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­­­­LSB  Ephesians 2:1-10

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

This is now our third reading of this text and we have been working through this rich doctrinal statement of Paul's for over a month.  This will be our 6th Sunday since we began this section back on December 10th because of Christmas and the Childrens pageant and time away.

And we are in no hurry to finish this section.  The reason is because in these verses we have the very heart of christianity, and the inner core of the gospel.  Paul goes deep, into the very internal machinations of how someone becomes a christian.  A real one.

And we can't get this wrong.  This is ground zero of our faith.  If we get this wrong, heaven and hell hang in the balance.  A wrong message or an incomplete message can send people to hell instead of heaven.  So this is critical information.

Now, then, you might already be saying to yourselves, Am I going to rely on some guy in Tonopah Nevada preaching to a dozen people on a good day to tell me what to believe about something so important that if he got it wrong, I might go to hell?

It's a reasonable question.  Do you trust me to get something of eternal consequence right?

It isn't rocket science folks.  Although I could actually make that claim.  I worked with rocket scientists in my career out on the range, and I wouldn't trust any of them with my eternal future.  

The ideas here do not require degrees.  PHD's.  Doctoral letters and framed diplomas on the wall.  These truths are basic.  God did that.  He made the gospel simple enough for fools to understand.

Isaiah 35:8 (KJV) And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

God didn't design the gospel so that only erudite high IQ people could understand it and be saved.  Just the opposite.  God made the message simple enough that fools could find the way.  

In fact Paul will argue that perhaps God purposely tipped the balance in the direction of fools.  Smart people have a much harder time.  They trip over the simplicity.  They want a gospel that appeals to their erudite pride.  He did purposely make it a stumblingblock for the jews, and for the greeks, foolishness.

There it is.  For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.  1 Cor. 1:18  God actually stacked the deck against the proud.

The message is so simple it excludes the proud.  Too stupid.  Too simple.  Too base.  And yet missionaries coming to tribes who have never heard need only the basics of their language to tell them a message that can save them from hell.

Right here in Ephesians 2:7 - 10 we have the mechanics, if you will, of the message.  How does it save us.  What is the order, if you will, of salvation.  Ordo salutis is the latin term.  We aren't the first people who have studied these things.  Theologians have talked about the order of events that takes someone out of a perishing doomed world and places them in Christ.

Since this doctrine of the good news, the gospel, is ground zero for people entering in or being turned away, does it not make reasonable sense that if you were the enemy of God who has a death grip hold on this world because of sin, that this would be THE place where you introduce error.  Damning error.

Of course!  Get this right, and believe, and you go to heaven.  Get this wrong, go to hell.  I said this is ground zero.  It's also ground zero for damning error.  This is where Satan concentrates his errors because this is ground zero.  And God made it easy on Satan by making His gospel un-appealing to proud men.  So Satan has a built in advantage since we are all proud sinners.  Pride is the root of sin.  

So the gospel is where Satan concentrates a high degree of effort to keep sinners out of heaven and help them get into hell.  Get the simple message wrong, go to hell.  Make the simple message more difficult, add a bunch of stuff to it or even subtract from it and hollow it out.  Whatever appeals to your sinful nature, more, or less, Satan's got a plan for you to get you to forsake God's pure simple message.

How many of you have heard that old hymn, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy?  Anyone?  I know I hold the PHD on obscure old school hymns, but this one came to mind.  

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.

There is a wideness in God's available forgiveness.  As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us.  But don't confuse that with the gospel message and begin teaching a wide "way".  

Well, how wide?  How much error can be included and people will still be transformed by the gospel.  Regenerated to new life by God's indwelling Holy Spirit.

We err in two opposing directions from the narrow way.  And Oh, by the way, Jesus said the way is narrow that leads to life, and few there are that find it, and the way is wide that leads to destruction.  Kind of blows up the wideness mercy idea.  Scripture says the wide easy highway is the road to hell.  The gospel that saves men is constrained.  It's a narrow way.  Jesus words, not mine.  So we have to get it right.

So then, we can err concerning the gospel message in two ways.  Directionally opposite from each other.  The first and most common error, perhaps more so in the past than now, since we're leaning into the second error more these days.

The first damning error is the one that the jews were making, and that in reality, if you think about it, every single man made religion is based upon, and that is working your way back to God by good works.

Who will God admit into His presence?  The righteous.  Right?  And if we introduced that discussion to religious jews they would all agree.  Righteousness is keeping God's law.  All of the minutia.  If you're a farmer you skin the peas out of the pod and you count them.  9 for me, one for God.  Righteousness takes every way shape and form of working out God's or whoever your created god is, laws and doing them.  Good works.  Law keeping.  Special underwear that makes the god you invented happy with you.

Sacerdotal religion.  God wants you to keep 7 sacraments if you desire to go to heaven.  Do stuff.  Do stuff.  Do stuff.  If you trip up and sin, do more stuff to make up the difference.  Do penance.  Say hail mary's.  Sleep on a bed of nails.  Walk the last quarter of a mile to some idol over rocky ground on your knees.  The more you do, the better your odds.  Like buying a thousand lottery tickets will increase your odds of winning.  More more more.  You do it.

Will any amount of righteous works increase your salvation?  These verses answer that, for all time.

Let's go the other way.  Works don't save you, soooo........ lets go the other direction.  Grace plus nothing.  Ever here that term.  We used to hear that all the time growing up.  

A dad of a friend of mine actually talked someone OFF the mission field with the grace plus nothing speak.  Believe in Jesus, say some magic words in a magic prayer, fuhhgeddaboudit.  You're in baby.  Never think about anything God related again.  Don't worry about changing.  Don't worry about growth.  Don't worry about anything.  You said the magic words, you're golden.

Grace plus nothing, and give me a heavy helping of the nothing.  Because if you think there's anything else required, you're adding works to salvation which is deadly.  Well, both are deadly.

Let's look at these verses together.  You'll notice I picked up the section in vs. 7 which we covered last time we worked together in this passage.  But I want to begin in vs 7 in order to stress what Paul is saying here.  God Himself is building a masterpiece for His own glory.  

7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Do you see those words,  - So That -  there at the beginning of vs. 7.  Those words are the fulcrum, the axle that the entire thought of vss 1 - 10 turn on.  God is doing something - SO THAT - something else is accomplished.  There is a means and an end.  

God is building a masterpiece, called the church, so that throughout eternity we will be a visible showpiece that speaks of His Grace towards us who deserved to be punished.  That's what the entire section is about.  That final end.  The glory of God because of His mercy and grace and kindness.  To us who are the makeup of His masterpiece.

God is the sole person building this masterpiece, this showpiece which will be on display for all eternity, we will forever be the visible show of the glory of God's kindness and grace.

The church is God's masterpiece.  Forever.  That's the baseline of this argument that He accomplishes everything, and we accomplish nothing pertaining both to our salvation, and also utlimately to all the righteous works we will accomplish after salvation.  He does both.  He builds His masterpiece without human effort.  Although we will see that there IS a place for human effort.  But not in what God is designing and building.

We are first of all dead, incapable of response, and second of all, incapable of anything relating to our salvation and then to acceptable works that glorify Him.  Watch close and you'll see both things addressed here.  X2

Before salvation, only God can cause life, and even after salvation, only God can achieve acceptable good works through our efforts for His glory.  He does it all.  And yet, He lets us join Him in what He is accomplishing, after we're redeemed and regenerated.  We are saved by His grace and then we accomplish good works for His glory, through His grace, by His Spirit.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast.

Let's try to unpack this a little at a time.  This is so important because it forever kills the idea that we could do anything to gain God.  To gain salvation.

? God's building a masterpiece and He's waiting for dead sinners to make themselves alive and then do enough good works to be worthy of Him.  No no no no.  First of all Paul begins with the obvious reason God must do this and we are useless.  We're dead.  

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

God cannot hope for a masterpiece of His grace, waiting for dead sinners to make themselves alive, pulling up at your dead bootstraps I suppose, and then having made our dead selves come back to life, we then perfect ourselves so that we're not sinners anymore.

Utter hopeless foolishness.  And yet this is the centerpiece of man made religion.  I must reform myself and keep God's laws in order to make myself worthy of heaven and God.  I will, I will, I will.  Sort of sounds like someone else we heard saying the same thing.

Isaiah 14:13 But you said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’

There's nothing new under the sun.  Satan invented the bootstraps method of man made religion that is the basis for all man made religious systems.   

God's response to man made self righteousness sounds something like this;

 15 Nevertheless you will be brought down to Sheol,
To the recesses of the pit.

When God creates a masterpiece to show off His mercy and grace and kindness for all eternity, He begins with dead sinners and does all of it.  He quickens us to life.  He removes our sins and pays our debt.  He places us IN Christ.  He raises us up to dwell in the heavenlies.  He adopts us as sons and daughters and makes us fellow heirs with Christ.  Him Him Him!  He does it all, we do nothing.

He does it all, and therefore, all the glory for all eternity is given to Him.
If we could pull ourselves up from our dead bootstraps and accomplish our own righteousness, what credit would go to God.  The glory would be on us forever for making ourselves alive through our own efforts.  Bootstrap righteousness from dead people making themselves alive.  Ludicrous.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith

OK, we've talked about the absolute necessity of grace.  Anything else and the glory goes somewhere else.  If God is building a masterpiece for His glory for all eternity, it can only be accomplished by His grace.  His effort.  

What is grace.  It is deserving hell and having heaven handed to you as a gift.  It is undeserved benevolence.  It is God causing all of the life and blessing for a helpless sinner who deserves only wrath.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith
 
What does it mean to be saved through faith.  We are saved from the deserved condemnation and judgement that is due every one of us.  Saved from perishing into an eternal hell, which is what every sinner deserves.

What part does faith play.  We hear the message that Jesus died on a cross, in our place.  He died a substitutionary death, in my place.  He took my punishment and He gave to me instead, His righteousness.  

Faith is me putting all of my trust into that finished work He accomplished in my place.  I believe He did that for me.  I believe that what He did for me is sufficient for my debt to be cancelled, paid in full, and I believe Jesus has given me a righteousness not my own.  My sins assigned to Him.  His righteousness assigned to me.

The big $5 theological word for that is imputation.  My sins and debt are imputed to Christ and He pays the full penalty that was due to me.  Likewise His righteousness is imputed to my account, and God declares me righteous.  I can stand in God's presence . . . righteous.  With Jesus righteousness.  I am clothed in Jesus perfection.  Those garments, white and clean have been given to me.

I believe it.  My faith is in His completed work, on my behalf.  Why would anyone believe that?  Well, for one thing, if it isn't true, if it didn't happen, I'm helpless.  I'm bankrupt.  There's nothing I can do to fix dead broken me.

But that's not why I have faith.  I believe all of that happened because this book tells me it did, but even more than that, Jesus rose from the dead.  
Reliable witnesses, over 500 of them, witnessed Jesus, risen from the dead.  That's the basis for my faith.  I believe everything this book promises about rescuing me from deserved condemnation.  My faith lies in His resurrection from the dead.  Everything He promised is true.  

Having said that, faith becomes important because works is the antithesis of faith.  Works says, I don't believe what Jesus did actually accomplished everything.  I don't believe Jesus death was sufficient without me kicking in some good works.  Faith and works are mutually exclusive.

Either Jesus death and resurrection were sufficient, or they weren't.  If they weren't, you better jettison faith and get to work being righteous enough to appease God.  How much is enough.  Jesus told us in the sermon on the mount.

Mt. 5:48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect
That's the standard if faith alone isn't good enough and you have to accomplish salvation without Jesus.  Sinless perfection is required if you go with works instead of faith.  And remember they are mutually exclusive.  Because as soon as you choose works, it cancels out faith alone.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

I confess that I have often taught that the faith that saves us is the gift of God.  And that's correct.  That's true.  But scholars have shown that because of word tenses and other things we don't see in the original greek that the this in the phrase and this not of yourselves, is not the anticedent of faith.

What is the this that is the gift of God.  It's the entire package deal of salvation that Paul has been talking about since verse 1.  Everything that it took to cause your salvation, including the faith to believe everything, all of it is a gift from God.  

If you are saved.  If you are a believer.  If you have been quickened from the deadness of sin to life together with Christ, if you have received the Holy Spirit who dwells in you and makes the one on One friendship real, causes the personal relationship with you and Jesus, if all of that has happened;

God did it.  You caused none of it.  He caused all of it.  THAT is the gift of God.  He did all of it so that you, and a whole lot more of us with you, will glorify Jesus, for all eternity.

It's that same idea again of God creating a masterpiece, the church, which will shine His glory back on Him for all eternity.  The fact that you are a building block in that building is because He gave this gift to you.  

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

So then, the anticedent of this, is not just the word faith, it's everything that came together to cause those three words together.  Saved through faith.  That's the antecedent.  That's the gift.  

I can't stress enough in verse 7 that God is building a masterpiece, a showpiece of His grace and kindness and mercy that will be on display for all eternity.  The church gleaming with God's reflected glory.  That's why human achievement is excluded.  All of the glory from this masterpiece, this creation must shine back upon God.  

If God allowed human achievement in the work of salvation, then only part of the glory would be His.  He'd have a whole bunch of glory of self righteousness works going back onto the workers.  The achievers.  NO.  All of the glory for this masterpiece is HIS because He caused it ALL.

and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

I have to be a broken record here.  Paul is saying the same thing over and over so I will too.  Not of works.  Not of works.  For we are HIS workmanship.  We are His creation.  Created in Christ Jesus.

Salvation is creation.  2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

You're a new creation, and NONE of it came from you.  All of it shines all of the glory back onto God and Christ.

Legalism and works righteousness systems make God angry.  How dare you think you can have some of the glory of salvation.  He does it all.  All the glory belongs to Him.

I stopped mid verse.  Right.  If I stopped here you might make the second error and say, OK, OK, I get it, I'll never go anything good again.  Grace plus nothing.  I'm actually pretty good at nothing.  I excel at nothing!  Nothing works for me.  God you can count on me doing nothing.  

People teach that, you know.  No effort doing righteousness.  Ever.  If you do, you're a self righteous legalist who God hates.  

No, no.  Paul is arguing that no human achievement is involved in the cause of salvation.  Salvation is a gift.  It is 100% accomplished by God for God's own glory.  But let's read the rest of vs. 10.

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

God fashioned the church, He builds His masterpiece, His showpiece for all eternity, He is the master craftsman.  He saves.  He regenerates.  He quickens from the dead and breathes life into His new creation.  He removes us out of this perishing condemned world and places us in the heavenlies, adopted heirs, IN His Son.

But he creates us for a purpose.  10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
 
The fact is, that before He breathes life into us, before He regenerates us and makes us a new creation, it was impossible for anything we did to be acceptable and pleasing to Him.

Isa. 64:6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;

Sewage.  The hebrew words here are the filth of sewage.  Decay.  Death.  Here, God, have some sewage.  Aren't you lucky to have me?  Are you pleased with the dung I'm bringing into your presence.

That's the righteousness we are capable of without Him removing the sin and re-creating us, regenerating us, quickening us from the dead.  

But after God calls us out of this world and makes us alive together with Christ, our sin removed as far as the east is from the west, then He has prepared good works for us to walk in.

As a new creation, with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit, God can work through me for His glory.  Read John chapter 15.  I am the vine, you are the branches.

4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

God saved us to work for His glory.  Good works have no part in salvation, but good works have every part in the necessary evidence that salvation has actually been accomplished.

The grace plus nothing folks who excell at doing nothing are the branches that get pruned and thrown into the fire!  Good works are the evidence of God living in us and us in Him.

One final idea quickly this morning.  Good works only meet God's standards when His Spirit is working through us accomplishing His purposes.  Remember this building God is assembling is a sparkling perfect jewel.

You may think to yourself, I can't imagine anything I did being any part of that sparkling jewel.  Well, you're partly right.  Paul tells the Corinthians how God will accomplish His perfect bejeweled building, His masterpiece, with their spotted, compromised, deficient works in 1 Cor 3:11 - 13

11For no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, 13his workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work.…

All of the stuff I did, without the Spirit, it was just Jim's works, worthless because the Holy Spirit wasn't working through me, that's the wood, hay, stubble that gets burned up.  Only the perfect gold, silver, and jewels that He accomplished with me and through my by His Spirit will make it through that fire and part of His masterpiece.

But still!  What a privilege to have something God accomplished, through me, unique to His love and use of me, forever in heaven, part of His masterpiece.  How exciting is that!