By Grace Through Faith

This message is about being saved by grace through faith.

In the book of Acts there is a moment where Peter is preaching to the crowds and the Bible says that those who were listening were “cut to the core” by the words that Peter was saying. That is the power of scripture. That is the power of the gospel message. It had nothing to do with how Peter was speaking, he was not creating a theatre moment. Some people like to see a lot of theatre and antics from preachers. This was the power of the gospel message that was cutting into their hearts. The power of the gospel is not in manipulation, but how the Holy Spirit speaks through the gospel and can cut through our hearts, cut through a hard heart, cut through our pains and even trauma. They did not attend multiple church services, their knowledge of who Jesus was probably rather limited. They were a crowd of people from other nations who heard the commotion and came to hear what the disciples were saying. The power of preaching, the power of a Bible Study, the power of a worship song, is rooted in the power of the gospel. I don’t come here to teach a new philosophy, or just a new way of looking at reality or your life, I come to preach the gospel and my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will speak the gospel through me, but it will be the Holy Spirit that uses these words of scripture that I am going to read to convict, to encourage, and to give life. Tonight I want to talk about the gospel and look at at passage of scripture that sums up the gospel message. Ephesians 2:1–10

In these ten verses we are confronted with the gospel. We are confronted with the sad state of the world and those who do not have a relationship with God. We are told the good news of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. And in this message of good news, more about the character of God is revealed to us. We are told how much God loves us and that his love for us is not because of any good work that we do, but is because it is the character and the nature of God to love us. It’s who God is to love us.

By Grace We Have Hope.

Ephesians 2:1–3 “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.”

Without grace, without a relationship with God, we do not have hope. Our trespasses and sin is the greatest problem in the world today. Do not let anybody tell you that sin isn’t a big deal. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is why the world is a mess. To be dead in our trespasses and sins means we are spiritually dead. The biggest problem of you, or me, or anybody’s life is whether or not they are still dead in their sins. It is not their financial situation, it is not their criminal record, it is not their self esteem or how happy they are, depending on how you define the term happy, the most important thing is whether you are still dead in your sins or whether you have relationship with Jesus Christ. If you are saved, then as this passage makes clear, you are made alive with Christ. No matter what you’re dealing with here on earth you can be thankful that the biggest problem in your life, the sin that separates you from God, has been forgiven by the blood of Jesus. If you are not a follower of Christ then not matter what you do, no matter how great your life gets after you leave here, the biggest problem of your life that has eternal consequences is still unresolved.

A. Following. Throughout these three verses is the language of following. Following the things that the world does. Well, what is the world following? The world is following the prince of the power of the air, that is Satan. For the unbeliever, their is not real freedom. Without Christ freedom is an illusion. The choices presented to you are an illusion. Because whatever you choose to do as somebody who is not following Christ, you will do as somebody following the world, or your own sinful desires. That is what it means to have a sin nature and not have the Holy Spirit. Think about it. Without Christ what true freedom do we experience? The freedom to chase sex, drugs, and money. Things that give us no lasting peace. Even if you chase something you deem as “good,” like a good career or a good job or a family. Without Christ, our own passions and sinful desires will catch up with us.

If you have experienced addiction, addiction of any kind, than this is a truth you understand well. In fact, addiction is a clear representation of what living without Christ is like. God can use some terrible like an addiction to open our eyes of what life really looks like without him. When you are addicted to something, you follow that thing you are addicted to. Your time, your money, your energy, it goes into pursuing that drug or whatever it is you are addicted to. The first step in Celebrate Recovery is: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors. That our lives had become unmanageable. That reality is made clear in addiction. Without Christ, we are powerless over our sin and our sin nature. But that reality is true for anybody who is not following Christ, the difference may just be that the things they are following are not as obvious in how damaging they are or may not cause physical death. God can use your addiction to show that life without him is not going to work. That doing things are own way, and following our own path is not going to end well. I do not meant that being a Christian automatically rids you of a physical dependency of drugs. Just like being a Christian no longer rids you of your sin nature. But. We are no longer enslaved to it. Romans 6:17–18 “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

And How does the path end for those who do not accept Christ? Ephesians 2:3 and were by nature children of wrath. The fate of those who do not have Christ is made clear in scripture. Those who are not followers of Christ are not children of God. I have heard people say, usually in justifying their sin that “we are all children of God.” Is that what the Bible says? Is that what Jesus said? John 8:42–45 “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

This is the harsh and sobering truth of the spiritual state of those who are not a true believer in Christ. This section reminds us of the reality of the spiritual state of the unbeliever, and also sets the stage for this amazing shift in language from verse 3 to verse 4.

By Grace we are Saved

Ephesians 2:4–8 “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.

This is a violent shift in language from a state of hopelessness to a state of heavenly dwelling. We have moved from being described as a child of wrath, whose free will may mean that we simply are free to follow the world and satan, driven by the passions of our flesh and the desires of our corrupted mind. How? If we are sinful, born into this world with a sinful nature. We lived our lives selfishly, we have a past that haunts us. We look back on our lives and we see chaos, we see people we have hurt. We look into our hearts and with opened eyes see how wicked our thoughts are, how can it be that we are Ephesians 2:6–7 “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.” How can this be?

The answer is given to us. Grace. It is by grace. It is through faith, but it is by grace. That is important. All the glory of our salvation goes to God. We do not pat each other on the back for our great faith, for even the faith you have is a gift from God. It is through faith, but it is by grace. Grace means this is a gift of God for which you did nothing to earn. That is the most important thing to understand about grace, you do not earn it, it is given to you. God is not running a recruitment program where he is selecting the best and brightest of humans to save. Remember in Matthew Jesus praised God that God reveals it not to the knowledgeable and wise, but to little children. God initiates salvation because of His own good and perfect will, it is not earned. It is not because we are “oh so humble,” be careful for giving yourself credit for your own humility because it may be a gift of God that you humbled yourself. It is by grace that you are even aware of a God for which to humble yourself to.

So what is faith? If our salvation is something that is by grace, meaning is a gift from God that God initiated, but it is accessed through faith, then we should be very clear about what faith is and what faith isn’t. It may take faith to believe that God exists. But it is not saving faith that believes God exists. Remember, demons believe the God exists. James 2:19 “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” Faith is not just that we believe in the existence and supremacy of Jesus, but that we declare our allegiance to him. If you are a Christian, you have declared an allegiance to Jesus. Jesus is Lord of your life. You have said that “I no longer follow these other gods, the way of the world, the sinful desires of my body, and I now follow Jesus.” A big problem in American Christianity is that people want to check off boxes. I said a prayer. I go to church. Listen, God will not be mocked. Galatians 6:7–8 “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” You cannot force your way into heaven by tricking God on a technicality where you go through the motions and yet you never give your heart to God. You never pick up your cross and follow him. Luke 14:27 “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” How do we bear our own cross? How do we have the strength to follow Jesus? Grace. Grace is our life blood as Christians. Christians live on grace. We get through the day without using drugs by grace. We live a different life by grace. We change from the person we used to be by grace. If you want this grace, ask for it! Stop just trying harder, pray for grace! God I can’t do this. I can’t go a day without this drug or this whatever. I need your grace. It is my only hope of changing. If you are trying with all your might and you are not praying for grace, you are probably getting frustrated because you live, not on trying harder, although taking action is important, but we live on grace.

So how are we saved. We are saved by Grace. What is our role in our salvation? To have faith in Jesus. Romans 10:9 “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” In this life you are never going to be perfect. We are going to struggle with out sin. But that’s the thing, we struggle with out sin. We hate it. We try to turn from it. We repent of it. Confession is asking God for forgiveness and repentance is the turning away from it. We will come back to repentance at the end.

How this happens is by grace through faith. So why? Why does God extend this grace to us. If we didn’t earn it, we did nothing to deserve it, this grace is totally initiated by God. Why does God do it? Because he loves us. Because of his mercy. The kind of love defies all human understanding of love. People understand love as transactional. I love you because I get something from you. You make me feel good, I feel happy when I am around you, whatever it is that we get from the person. But then when we no longer get that from the person, we no longer love them. Thats the world’s understanding of love. Marriages the end because one spouse says to the other “I fell out of love,” when the truth is they never understood what true love is because they loves the person as long as they got something out of it, security, chemical reactions and feelings.

But this God extends mercy to us because he loves us, and it is by grace because he gets nothing out of it. God will be glorified whether we believe in him or not. God loves us because that is who God is. God is love. It is the character of God to have mercy on us and love us. God is not lonely where he created us so that he would be less lonely. He does not need us to be glorified. Sometimes people talk about God as if he needs us for something, like he is incomplete without us. It is amazing grace and amazing love that God saved us, even while we were still sinners. Even when we were still dead in our trespasses. When you were doing whatever it was you were doing that put you here, God was there, God saw all of it, and he saw your heart when you did it too. He knew you would be sitting in this seat right now, he knew you would bend your knee to him and give your life to him and say God I want to do things your way because my way of doing things has not worked out. Why? Because he loves you.

IF you are a follow of Christ. If you have been saved there is an amazing truth in this passage about your spiritual position. What I mean by spiritual position is your standing before God. Ephesians 2:5–7 “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.” This is a completed thing IF you are a Christian. This is not something you are still working for if you have been saved by grace through faith. Your current physical position is here at WCC, but your spiritual position is not that your sins are forgiven, but that you have been raised with Christ and seated in a heavenly position. Here is an analogy to what I mean. Your physical position right now is sitting in the chapel at WCC. Your position with the state is as an inmate who must serve however much time for whatever your crime. That is your position with the state of NC. With God, which is way more important, infinity more important than the state of the NC, you are physically still here at WCC but your spiritual standing with God is not only that your sins are forgiven but that you have been raised and seated in a heavenly position with the purpose of God showing you the riches of his love and kindness from now to eternity.

By Grace we do Good Works

As Christians, we need to understand that works are important but it is key that we understand works are important, not because they posses any saving power, but because they reflect that God is working in us. 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.” We used to walk in our trespasses and sins, but now we walk in good works. We cannot boast about our salvation because it is all by grace. I am clean of drugs, if I took a drug test right now I would pass. I do not boast in that. That is all due to Christ. The same grace that saves us from hell, the same grace that makes our spiritual position no longer a child of wrath but a child of God, is the same grace that God continues to give to us. Grace is not a one time deal that forgives your sin and now its on you to do the rest on your own by your own strength. The same grace that God gives us in salvation is the same grace that God gives us to help us overcome our addictions, our failure, our trauma from our past, it is the same grace that is supplied to us everyday and throughout the day.

Christians will frequently read this passage and stop at verse 9. Verse 10 is that Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are created for good works. Works does not save us but works are important. They reflect that something real has happened to us when we gave our lives to Christ. But before Paul tells us the we are created for good works, he tells us the we are Christ’s workmanship. Christ is working on us. Christians can get very defeated by looking at the sin in their life and trying to white knuckle their way through it on their own effort. How do we do this? We give ourselves pep talks. We hype ourselves us by telling ourselves “I am done with that. I am not doing it again.” We make oaths, we swear we are never doing that sin again or going to that place again. But are we asking for God’s grace? Grace that not only forgives our sin, but changes us? All the recovery meetings in the world will be in vain if God in his grace does not change your heart. Yes you need to ditch the old numbers. You need to cut off some people in your life. You need to make some drastic changes in your life to get clean or live a life that does not put you right back here. But most important, you need a new heart. You need Jesus working on you, changing you, renewing both your heart and your mind, you need grace.

How does God do this? Its happening all the time, in prayer, in reading scripture, and in worship. But here are some things that God will use to supply grace and change you heart.

1. Read scripture. If you don’t know where to start, start in Matthew and read to John. Then read them again. Then read the rest of the New testament letters.

2. Pray. Pray often, continually. Pray scripture. Ask God for grace. Grace in your addiction. Grace in your families situation. Praise God for the grace he supplies.

3. Community. You need to have brothers in Christ. I don’t mean other guys that come to the chapel. I don’t mean other guys who claim to believe in God. I mean brothers in Christ who are following Christ. Who are saying I am not the person I was before and I am walking away from that old life. You’re not going to find perfect friends. You’re not going to find friends that never let you down. But you can find other guys that are serious about Jesus. They may be different than you, but if they are serious about Jesus then you have the most important thing in the world in common.