf of the church in an infallible way is also passed on to his successors. Thus giving all power and all authority in the church to one man, and we all know the saying about absolute power, it corrupts absolutely. There has only been one man ever to walk this Earth that can be given this authority and still do God’s will and that is Jesus Christ. The Catholic church introduced the doctrine of Purgatory, where all believers go after death to suffer and pay for the sins that were not covered by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Let that sink in, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, his substitutionary work of taking the holy wrath of God even though he was spotless and sinless, taking the full cup of wrath from God the Father was not enough to completely save you. God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity was not powerful enough, was not strong enough to take all of our punishment for sin and so we still have punishment left to pay for. The Catholic church introduced the doctrine of Mary, the mother of Christ as also being sinless and is a co-mediator for us in heaven, and the institution of indulgences. Indulgences were things you could do, works, that would remove some of the time you or a loved one that had already died needed to spend in purgatory. This also led to the practice of paying for these indulgences to fund church buildings and the lavish lifestyle that Martin Luther saw when he visited the Vatican as a young priest.

The Protestant Reformation

So around the 15th century there were some men that began to question these new doctrines and the Pope, and in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the Church in Wittenburg Germany, which is widely cited as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. These 5 sola doctrines have their beginnings during this time of reformation but these famous five were not grouped together like we see them today until the 20th century. The first part of this series we covered Sola Scriptura, Scripture Alone, and how we are to always go back to the bible for all knowledge about God and how we can be saved from God’s holy justified wrath on sin. Today I would like to talk about Sola Gratia, Grace Alone, or by grace alone.

God’s Grace

What is grace? More specifically what is God’s Grace? Many think of God’s grace as His kindness, and it is. It is one of the aspects of God, one of the attributes that make God God. God is all knowing, or omniscient, God is all powerful, omnipotent, God is present everywhere, omnipresent, God is perfectly just and true, He is Holy, and God is perfectly loving and merciful, He is eternally full of grace. Like a multifaceted perfectly cut diamond, with every move you see a new and beautiful sight. Before I was saved I knew a little about the bible and about God, and what I knew then was also pretty much wrong, but that sadly is to be expected from an unbeliever. I knew that there was the Old Testament and the New Testament, and that is the end of my correct thinking about God and the bible then, but I thought that God of the Old Testament was angry that what he had created had gone so wrong, and the whole thing was about his wrath and punishment, then something happened, God chilled out and then the New Testament was a different God and it was all about love and peace and how to be good to each other, then that didn’t work either and at the end He would just throw it all away, the end. I am happy to say that I was very wrong. God did not change in between the pages of the Old and New Testaments, he is not wrathful in the beginning and loving in part two. God is, has, and always will be the same. He is love, and he is wrath, he condemns and he forgives.

Grace in Creation

Lets take a look at God’s grace through out the bible, and we will start where the bible starts. Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In the beginning there was only God, He was there and perfect and in perfect unity with himself, Father, Son, and Spirit. God then decided to create everything that is, from nothing, the heavens and the earth, what we are standing on today and everything else that is above and beyond the earth. But why? God was in perfect triune harmony and in need of nothing, was He compelled to create? Did he need to create? No, in a massive and spectacular display of His grace he created everything, He did not have to create us, He was not lacking in something that compelled Him to create, it was His will to create and His will be done. God does not need us to be fulfilled or to be complete, but we need him to exist at all.

Grace in Holding Creation Together

God showed His infinite grace in creation but the grace of creation does not end after the sixth day. God continues to display his grace on all of his creation by holding everything together with his power. Colossians 1:16–17 “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Also Hebrews 1:2–3 “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” At any moment God could remove his control over the very atoms that make up the universe and let them scatter apart, He made everything from nothing he could close his fist and send all of His creation back to nothing. It is God’s grace that keeps the everything together.

Grace with Adam and Eve

Back to Genesis, when God created man and placed him in paradise, He, God, gave man dominion over all the things on the earth, but God gave man one rule, one thing that he was not to do. Genesis 2:16–17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” We all know how that went. There was one rule to follow and Adam failed to follow that rule. God is Holy and just and had warned Adam what the penalty was, eat the fruit and you will die. God had every right to kill Adam and Eve the moment their lips touched the fruit, but God is a gracious God. Adam and Eve do die, God does not completely ignore the penalty for their transgression, but God does not immediately kill Adam and Eve he first declares the curse that is now on all of creation because the once perfect world has been stained with sin. Even in the curse that is handed down there is hope that a child of Eve will come and defeat Satan, also in a picture of this promised Christ to come an animal is slain to cover Adam and Eve because sin requires death.

Grace in God’s Patience

Not only did God show Adam and Eve grace in delaying their death and while handing down the curse provide a hint of the ultimate defeat of sin, He continues to show every man, woman and child grace by holding back his righteous wrath every time someone sins. This is also called God’s common grace, not that the grace He shows is common, which can also mean ordinary, but common as in it is for everyone, saved and unsaved alike. Grace provided to the common man, not common, or ordinary or plain grace provided to man. This aspect of God’s grace is often referred to in the bible as the patience of God or being slow to anger. Psalm 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” God shows his grace on everyone, not wishing destruction but repentance.

God’s Redemptive and Saving Grace

As you can see there are many aspects of God’s grace but the one aspect of His grace that has been hinted at is God’s redemptive and saving grace, and when we talk about sola gratia, or grace alone, this is the aspect of God’s grace that is meant. Salvation is a free gift from God, we read that in the passage in the beginning. Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” It is a free gift, free, we did nothing to earn this gift, if there was something that we had do to or could do to earn our salvation then it would not be a gift, and certainly not a free gift. Also the decision to give this free gift was not made at the time that it was given, it was not made when you or I were on the path of salvation, it was not made when we first heard the gospel, not when we were born, not when we were conceived in our mothers womb. God made this sovereign choice to give us, an undeserving sin filled rebel of the Holy God, who from birth have been at war with God, not indifferent, not apathetic, but fully and openly at war with God, He made the decision to give us the free gift of salvation before he created everything, before Genesis 1:1 before in the beginning. Ephesians 1:3–4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him...” Lets consider that for a moment, God did not have to create us, He was under no compulsion, or duty to create this entire universe and us, but he did. He also knew that we would reject him, we would despise him, deny him and his holiness. He knew that he would redeem us and He knew the cost of of our redemption, we talk about it quite often but do we really and truly consider the cost? The condescension of the Son, coming as fully man and fully God to live with us, to be tempted over and over by sin and the devil himself, but never failing, living a perfect sinless life so he would not have any stain of sin that would in turn require its own punishment, but totally sinless in order to be able to take on our sin in punishment from God the Father on the cross and then God the Son dying on the cross. Have we really considered the cost enough? God has, but he chose, in grace, to create us anyway.

Election of the Saints

Now lets consider the choice, God made the choice to save me and you before the foundations of the world as Ephesians 1:4 says, it is also clearly stated in Romans 8:29 “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Last Wednesday we went through this section of Romans and we talked about this very verse in order that we can be very clear on this point, God being omniscient did not peer through time and see which ones of us would come to Christ on their own and those are now the ones He predestined, or elected to be saved. If that were the case electing us before the foundations of the world is not a free gift, it we will do something and God agrees that we will be good enough to be saved and chooses us then that choice is not a gift but a reward or what we are due. That line of thinking says that God is not sovereign in His creation and relies on us to make the first move. That is completely wrong, the gift of salvation, the free completely undeserved gift from God is made by God for His glory. Why did he chose me or you? I do not know, what I do know is that there was completely and totally nothing I did to deserve this, to be forgiven, to be covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, all I did was reject and blaspheme God at every turn, I didn’t want to be saved. Until I did, until God said it was time and sent the Holy Spirit in power to remove my calcified rock of a heart, replace it with a heart of flesh and open my eyes so I could see that I was not at all a good person, that I was lost and I needed a savior. That was and is a priceless gift of grace from God that I thank God for everyday.

Free will and the Sovereignty of God

God is sovereign over all and he has chosen whom he is going to save before he sends his spirit, before we heard the word, before we were born, before He created everything that is from nothing. But wait, we have free will right? We decide what we are going to do, we decide when we are going to do it. It’s my choice, it’s my life to live and do what ever I want to do, I have free will. Right? If I have free will to do whatever I please, then how can God be sovereign, how can God be in control of all things? We do have a will that is our own, but, ever since Genesis 3 and the fall of Adam and Eve, that will that we have only seeks to sin, to disobey the God that created us and all things. So we have a free will but that will only want to do evil and to sin, Romans 8:7 “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” so all our works we do with our free will are works of sin, and what are the wages of sin? Death. With our free will we have earned death and destruction in hell for all eternity. Our free will has made us slaves to sin and bound to its punishment, the freedom that we claimed to have has put us in bondage, in this life and in eternity. Here is a quote from Martin Luther in his book “Bondage of the Will” “‘free will’ is nothing but a slave of sin, death, and Satan. Such ‘freedom’ is no freedom at all” Also from Galatians 6:7 “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Our will sows evil and sin, and our free will will reap death. God is sovereign over all and his will be done, and we can rejoice in that fact because God is holy and his will is holy and good, and all things will work for the glory of God, but we will save that sola for the last part.

Some may still have a hard time coming to grips with the full implications of a sovereign God and want to cling to the belief of our free will, I would say this. What is your view of God? Do you believe that God is all knowing and all powerful? Do you have a high enough view of God, if God is all knowing and all powerful and he has a will and a plan for his creation, then how do you think your incomplete limited knowledge and weak, or really nonexistent, power will be able to over rule the holy, omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign creator of the universe’s sovereignty? Our week pitiful will has no comparison to the will and strength of God.

God will save whom he wills

Some may say that God predestining and electing him, and not him or her, and not her isn’t fair, to that again I would say, what is your view of God? Did we create ourselves from the dust of the Earth? Did we breathe life into ourselves? Does the clay say to the potter why did you make me into a ashtray and not into a flower vase? Examine your view of God and know that He is sovereign over all, and I mean all. He made us for his purposes and according to his will and plan not the other way around. 2 Timothy 2:20 “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable.” We must remember that we are not the potter, we are the clay. The question we should be asking is not why did God elect some but not all, but why did God elect any of us at all. Because God along with his unwarranted choice to create also made the unwarranted and undeserved choice to show us his grace. It is a work of God’s grace alone that any are chosen to be elect and saved from our deserved and earned fate of eternal death.

We cannot work ourselves to Heaven

I have talked about our salvation being a free gift, that it is undeserved and that God has chosen us, predestined, elected us for salvation before the foundations of the world. I have touched on this next point that I need to go over in the other points I have made but this point is critical that we understand and grasp, not just in our heads but in our hearts. The point is this plain and simple, we cannot work ourselves to Heaven. There is nothing that we did to earn salvation, there is nothing we did to signal to God that we were ready to be saved. Salvation is a total and complete work of God, a complete and total work of God’s grace to a sinful, rebellious, wrath deserving, hell bound person. The very notion that we need to be saved is a gift of grace from God. Any notion of the sovereignty of God, of his holiness, of being dead in sin is foolishness to the man without the grace of God and the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:14 “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The natural person does not, and cannot accept the things of God because the natural person does not have the Spirit in him. Look at the world today, the theory of evolution is taught as fact in public schools and any mention of creation is forbidden. Marriage is not a thing to be cherished and guarded, anyone can marry anyone, man with man or woman with woman, but don’t you dare to assume anyone’s gender because there its no longer two, man or woman, there are dozens of genders that you can pick from depending on your mood or what you want to wear that day. The things of God are folly to the world and to all the unsaved. Any work done without the help of the Holy Spirit are dead works and are cannot be pleasing to God. Romans 8:8 “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Can an unsaved person help an old woman across the street? Yes. An unsaved person can do kind things but with out the Holy Spirit these things that on the surface look like good deeds, helping people, giving to charity, etc. are done not for the glory of God but for the glory of ones self, either to seem better in the worlds eyes or to try and quiet their own conscience. We cannot save ourselves by any works or deeds. Also on the other side of that coin is the fact that just as we cannot save ourselves, we also cannot save others. God has chosen his elect for salvation by his grace, but also God has ordained the method for his elect to come to the faith. Romans 10:13–15 “For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”” The elect will hear the word of God, receive the Holy Spirit and believe in faith and be saved, but how will they hear the word unless someone tells them the gospel. We are charged by Jesus to spread His gospel to everyone, but we must remember this always, it is not us who brings about salvation to anyone. We share the gospel to anyone and everyone, throwing God’s gospel seed out far and wide, but God is the one who sees that seed into the heart of his elect to grow and bear fruit. We can rejoice if any that we have shared the gospel too comes to Christ but we rejoice that God’s grace has been shown and not that our works were the cause of redemption. Just importantly for us to remember when we are evangelizing to the world is it is God’s grace that saves, we are not the cause of salvation but also we will not be the prevention of salvation either. But that comfort should never lead us to laziness and the thought that because salvation is a free gift from God and God is sovereign then we do not need to evangelize and spread the word, to think that those that are elect will be saved because God is sovereign and he will make sure they are saved. God will make sure that all of his elect are saved but he uses us, and has commanded us to be the message bearers of his gospel and Jesus has not sent us out to do this great commission with out sending us the helper in the Holy Spirit. What a joy and a privilege we should feel to be a tool of salvation for God’s elect, a tool, but not the cause or reason.

By Grace we are Chosen to be the Bride of Christ

God made the world and us by his grace, God has been patient with the whole human race by his grace, God chose some to be saved by his grace alone, and God provided the means of our salvation and redemption by his grace alone. But why? We have been discussing a lot of the how, God is all powerful, God is all knowing, but the why is God is Love, infinite and perfect love, and also God is Just, infinite and perfectly just, right and true. God created because he willed to show his love for the Son, to create a people for God the Son, but God knew we would fall and sin, not just some but all, first through Adam and also through our own sin desiring will inherited from Adam, and God being also perfect justice meant the sin had to be punished. God’s grace is the reconciliation of his love and his justice. What do I mean by reconciliation, God loves us with a love that we cannot imagine right now, all three persons of the trinity love the other with a perfect and holy love, God’s will was to have a bride for Christ and his will, his plan from the beginning, before creation, before the foundations of the world, Father, Son, and Spirit, in perfect agreement, in perfect Love, set this plan into motion, to create everything from nothing, to create man in Their image, choosing some people to be the gift, being patient with all of man kind, storing the wrath that we deserve because we sin constantly, sending the Son to Earth as fully man and fully God to be tempted, mocked, lied about, beaten, crucified on a cross and that stored wrath placed on Him, God the Son, who did not sin and deserved no wrath, all of the wrath for all of the elect past, present, and future, all of it, every single drop of wrath destined for all of the chosen saints who are to be the bride of the very one taking their due punishment, giving up his life when it was finished. Defeating death and providing our sure salvation, that is God’s grace displayed in showing his perfect justice in punishing sin and showing his perfect Love. John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God’s grace alone is the reason we can say that we are saved.

What the Free Gift of the Covenant of Grace does not Mean

There is so much that can be said about God’s grace, so much that I don’t have time for right now. But before I wrap this up I need to point out a few things that the covenant grace, that we the elect now have, does not mean.

Abolish the Law

Firstly, God is holy and perfect and does not nor cannot lie. And God gave his law, His commandments and statues to Moses and to his chosen race. This law was not given to Israel as way that they can be redeemed and be right with God. It was given to show God’s holiness and perfection that man cannot live up to, the covenant of the law was given to show man that we needed a savior because we cannot live up to God’s law. We are now, though, under the new covenant of his grace so is the covenant of the law abolished by the new covenant of grace? As Paul often says in his epistles when he answers his own questions, God forbid. The covenant of the law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, fulfilled completely by living in accordance to the covenant of the Law, perfectly fulfilling each and every statute, and in our redemption we are in Christ and he is in us, thus we have fulfilled the law of God through Christ, the law given to Moses and the Jews is not swept away and abandoned it is fulfilled. As Jesus said very plainly in Matthew 5:17 ““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.”

The Gift of Grace does not Save Everyone

Secondly, this gift of grace to provide a means of redemption and salvation is targeted and specific. God chose the elect to be saved before the foundations of the world, those elect in the past, the elect still alive right now and the elect still to come until the second coming of Christ are predefined and numbered. Jesus did not take the punishment for every human being past, present, and future. And the reason he did not take the punishment due to the whole human race is not because God did not have enough power to do so, the reason is simply it is God’s will to choose some vessels for honorable use and some for dishonor. If you don’t like that, or think that its not fair that God would choose some and not others then examine yourself and examine your view of God. God is sovereign, God is Holy, God is Just, and yes God is Love, but to think that you are right and God is wrong in his sovereign plan for redemption is a work of Satan.

The Free Gift of Grace is not a Free License to Sin

Lastly our sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, past present and future sins. Yes even our future sins were taken by Christ on the cross, BUT, this does not give us a free pass to go on living as if we have not recieved the Holy Spirit and have not been saved. The free gift of grace from God is not a free license to sin. Being saved and receiving the Holy Spirit changes us into a new creature, this is why Jesus said we have to be born again in the spirit, John 3:5 “Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” To be saved is to be born again in the Spirit internally and to show this rebirth with the outward display of being baptised in water. This rebirth makes us a new creature that now has the desire, and through the Holy Spirit in us, helping us, the ability to produce the good works that are pleasing to God. We now do not want to go on doing the work of sin, which is death. We do, as saved saints of Christ sill sin, our new spirit and changed heart is still encased in this flesh of damnation that wants to sin. We will battle with our flesh until we die or the Lord comes again in glory, whichever is first. But living for this dying world and giving into our sinful flesh is not what we as saved redeemed saints are to be known for, it is not our pattern of life anymore. We have been justified through Jesus Christ, have received the Holy Spirit with power and are now being sanctified into the image of Christ day by day. To put it very simply if we are saved, truly a child of God, we do not want to sin any longer, it should pain us when we do, that our continued sinning heaps more and more punishment on our Savior. If you are not feeling that pain when you stumble and sin, examine your faith in the scriptures. I cannot explain this better than the bible itself. Romans 6:1–4 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Conclusion

Ephesians 2:8–10 once more “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.” By grace alone you have been saved, nothing we have done to earn it, nothing special about us signaled to God that we were different and worthy of salvation. We are not saved to glorify ourselves but to glorify God. God chose whom he chose, provided the means, and holds us fast in his hands so that none that he has chosen through his grace and saved through Jesus Christ will ever be lost, or snatched from his hand. Nothing we can do to lose our salvation, nothing the world or Satan can accuse us of to make God reject his chosen saints. I would like to close with a reading from Romans 8, please turn there and follow along with me, and as we read this passage that starts with the golden chain of redemption and ends with a blessed assurance of our salvation, concentrate on what God is telling us. Romans 8:28–39 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen

Let us pray.