The Gospel & Salvation: Salvation by Grace Alone Part 2

Salvation by Grace Alone

Not of Works

Ephesians 2:9

 There is nothing more important for man to understand than the work of God by which we become part of His family. We are focusing on the good news of salvation and the work of God which saves the undeserving sinner. We have studied the sin problem. We know we all deserve the just wrath of God as the eternal consequence of our sin. It isn’t the bad sinners alone who deserve God’s judgment. It is all of us because none of us measures up to the standard set forth by the Law of God. We don’t, nor are we capable of loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul. We all fall short also on the requirement of the Law that calls us to love our neighbor as we love our self.

We have come to understand Jesus as the only solution to our sin problem. He was the innocent substitute upon whom God laid our sin at Calvary, and on the Cross Jesus bore the wrath we deserved. God raised Him from the dead as proof that He was satisfied with the sacrifice of His innocent substitute. The suffering and death of Christ on the Cross was sufficient payment for our sins.

We have learned about how we become beneficiaries and partakers of the divinely provided solution. We repent and believe. We are saved by faith alone in Christ alone. And we have been looking most recently at why it is that simple. All God requires is that we see ourselves as destitute sinners, humble ourselves before Him and cry out for mercy, turn from our sin, and embrace Christ by faith. The result of our faith is an imputed righteousness. In the great exchange our filthy sinfulness is removed and we are graciously and mercifully clothed in the righteousness that belongs to none other than Jesus Christ Himself. Our sin is removed and we are clothed in perfect righteousness.

Take out your black hymnal and turn to page 181. His Robes for Mine is a newer hymn that details the truth of this exchange. Read these lyrics.

Turn now with me to Ephesians 2. Read verses 1-10. We looked at this passage last week in order to understand why salvation works the way it does. There is a simple answer to one of salvation’s most intriguing questions. The question is, “Why does salvation result from simply repenting and placing our faith in Jesus?” The answer is “grace.” The great “but God” action described in verse 4, that caused us to be born again to a living hope, even when we were dead, is the result of God’s amazing, unfathomable, life transforming grace. We saw what grace is and what grace does last week. If you missed it you need to hear it.

We are saved by turning from our sin and trusting Christ by faith. It is that simple. Salvation is God’s free gift to those who repent and believe. The fact that it is the “free” gift of God that makes many stumble. It is the “free” aspect that makes some decide that this is too good to be true.

Haven’t we been conditioned toward skepticism when we are presented with things that sound just a little too good to be true? You can finish this statement for me. “If it sounds too good to be true, …..” After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if we look at the offer of salvation from a pragmatic perspective, wouldn’t we have to admit that it falls into the category of offers too good to be true. We turn from our sin and trust in Christ, and look at what we receive in exchange. We are rescued from eternal death, clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and blessed with eternal life as partakers of the blessings of heaven for eternity. From a merely pragmatic perspective, and thinking about that logically, it sounds way too good to be true. It sounds far too easy. It must be harder than that.

There have been multitudes of religions developed because mankind has decided that the offer is too good to be true. It can’t be as simple as repent and believe. It has to take more than that. From the earliest days of the church there have been detractors, skeptics, frauds, and outright enemies of the gospel, who have never stopped trying to pervert the simplicity and glory of the gospel of God’s grace.

The Religion of Human Achievement

Justification = Faith + Works

The Religion of Divine Accomplishment

Faith = Justification + Works

 Look at Ephesians 2:9-10 with me. Verse 8 says, “For by grace you have been saved (justified) through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;” This verse describes the work of justification. This is what happens to us as a result of the great exchange. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We walked according to the course of this world. Everything described in verses 1-3 was true of us. But God, by His grace, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and seated us with Him in the heavenly places. That is justification, salvation, redemption, and our rescue by grace. This is why Paul makes the great statement of verse 8.

Then, to make sure there is no mistake, no misunderstanding, no room for anything to be added to the work of God’s amazing grace, he states clearly in verse 9, “not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” This verse is the basis for our message today. We are not saved by any good works. At a later point we will cover the truth of verse 10. We are saved unto good works. That is the point of verse 10. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we would walk in them.” Verse 9 tells us that salvation is not the result of our good works. Verse 10 tells us that the result of salvation will be the good works which God saves us to do.

There is good reason Paul had to write a great deal about the true work of salvation being by grace alone through faith alone. The detractors and enemies of grace attacked him and his message on literally every front. The earliest of these enemies were what we most commonly call Judaisers. They would also be appropriately called “circumcisers.” They would be called this because circumcision is the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham. 

The Judaisers, or circumcisers rejected the idea that salvation was by grace alone through faith alone. They believed and taught, and insisted on those who came to Christ must also embrace the religion of the Jews and be circumcised and follow the religious practices of the Jews. The circumcisers believed that everyone had to conform to the Law of Moses, as well as the traditions of the Jewish religious authority. They had to keep the Law, observe the feasts and festivals, and follow the dietary and other restrictions outlined in the Torah. (The first five books of the Old Testament.)

Turn to Acts 15. The end of chapter 14 gives us the historical background. Paul and Barnabas had been on a missionary journey. They had been sent out from the church at Antioch and they now returned and reported all the things God had done and especially how that God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas were fulfilling the Great Commission by taking the gospel to the whole world. In fact, Antioch was the first church established among the Gentiles. The term “Gentiles” refers to all people who were not Jewish.

Read Acts 15:1-5. These verses describe the problem Paul faced from the first enemies of the gospel. What was the problem? The problem was that these circumcisers wanted to add the requirements of works to salvation. They believed in the religion of human achievement. They believed that justification was the result of faith plus works.

But notice in verses 6-11 who was defending the doctrine of grace. It was Peter. Read verses 6-11.

Let’s turn to Galatians for a little insight into this first point. Remember, we are expanding on the truth of Ephesians 2:9. We are not saved by works. None of us has any reason to boast before God about anything we have done to deserve to have been saved.

I want to walk you through the flow of thought in the first two chapters of Galatians. I would encourage you to read these chapters carefully sometime soon. This is one of the earliest letters written to the churches. Notice in Gal. 1:6-7 that Paul wastes no time getting to the issue which is of great concern to him. Read verses 6-7. Paul was not a little concerned that the Galatians had been led astray by those who distorted the gospel. Paul warned them that a distorted gospel is no gospel at all. The distortion was basically the same issue we read about in Acts 15.

From this point in chapter 1 Paul warns against anyone preaching a gospel contrary to the gospel he delivered. Look at verses 8-9. These are strong words. Then, beginning in verse 11 Paul describes how he received the gospel message he preached. He got it directly from the Lord Jesus Christ. Just like the other apostles of Christ had spent three years learning from Jesus, Paul did the same thing in the desert of Arabia. He went to Jerusalem and met with Peter and James. They didn’t correct anything about the gospel Paul preached at that time. It was fifteen years later that Paul went again to Jerusalem, and even though there were circumcisers there who insisted on Paul’s Greek companion being circumcised, Paul didn’t yield in subjection to them for even an hour. 

Paul was so committed to the defense of the gospel of grace that in 2:11, when Peter’s actions were contrary to the teaching of the gospel of grace, Paul opposed Peter to his face. Sometime after Paul’s trip to Jerusalem he returned to Antioch. Peter came for a visit. Peter had been in Antioch, hanging out with the Gentiles, and while there were no other Jewish brethren around, Peter was comfortable eating with the Gentiles and enjoying the fellowship of his brothers in Christ. Then a company of Jews came from Jerusalem and with their arrival came a change in behavior. Peter began to withdraw from the Gentile believers because he feared the circumcisers. Paul confronted Peter’s hypocrisy. He confronted them directly about not being straightforward about the gospel. See verse 14.

Look closely at 2:16. Paul states clearly and repeatedly this important truth. “…nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” It could not be stated more clearly. No person can be justified by the works of the Law. Justification is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Paul’s conclusion in verse 21 is, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

Attempts to distort the gospel by adding various works did not stop with the early church. There are many “Christian” denominations that have been guilty of distortions, not by adding requirements of the law, but by adding requirements of other things. The Catholic Church adds to faith the necessary good works of the sacraments, infant baptism, confession to the priest, and several other traditions. From my understanding of Catholic doctrine, grace is conferred through the sacraments. I don’t find a biblical basis for this anywhere in Scripture. Grace is God’s benevolent favor to man which makes sinners part of the church. It is not God’s benevolent favor to the church which is then distributed through the church to man. These are distortions of the gospel.

Many denominations add baptism as a necessary component to faith for a person to be saved. I’m not saying that there are no Christians in those other religions. God saves many people who have some distorted views of Scripture and the work of salvation. This is undoubtedly another argument that salvation is by grace alone. But we cannot add any human good work to the work of God, or salvation is no longer by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Baptism is an important first step of obedience for the follower of Christ, but baptism does not produce the work of salvation.

The thing we must recognize is that there is nothing we can do or need to do because salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This is so that no one may boast about anything we do to merit salvation. Paul wrote in Romans 3:27-28, where Paul is writing about justification by faith, he says, “Where thin is the boasting?” He had just written in 3:24 that we have been justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Because this is how we are saved, where then is the boasting? Paul goes on in verse 27 to say, “It (boasting) is excluded.” He writes in verse 28, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” He had stated earlier in verse 20, “…by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight…”

Why would I spend this much time emphasizing something so basic? I know it is necessary because there are so many who believe that people get to heaven because of the good deeds they do in this life. I’ve said this often. The most commonly believed lie of Satan is that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. That is the belief system embraced by most people in our culture. If you ask the average person if he or she believes themselves to be a good person, they will inevitably answer “yes.” They believe they are good people because they truly believe they do more good than bad. They are counting on God’s judgment using a set of scales. If their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, their ticket gets punched and they are permitted into heaven. This is a religion of human achievement. 

We are spending time on this because some of you have a history in churches that teach that to be justified a person must perform certain works in addition to faith in order to obtain a right standing before God. I have a responsibility to teach the truth of the gospel. Distortions of the gospel are designed to do one thing. They are designed to deceive people regarding God’s work of salvation and lead them to a path that does not bring them into the kingdom of heaven.

What is wrong with a religion that adds certain elements of human achievement to faith? In the first place it perverts the gospel and pollutes the doctrine of grace. We have talked about that. In the second place, and this is problematic, how does a person ever know for certain they have done enough? If any part of my salvation depends on something I do, how can I know for certain I have done enough, or done everything, or done what I thought I was supposed to do correctly? I would live in constant fear that something had been omitted, or something had not been done correctly, or that I had done enough wrong since I did what I thought was correct, and my efforts had been somehow canceled out because I messed up.

Look again at the handout I gave you. Under the religion of human achievement look at the equation. Justification = faith + works. If this is how it works, how many good works must I do? How long must I persist in my effort? What are the good works which would be included? Who decides which good works are acceptable? Who decides whether or not I have done enough? How often should the list of good works be reviewed? Has anyone developed a spreadsheet, or a flow chart to help me figure all this out? Is this like it was in school? Do I have to achieve something better than the grade of “F” to make it into heaven?

There is no peace in that kind of system. There is no security in that kind of system. There is no assurance in that kind of system. If my salvation depends on me doing something to confirm or perfect or complete what God has done, then I am doubtless in deep trouble because I am so prone to mistakes and errors. To tell you the truth I could mess up a soup sandwich. It is messy to begin with but I can mess it up even more.

Salvation is by grace through faith. It is not as a result of our works. None of us has anything to boast about before God. We have nothing to boast about because we didn’t have to do anything to earn God’s favor. If we had done anything to earn it, it was the result of our works and not of grace.

We will come back next week to look at Ephesians 2:10. We need to understand the role of good works in the life of the true Christian.

What do you believe about the work of salvation? Do you believe it is the result of God’s grace alone? Are you trusting in Christ alone? Or do you believe you have earned God’s favor because of your goodness, or something you have contributed which has earned you God’s favor? Isaiah tells us that our best human works are nothing but filthy rags. (Is. 64:6) 

The good news of the gospel is that God is willing to remove our filthy garments, those stained with sin, and He will wash us and make us white as snow. He will remove our transgressions and remember them no more. He will forgive, and heal, and rescue from sin and death and restore life, and peace, and joy. We don’t become partakers of this great exchange because we have done anything to deserve it. It is the result of God’s amazing grace.

Let’s pray.