Coming Alive in Christ (2:1-10)

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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (2:1-10)

Some years ago I spoke to a group of actors and actresses, presenting to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Afterward, a handsome young Indian came up to me and told me that he was a Muslim and that he wanted to have Jesus Christ. We went to a nearby room, and after I had explained the gospel in more detail, he prayed a prayer of acceptance. He opened his eyes and said, “Isn’t it wonderful! Now I have Jesus and Mohammed.” Considerably disappointed, I had to tell him that Jesus could not be taken from some shelf of divinities and added to whatever other gods one might have. When He is Lord, there can be no others beside Him. Such is an example of the many misunderstandings of the meaning of salvation.

In Ephesians 2:1-10 Paul clarifies what it means to receive salvation and to be a part of Christ’s Body, the church. Here the apostle moves from eternity past into time. He describes the act and process of salvation, the miracle that draws men into the eternal plan portrayed in chapter 1. In context this section builds on the thought of 1:19, where Paul introduces the great power of Christ toward us who believe and then digresses to discuss that power in Christ’s life. He returns now to show that power in our salvation.

In the first ten verses Paul presents the past, present, and future of the Christian: what he was (vv. 1-3), what he is (vv. 4-6, 8-9), and what he will be (vv. 7, 10). Within this framework he gives six aspects of salvation: It is from sin (vv. 1-3), by love (v. 4), into life (v. 5), with a purpose (vv. 6-7), through faith (vv. 8-9), and unto good works (v. 10). The first aspect is in the past, the next four aspects (except for the second part of “purpose,” v. 7) pertain to the present, and the last aspect (including v. 7) is in the future.

SALVATION IS FROM SIN

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. (2:1-3)

First, salvation is from sin, which characterizes life before Christ. In these three verses there is perhaps no clearer statement in Scripture on the sinfulness of man apart from Christ.

The wages, or payment, for sin is death (Rom. 6:23), and because man is born in sin he is born to death. Man does not become spiritually dead because he sins; he is spiritually dead because by nature he is sinful. Except for Jesus Christ, that is the condition of every human being since the Fall, including every believer before he is saved. It is the past condition of believers and the present condition of everyone else.

Man’s basic trouble is not being out of harmony with his heritage or his environment but being out of harmony with his Creator. His principal problem is not that he cannot make meaningful relationships with other human beings but that he has no right relationship to God, from whom he is alienated by sin (Eph. 4:18). His condition has nothing to do with the way he lives; it has to do with the fact that he is dead even while he is alive. He is spiritually dead while being physically alive. Because he is dead to God, he is dead to spiritual life, truth, righteousness, inner peace and happiness, and ultimately to every other good thing.

One of the first indications of physical death is the body’s inability to respond to stimulus, no matter what it might be. A dead person cannot react. He no longer responds to light, sound, smell, taste, pain, or anything else. He is totally insensitive.

One day a young boy came up and pounded on my office door. When I opened the door, I saw he was breathless and crying. He said, “Are you the Reverend? Are you the Reverend?” When I answered yes, he said, “Come on. Please hurry.” I ran after him for a block or two, and we went into a house. A young woman was standing inside, weeping uncontrollably. She said, “My baby is dead! My baby is dead!” Lying on a bed was the limp body of her three-month old infant. She had tried to revive him, and nothing I could do proved to be of help. He showed no sign of life. The mother caressed the baby, kissed it, spoke to it, and cried tears over its little head. But the child made no response. When the ambulance crew arrived they tried desperately to get the child breathing, but to no avail. He was dead, and nothing anyone could do had an effect or could bring any response. There was no life there to respond, not even to the powerful love of a mother.

That is the way of spiritual death as well. A person who is spiritually dead has no life by which he can respond to spiritual things, much less live a spiritual life. No amount of love, care, and words of affection from God can draw a response. A spiritually dead person is alienated from God and therefore alienated from life. He has no capacity to respond. As the great Scottish commentator John Eadie said, “It is a case of death walking.” Men apart from God are spiritual zombies, the walking dead who do not know they are dead. They go through the motions of life, but they do not possess it.

After Jesus had called a certain man to follow Him, the man asked permission to first bury his father—a figure of speech that meant waiting until his father died in order to receive the inheritance. Indicating the condition of spiritual deadness and bringing both deaths together, Jesus responded, “Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:21-22). The man’s concern was not for his father, who was not likely dead, but for the things of the physical world. He wanted to take care of his physical welfare first and showed no genuine desire for the spiritual. When Paul counseled Timothy about widows in the church, he said of those who were profligate, “She who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives” (1 Tim. 5:6). Dead while they live is the sad state of every unredeemed human being.

Before we were saved we were like every other person who is apart from God—dead in … trespasses and sins. The Greek case is the locative of sphere, indicating the sphere, or realm, in which something or someone exists. We were not dead because we had committed sin but because we were in sin. In this context trespasses and sins do not refer simply to acts but first of all to the sphere of existence of the person apart from God. He does not become a liar when he tells a lie; he tells a lie because he already is a liar. He does not become a thief when he steals; he steals because he already is a thief. And so with murder, adultery, covetousness, and every other sin. Committing sinful acts does not make us sinners; we commit sinful acts because we are sinners. Jesus confirmed this when He said, “The evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil” (Matt. 12:35) and “the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:18-19).

Paraptōma (trespasses) means to slip, fall, stumble, deviate, or go the wrong direction. Hamartia (sins) originally carried the idea of missing the mark, as when hunting with a bow and arrow. It then came to represent missing or falling short of any goal, standard, or purpose. In the spiritual realm it refers to missing and falling short of God’s standard of holiness, and in the New Testament it is the most common and general term for sin (used 173 times). Paul does not use the two terms here to point up different kinds of wrongdoing but simply to emphasize the breadth of the sinfulness that results from spiritual deadness.

Paul’s statement that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) does not give two truths but two views of the same truth. Sin is falling short of God’s glory, and falling short of God’s glory is sin. As Paul had explained two chapters earlier in Romans, in its most basic sense sin is failing to glorify God. Although fallen mankind “knew God, they did not honor Him as God” (1:21). Of all the epitaphs that could have been written for Herod, the words of Acts 12:23 are the most appropriate: “An angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.”

That all men apart from God are sinful does not mean that every person is equally corrupt and wicked. Twenty corpses on a battlefield might be in many different stages of decay, but they are uniformly dead. Death manifests itself in many different forms and degrees, but death itself has no degrees. Sin manifests itself in many different forms and degrees, but the state of sin itself has no degrees. Not all men are as evil as they could be, but all fail to measure up to God’s perfect standard.

As a state of being, a sphere of existence, sin has more to do with what is not done than with what is done. God’s standard is for men to be perfect just as He Himself is perfect (Matt. 5:48). Jesus did not give a new standard but restated a very old one. Nor had God’s command to “be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44; cf. 1 Pet. 1:16) created a new standard for mankind or for His chosen people. God has never had any standard for man but perfect holiness.

It is because of that perfect standard of holiness that men apart from God cannot be anything but sinful. Because he is separated from God he cannot do anything but fall short of God’s standard. No matter how much good he does or attempts to do, the standard of never doing or never having done evil at all is unattainable.

Man’s common state of sin has often been compared to a diverse group of people standing on the bank of a wide river, perhaps a mile across. Each of them is trying to jump to the other side. The little children and old people can jump only a few feet. The larger children and agile adults can jump several times that far. A few athletes can jump several times farther still. But none of them gets near the other side. Their degrees of success vary only in relation to each other. In relation to achieving the goal they are equal failures.

Throughout history people have varied greatly in their levels of human goodness and wickedness. But in relation to achieving God’s holiness they are equal failures. That is why the good, helpful, kind, considerate, self-giving person needs salvation as much as the multiple murderer on death row. The person who is a good parent, loving spouse, honest worker, and civic humanitarian needs Jesus Christ to save him from the eternal condemnation of hell as much as the skid row drunk or the heartless terrorist. They do not lead equally sinful lives, but they are equally in the state of sin, equally separated from God and from spiritual life.

Jesus said, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same” (Luke 6:33). On another occasion He said, “You then, being evil, [nevertheless] know how to give good gifts to your children” (Luke 11:13). A person apart from God can do humanly good things. But as the Lord points out in both of those statements, the person is still a sinner, still evil by nature, and still operating on a motive less than that of glorifying God. When Paul and the others were shipwrecked on the island of Malta, Luke reports that “the natives showed us extraordinary kindness” (Acts 28:2); yet those natives remained superstitious pagans (v. 6). A sinner’s doing good is good, but it cannot change his nature or his basic sphere of existence, and it cannot reconcile him to God.

Relational goodness is helpful to other people and is more pleasing to God. It is a step in the right direction. But a hundred thousand such steps cannot bring a person any nearer to God. Because it is a sinner’s condition of sinfulness and not his particular sins that separate him from God, his particular acts of goodness cannot reconcile him to God.

During Jesus’ second farewell discourse to His disciples He said, “He [the Holy Spirit], when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin” (John 16:8). The sin of which He will convict men is the sin of disbelief in Jesus Christ (v. 9). That is the sin of separation, the sin that both causes and reflects man’s alienation from God. It is the sin of not accepting God as God and Christ as Savior, the sin of rejection. It is not particular acts or statements of rejection but the sphere of rejection in which the unsaved person exists that separates him from God. That is his state of spiritual death, his being dead in … trespasses and sins.

In the state of spiritual death, the only walking, or living, a person can do is according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Kosmos (world) does not here represent simply the physical creation but the world order, the world’s system of values and way of doing things—the world’s course. And as Paul makes clear, the course of this world follows the leadership and design of Satan, the prince of the power of the air.

What we often call “the spirit of the times” reflects the wider course of this world, a course in which men are in basic agreement about what is right and wrong, valuable and worthless, important and unimportant. Sinful men have many different ideas and standards, but they are in total agreement that the network of things in this world is more important than the divine perspective of God. In this most basic world outlook they are of one mind. They resolutely work to fulfill the goals and values of their system, though it defies God and always self-destructs. Sinners are persistent in their rejection, and the worse their system becomes, the more they try to justify it and condemn those who speak the Word of God against it.

They are of one mind because they have a common leader and lord, the prince of the power of the air. Satan is now “the ruler of this world,” and until the Lord casts him out (John 12:31) he will continue to rule. The power [or authority] of the air probably refers to Satan’s host of demons who exist in the heavenly sphere. Paul has this in mind in Ephesians 6:12, where he warns of “the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” During the present age he and his demon host dominate, pressure, and control every person who is unsaved. He is the personification of spiritual death because he is the personification of rebellion against God—and so is the system he designed.

The three elements that most characterize our present world system are humanism, materialism, and illicit sex. Humanism places man above all else. Man is the measure and end of all things. Each man is his own boss, his own standard of good, his own source of authority—in short, his own god. Materialism places high value in physical things, especially money, because money is a means of acquiring all the other things. Sexual perversion dominates modern western society as it has no other societies since the lowest periods of ancient Greece and Rome. Along with the humanistic appeal to self-interest and the materialistic appeal to self-aggrandizement, sexual vice is used to promote and persuade in virtually every field of marketing, pandering to self-pleasure. That triumvirate represents the spirit of our age, the current course of this world.

Satan is the archōn, the prince and ruler over this world system. Not all unsaved people are necessarily indwelt at all times by Satan or are demon-possessed. But knowingly or unknowingly they are subject to Satan’s influence. Because they share his nature of sinfulness and exist in the same sphere of rebellion against God, they respond naturally to his leading and to the influence of his demons. They are on the same spiritual wavelength.

As with the world, the air over which Satan has controlling power represents the sphere where demons move. The air could be used metaphorically, as when we speak of an “air of expectancy.” In this context world and air would be almost synonymous, both of them representing a realm, or sphere, of influence. In that case it would be a reference to the realm of ideas, beliefs, and convictions over which Satan now operates as prince. But it is not that which is in Paul’s mind here or in 6:12. He has in mind the fact that Satan rules the power (demons) who occupy the air (the heavenly sphere around the earth). Men are not free and independent; they are totally dominated by the hosts of hell.

To walk according to the course of this world, according to the power of the prince of the power of the air, is to think and live according to the presuppositions, ideologies, and standards over which sin and Satan have control and to be dominated by evil supernatural beings. Satan’s supreme purpose for men is not to get them only to do evil things (the flesh will see to that, as is made clear in Gal. 5:19-21) but to think and believe evil things, especially about God (cf. 2 Cor. 11:13-15). Because fallen mankind and Satan’s hosts exist in the same spiritual realm, it is quite natural that his spirit is the same spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. The prince of disobedience works in (the use of en emphasizes the intimate relationship) willing followers, those who have no regard for the Word and will of God, called the sons of disobedience (a Semitic term that describes a person characterized by disobedience), of whom he is the spiritual father (John 8:38-44). Paul makes clear this identifying characteristic of disobedience to God when he states absolutely that “you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness” (Rom. 6:16). He then characterizes the believer as one who obeys God: “you became obedient from the heart” (v. 17).

Paul’s primary purpose here is not to show how unsaved people now live—though the teaching is valuable for that purpose—but to remind believers how they themselves formerly walked and formerly lived. All of us once lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Epithumia (lusts) refers to strong inclinations and desires of every sort, not simply to sexual lust. Thelēma (desires) emphasizes strong willfulness, wanting and seeking something with great diligence. As with trespasses and sins, lusts and desires are not given to show their distinctiveness but their commonness. They are used synonymously to represent fallen man’s complete orientation to his own selfish way. By nature he is driven to fulfill the lusts and desires of his sinful flesh and… mind. The flesh (sarx) refers to the dissipation of life that comes when one is abandoned to doing whatever feels good. The mind (dianoia) indicates the deliberate choices that defy the will of God.

Every believer was once totally lost in the system of the world, the flesh, and the devil, who is the prince over the demons, who are the power of the air. Those are fallen man’s three great arenas where he is in a losing battle with spiritual enemies—yet they are enemies with whom, by nature, he is now allied (cf. 1 John 2:16). Rather than all men being children of God, as most of the world likes to think, those who have not received salvation through Jesus Christ are by nature children of wrath (cf. John 3:18). Apart from reconciliation through Christ, every person by nature (through human birth) is the object of God’s wrath, his eternal judgment and condemnation. They are characterized most accurately not only as sons of disobedience but consequently as children of wrath—objects of God’s condemning judgment.

But though we were once even as the rest, through faith in the Savior we are not like them any longer. Because of Christ’s past work of salvation in us, we are presently and eternally under His love and delivered from the natural human condition of death, sin, alienation, disobedience, demon control, lust, and divine judgment.

SALVATION IS BY LOVE

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, (2:4)

Salvation is from sin and by love. God’s mercy is plousios, rich, overabounding, without measure, unlimited. The problem with reconciliation is not on the Lord’s side. The two words but God show where the initiative was in providing the power of salvation. His great desire is to be rejoined with the creatures He made in His own image and for His own glory. The rebellion and rejection is on man’s side. Because He was rich in mercy toward us and had great love for us, He provided a way for us to return to Him. In Romans 11:32 the apostle Paul focuses on this same issue in saying, “God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all.” His purpose in so doing is given in verse 36: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (emphasis added).

Salvation for God’s glory is by the motivation and power of God’s great love. God is intrinsically kind, merciful, and loving. And in His love He reaches out to vile, sinful, rebellious, depraved, destitute, and condemned human beings and offers them salvation and all the eternal blessings it brings. Man’s rebellion is therefore not only against God’s lordship and law but against His love.

If a person were driving down the street and carelessly ran down and killed a child, he probably would be arrested, tried, fined, and imprisoned for involuntary manslaughter. But after he paid the fine and served the sentence he would be free and guiltless before the law in regard to that crime. But paying his penalty before the law would do nothing to restore the life of the child or alleviate the grief of the parents. The offense against them was on an immeasurably deeper level. The only way a relationship between the parents and the man who killed their child could be established or restored would be for the parents to offer forgiveness. No matter how much the man might want to do so, he could not produce reconciliation from his side. Only the one offended can offer forgiveness, and only forgiveness can bring reconciliation.

Though greatly offended and sinned against (as depicted in the parable of Matt. 18:23-35), because of God’s rich … mercy and His great love He offered forgiveness and reconciliation to us as He does to every repentant sinner. Though in their sin and rebellion all men participated in the wickedness of Jesus’ crucifixion, God’s mercy and love provide a way for them to participate in the righteousness of His crucifixion. “I know what you are and what you have done,” He says; “but because of My great love for you, your penalty has been paid, My law’s judgment against you has been satisfied, through the work of My Son on your behalf. For His sake I offer you forgiveness. To come to Me you need only to come to Him.” Not only did He love enough to forgive but also enough to die for the very ones who had offended Him. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Compassionate love for those who do not deserve it makes salvation possible.

SALVATION IS INTO LIFE

even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), (2:5)

Above all else, a dead person needs to be made alive. That is what salvation gives—spiritual life. To encourage believers who doubt the power of Christ in their lives, Paul reminds them that if God was powerful and loving enough to give them spiritual life together with Christ, He is certainly able to sustain that life. The power that raised us out of sin and death and made us alive (aorist tense) together with Christ (cf. Rom. 6:1-7) is the same power that continues to energize every part of our Christian living (Rom. 6:11-13). The we may emphasize the linking of the Jew with the Gentile “you” in verse 1. Both are in sin and may receive mercy to be made alive in Christ.

When we became Christians we were no longer alienated from the life of God. We became spiritually alive through union with the death and resurrection of Christ and thereby for the first time became sensitive to God. Paul calls it walking in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). For the first time we could understand spiritual truth and desire spiritual things. Because we now have God’s nature, we now can seek godly things, “the things above” rather than “the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). That is what results from being alive together with Christ. “We shall also live with Him” (Rom. 6:8) says the apostle, and our new life is indistinguishable from His life lived in us (Gal. 2:20). In Christ we cannot help but be pleasing to God.

SALVATION IS WITH A PURPOSE

and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (2:6-7)

Salvation has a purpose, in regard to us and in regard to God. The most immediate and direct result of salvation is to be raised up with Him, and [to be] seated with Him in the heavenly places. Not only are we dead to sin and alive to righteousness through His resurrection in which we are raised, but we also enjoy His exaltation and share in His preeminent glory.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead His first instruction was, “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44). A living person cannot function while wrapped in the trappings of death. Because our new citizenship through Christ is in heaven (Phil 3:20), God seats us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. We are no longer of this present world or in its sphere of sinfulness and rebellion. We have been rescued from spiritual death and given spiritual life in order to be in Christ Jesus and to be with Him in the heavenly places. Here, as in 1:3, heavenly places refers to the supernatural sphere where God rules, though in 6:12 it refers to the supernatural sphere where Satan rules.

The Greek verb behind seated is in the aorist tense and emphasizes the absoluteness of this promise by speaking of it as if it had already fully taken place. Even though we are not yet inheritors of all that God has for us in Christ, to be in the heavenly places is to be in God’s domain instead of Satan’s, to be in the sphere of spiritual life instead of the sphere of spiritual death. That is where our blessings are and where we have fellowship with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and with all the saints who have gone before us and will go after us. That is where all our commands come from and where all our praise and petitions go. And some day we will receive the “inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for [us]” (1 Pet. 1:4).

The phrase in order that indicates that the purpose of our being exalted to the supernatural sphere of God’s preserve and power is that we may forever be blessed. But it is not only for our benefit and glory. God’s greater purpose in salvation is for His own sake, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. That, too, is obviously for our benefit, but it is first of all for God’s, because it displays for all eternity the surpassing riches of His grace (cf. 3:10). Through His endless kindness toward us in Christ Jesus the Father glorifies Himself even as He blesses us. From the moment of salvation throughout the ages to come we never stop receiving the grace and kindness of God. The ages to come is different from the age to come in 1:21 and refers to eternity. He glorifies Himself by eternally blessing us with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (1:3) and by bestowing on us His endless and limitless grace and kindness. The whole of heaven will glorify Him because of what He has done for us (Rev. 7:10-12).

SALVATION IS THROUGH FAITH

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.(2:8-9)

Our response in salvation is faith, but even that is not of ourselves [but is] the gift of God. Faith is nothing that we do in our own power or by our own resources. In the first place we do not have adequate power or resources. More than that, God would not want us to rely on them even if we had them. Otherwise salvation would be in part by our own works, and we would have some ground to boast in ourselves. Paul intends to emphasize that even faith is not from us apart from God’s giving it.

Some have objected to this interpretation, saying that faith (pistis) is feminine, while that (touto) is neuter. That poses no problem, however, as long as it is understood that that does not refer precisely to the noun faith but to the act of believing. Further, this interpretation makes the best sense of the text, since if that refers to by grace you have been saved through faith (that is, to the whole statement), the adding of and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God would be redundant, because grace is defined as an unearned act of God. If salvation is of grace, it has to be an undeserved gift of God. Faith is presented as a gift from God in 2 Peter 1:1, Philippians 1:29, and Acts 3:16.

The story is told of a man who came eagerly but very late to a revival meeting and found the workmen tearing down the tent in which the meetings had been held. Frantic at missing the evangelist, he decided to ask one of the workers what he could do to be saved. The workman, who was a Christian, replied, “You can’t do anything. It’s too late.” Horrified, the man said, “What do you mean? How can it be too late?” “The work has already been accomplished,” he was told. “There is nothing you need to do but believe it.”

Every person lives by faith. When we open a can of food or drink a glass of water we trust that it is not contaminated. When we go across a bridge we trust it to support us. When we put our money in the bank we trust it will be safe. Life is a constant series of acts of faith. No human being, no matter how skeptical and self-reliant, could live a day without exercising faith.

Church membership, baptism, confirmation, giving to charity, and being a good neighbor have no power to bring salvation. Nor does taking Communion, keeping the Ten Commandments, or living by the Sermon on the Mount. The only thing a person can do that will have any part in salvation is to exercise faith in what Jesus Christ has done for him.

When we accept the finished work of Christ on our behalf, we act by the faith supplied by God’s grace. That is the supreme act of human faith, the act which, though it is ours, is primarily God’s—His gift to us out of His grace. When a person chokes or drowns and stops breathing, there is nothing he can do. If he ever breathes again it will be because someone else starts him breathing. A person who is spiritually dead cannot even make a decision of faith unless God first breathes into him the breath of spiritual life. Faith is simply breathing the breath that God’s grace supplies. Yet, the paradox is that we must exercise it and bear the responsibility if we do not (cf. John 5:40).

Obviously, if it is true that salvation is all by God’s grace, it is therefore not as a result of works. Human effort has nothing to do with it (cf. Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). And thus, no one should boast, as if he had any part. All boasting is eliminated in salvation (cf. Rom. 3:27; 4:5; 1 Cor. 1:31). Nevertheless, good works have an important place, as Paul is quick to affirm.

SALVATION IS UNTO GOOD WORKS

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (2:10)

Although they have no part in gaining salvation, good works have a great deal to do with living out salvation. No good works can produce salvation, but many good works are produced by salvation.

“By this is My Father glorified,” Jesus said, “that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples” (John 15:8). Good works do not bring discipleship, but they prove it is genuine. When God’s people do good deeds they bear fruit for His kingdom and bring glory to His name.

The Bible has much to say about works. It speaks of the works of the law, which are good but cannot save a person (Gal. 2:16). It speaks of dead works (Heb. 6:1) and of works, or deeds, of darkness and of the flesh, all of which are inherently evil (Rom. 13:12; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:11). All of those works are done in man’s own strength and have nothing to do with salvation.

Before we can do any good work for the Lord, He has to do His good work in us. By God’s grace, made effective through our faith, we become His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. God has ordained that we then live lives of good works, works done in His power and for His glory.

The same power that created us in Christ Jesus empowers us to do the good works for which He has redeemed us. These are the verifiers of true salvation. Righteous attitudes and righteous acts proceed from the transformed life now living in the heavenlies. To the Corinthians Paul said there was in them “an abundance for every good deed” (2 Cor. 9:8). To Timothy he instructed that the believer is “equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17). Christ died to bring to Himself a people “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). Even this is the work of God, as Paul says: While you “work out your salvation… it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Paul’s primary message here is still to believers, many of whom had experienced salvation years earlier. He is not showing them how to be saved, but how they were saved, in order to convince them that the power that saved them is the same power that keeps them. Just as they already had been given everything necessary for salvation, they also had been given everything necessary for faithfully living the saved life. The greatest proof of a Christian’s divine empowerment is his own salvation and the resulting good works that God produces in and through him (cf. John 15). These good works are expected because God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them, and that is why James says faith is illegitimate if works are not present (James 2:17-26).

It is from poiēma (workmanship) that we get poem, a piece of literary workmanship. Before time began, God designed us to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29). Paul could therefore say to the Philippians, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (1:6).

The story is often told of the rowdy, disruptive young boy in a Sunday school class who continually frustrated his teacher. One morning the teacher asked him, “Why do you act like that? Don’t you know who made you?” To which the boy replied, “God did, but He ain’t through with me yet.”

All of us are still imperfect, uncut diamonds being finished by the divine Master Craftsman. He is not finished with us yet, but His work will not cease until He has made us into the perfect likeness of His Son (1 John 3:2).

A famous actor was once the guest of honor at a social gathering where he received many requests to recite favorite excerpts from various literary works. An old preacher who happened to be there asked the actor to recite the Twenty-third Psalm. The actor agreed on the condition that the preacher would also recite it. The actor’s recitation was beautifully intoned with great dramatic emphasis, for which he received lengthy applause. The preacher’s voice was rough and broken from many years of preaching, and his diction was anything but polished. But when he finished there was not a dry eye in the room. When someone asked the actor what made the difference, he replied, “I know the psalm, but he knows the Shepherd.”

Salvation does not come from knowing about the truth of Jesus Christ but from intimately knowing Christ Himself. This coming alive can be accomplished by the power of God because of His love and mercy.