BY GRACE UNTO WORKS
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on November 13, 2022 under 2022 |
Bethany Bible Church Sermon Message; November 13, 2022 from Ephesians 2:10
Theme: We are saved by grace so that we might live a new life characterized by good works.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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We’ve been studying together from Ephesians 2. And isn’t the message that it has been declaring to us a glorious one? It tells us that salvation is the free gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ—completely apart from any work that we could do to earn it or to make ourselves worthy of it. Can there be better news to hear than that?
Today, we’ll be looking at just one verse in this chapter of Ephesians. It’s an amazing verse that sets before us the practical implication of God’s saving grace. But before we look at this one verse, let’s take a moment to review some of the highlights we’ve already learned from this chapter.
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Ephesians 2 began with some bad news—that is, by showing us how desperately we needed to be saved by God’s grace. In verses 1-3, the apostle Paul wrote;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).
That describes the condition we were in apart from Christ. We were spiritually dead before God in trespasses and sins. And yet, though spiritually dead, we nevertheless walked around in those trespasses and sins. We were under the oppressive bondage of the devil. We spent our time gratifying our sinful passions and lusts, and were operating under the guidance of our own blinded thinking. We were compounding guilt upon ourselves before a holy God, and were justifiably worthy of His eternal wrath.
In such a condition as that, there was nothing that we could have ever done to make ourselves worthy of His love and mercy. And yet, then comes those two wonderful words that we find in verse 4; “But God …” God, in great mercy, looked down upon us, saw our helpless condition, and saved us through His Son Jesus Christ. Paul went on to say in verses 4-7;
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (vv. 4-7).
By the rich mercy of God as a free gift—simply because of His great love—God raised us up from our spiritually dead condition, made us alive in Christ, and set us at His right hand in heavenly places in Christ. He did this so that He could forever set us on display as a demonstration of the greatness of His grace and kindness.
And do you particularly notice those words in verse 5? They declare the wonderful news to us that “by grace you have been saved …” That reminds us that it was all done for us as a gift—completely apart from anything we could have done to earn it. After all, as people who were dead in trespasses and sins, we didn’t have the ability to do anything to make ourselves worthy before God. Paul went on to make this especially clear to us in verses 8-9, when he wrote;
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (vv. 8-9).
What wonderful news this is! I can tell you that, as a former ‘dead man’—utterly guilty before God—completely helpless to do anything to make myself worthy of salvation—now made alive in Christ—there’s no question in my mind why this is called ‘The Good News’.
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But all of this brings us to a very important question. If you haven’t asked it yet, dear brothers and sisters, you eventually must. What place, then, do “good works” have in it all? Does all of this mean that it now no longer matters what we do?
I was skimming my way through the autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi once. And I found something that he said that made me feel that he wrestled with that question. And it seems to me that it played a large part in why he personally rejected the Christian faith. He wrote of how a Christian missionary—a Plymouth Brethren believer—once spoke to him and made the observation that Gandhi seemed to be continually struggling with an endless cycle of mending his ways and seeking to atone for his own sins. This Christian told him that all such attempts at self-improvement were futile. He invited Gandhi to stop trying to reform his ways and simply throw his trust upon Jesus. And Gandhi replied, “If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin.” And then—in these very telling words—he said, “Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.”1
I believe that Gandhi suffered under a very mistaken conception of the Christian faith—one that, I’m afraid, seemed to have been reinforced to him by some pretty bad examples of so-called ‘Christian behavior’. He was given the impression that, because of the teaching of ‘salvation by grace’, Christians who were thus saved no longer had to worry about their behavior—that, for them, “good works” no longer mattered.
When I read that, I sincerely wished that Gandhi had been shown the truth from Ephesians 2. It’s absolutely true that we are saved by God’s grace apart from our works. We don’t have to enter into an endless cycle of mending our ways and atoning for our own sins before we can be saved. Jesus has completely paid the debt for us on the cross. We truly can cast it all on Him by faith. But having been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, “good works” must now follow as the product of God’s grace! As the apostle Paul went on to tell us in verse 10;
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (v. 10).
In other words, we are saved by God’s grace by faith in Jesus Christ alone—apart from our works—so that we would now go on to live a new life that is characterized by good works. We are saved by grace—apart from our good works—but unto good works that God gives us to perform.
Let’s look at these wonderful words in Ephesians 2:10; and see how it is that God has brought this about.
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The first thing that Paul tells us in this verse is, “For we are His workmanship”—God’s workmanship. That’s what we now are; and what we will be, going forward, all the way to glory. What this tells us, then, is that we have been saved by grace unto good works …
1. HAVING BEEN GIVEN A NEW IDENTITY.
That word “workmanship” is a remarkable one. In the original language, it’s the Greek word poiēma. As you might guess, that’s the word from which we get the English word “poem”. I wouldn’t go so far as to say—as some preachers do—that this means that we are God’s “poems”. The best way to understand this is simply that we are God’s “workmanship”. But since a poem is a kind of ‘workmanship’, it might be helpful to think about it in that way for a moment.
What, after all, is a poem? It’s a well-crafted, carefully structured, creative literary composition—using such qualities as symmetry of lines, rhythm, meter, phonetics, symbolism, variety, and design—that results in a singular, well-ordered, aesthetically-pleasing work of art that makes an intended impression upon the listener. Every word in a poem is there for a reason; and is where it is for a reason. If you’ve ever seriously attempted to write poetry, you know that it takes a great deal of thought and hard work. And in that sense—if we are careful how we understand it—we can honestly and justifiably be said to be God’s piece of poetry—that is to say, His workmanship. We are a work of His that is carefully constructed with meaning and purpose.
I love it that we are told that we are God’s workmanship—and not our own. I certainly have a part to play in it all. So do you. As the apostle Paul puts it in Philippians 2:12-13;
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).
But in the end, we are not our own ‘workmanship’. We will not stand before God in heavenly glory as ‘self-made’ men and women in Christ. And we can be thankful for that! We will—in the end—be His workmanship in Christ; and all the glory will go to Him.
This is now our identity in Christ. And dear brothers and sisters; do you look at yourself in that way? Do you see yourself—right now—as God’s workmanship in Christ? If you do, then you won’t be discouraged by those times when you struggle in overcoming the sins of the past. You won’t feel like a complete failure when you stumble and fall. You won’t be in despair about your faults and shortcomings. You’re truly a work in progress—and the work will not fail because the Divine Workman Himself cannot fail. As it says in Philippians 1:6;
… being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).
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Second, we see that we are God’s workmanship “created in Christ Jesus”. This tells us that we are saved by God’s grace unto good works …
2. THROUGH A NEW ORIGIN.
When God made us into His own workmanship, He didn’t just simply take us as we once were—using all the old raw materials of our past life of sin—and simply do a ‘remodeling job’. He created us completely new. As it tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17;
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Think of the way we all celebrate our birthdays. That’s when you and I are typically accustomed to thinking of as our ‘beginning’. But that’s not how God sees our beginning. On the day when He opened our eyes to see and understand what Jesus did for us—on the day when He gave us faith, and we first placed our faith in Jesus’ work for us on the cross—we became ‘born again’. Everything that was true of us before that time, in God’s sight, is now gone. We are now “in Christ”; and a completely new life has begun. We may look the same on the outside. The clothes in the closet still fit us. (Well; some of them do, anyway.) But inside—by God’s estimation—we’re brand new.
This means, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that—when it comes to how we are to live today—we are no longer bound by our past. The apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:13-14;
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended [that is, to have grabbed-hold of the goal yet]; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).
The past no longer identifies us, because—in God’s sight—we have been made into brand new creations in Christ. And it also means that our past is no longer the foundation of what God is making—as His workmanship—as we now go forward. He makes us brand new in every respect—even in respect to the workmanship that He brings about in us as His people—saved to live a new life for His glory.
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And that leads us to the third thing that this verse tells us. Paul said that we have been created in Christ Jesus “for good works”. This means that we have been saved by grace …
3. FOR A NEW PURPOSE.
This is something that the apostle Paul stressed to us very clearly elsewhere in Scripture. I think one of the clearest passages of all is found in Titus 2:11-14. In that tiny little letter, Paul wrote to Pastor Titus to encourage and exhort the believers under his care to live faithfully for Jesus. And he told Titus;
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works (Titus 2:11-14).
Do you see it? The great lesson of the grace of God in our lives isn’t that it doesn’t now matter anymore how we live. Instead, it teaches us that Jesus gave Himself for us to redeem us from our sins so that we would be God’s own people “zealous for good works”. That’s what Pastor Titus was to teach the people of God. In Titus 3:8, Paul wrote;
“… these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works” (3:8).
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we look at the grace of God—shown to us in the death of Jesus for our sins—and interpret it to mean that it no longer matters what we now do, then we will have completely misunderstood the great lesson that the grace of God is meant to teach us. God has demonstrated His grace toward us through Jesus Christ, not only to raise us from spiritual death, but also to transform the way that we then go on to live.
Don’t you wish Gandhi had understood that? But dear brother and sister; do you and I understand that as we should? Wouldn’t it transform the conduct of our lives to know that we were saved for the purpose of good works?
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And there’s more to be said about this. It’s not that we now need to go out into the world and create ‘good works’ for ourselves to do. I say this cautiously, dear brothers and sisters; but I suspect that a lot of people have manufactured a lot of ‘man-made good works’ for themselves—’good works’ that they have created from out of their own worldly imagination apart from God; and that may even seem laudable to the people of this world—that have ended up actually resulting in a lot of harm to a lot of other people.
As frail creatures, we don’t have the wisdom to make up ‘good works’ that would be acceptable to God. But we don’t have to. As Paul goes on to tell us we are saved by God’s grace unto good works “which God prepared beforehand”. This teaches us that we are saved by grace …
4. WITH A NEW PROVISION.
It’s important to notice that the works we’ve been saved unto are called “good”. And that would mean that they are not works that come from out of our own creative imagination, or from out of our own human zeal and passions, or even from out of our own good intentions. They are called “good” works because they have their origin in the will of God. They are works that come from Him—works that, in His sovereign provision, He has designed, and ordained, and prepared for us in advance.
Now; that raises an important question: How do we know which specific works are His good works? I think that it’s very instructive that the New Testament doesn’t tell us in detail what those good works are. It doesn’t give us an official “good works” list. And that’s a good thing, too; because you and I both know—good and well—what we would do with such a list. We’d try to fulfill the list in our own power, check items off, and inflate our egos by thinking of what good people we are. “Look at how I have fulfilled the list!” No; God is wiser than to give us a specific, detailed list.
But I believe we can, nevertheless, know what His good works for us are by paying careful attention. We have God’s written word—which includes His commandments and instructions—to teach us how we are to live and what we are to do in the various situations of life. We should study our Bibles faithfully; because, as we’re told in 2 Timothy 3:16-17,
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
We’re also given the Holy Spirit, who indwells us, and empowers us, and—if we will faithfully yield ourselves to Him—guides us into the good works God has prepared for us. As Galatians 5:22-23 says;
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23).
And if we are keeping ourselves in the Scriptures, and are yielding ourselves ongoingly to the Holy Spirit’s leading—looking to Jesus as our great example—we can pay careful attention to the circumstances of life and to the needs of people around us—confident that God will reveal to us the good works that He has already prepared for us in advance.
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And that leads us to one more thing. Paul says, of these good works, that God has prepared them for us in advance “that we should walk in them”. In other words, God has saved us by grace through faith in Jesus …
5. UNTO A NEW WALK.
When Paul speaks of our “walk”, he’s speaking of our daily conduct—our everyday pattern of life. And can you see it? Good works are far from out of the picture for us! They are, in fact, what God has saved us by His grace to walk in ongoingly! They are crucial to who we are as His redeemed people.
What a picture this one, single, wonderful verse gives us. Think of it all! It tells us that, by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been given a brand new identity (“For we are His workmanship”), through a brand new origin (“created in Christ Jesus”), for a brand new purpose (“for good works”), with a brand new provision (“good works which God prepared beforehand”) unto a brand new walk (“that we should walk in them”).
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Now; is all of this true? Well; let’s let the greatest Authority of all tell us. Jesus Himself—in John 15—said this:
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you (John 15:1-7).
And at the end of it all, our Savior, Master, and Teacher said this:
“By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (v. 8).
Dear brothers and sisters; don’t ever think that we can ever be saved by good works. Rather, we are saved only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus apart from good works. But let’s also remember that we are saved by His grace unto good works. May the people of this world see the genuine fruit of His ‘good works’ in us through faith in Jesus Christ, and thus glorify our Father in heaven.
1Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mahadeve Desai, trans., Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (New York: Dover Publications, 1983), p. 108.
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