We saw the monumental importance of these three verses this morning, both for the personal Christian life and the life of the church. Our fall is so deep that it is not enough for God to simply let His pure grace flow to us; He must guard that grace as it flows continuously so that we do not spoil it with our own depravity.
There is a beautiful sentiment in the idea that God’s grace is greater than our very lives. We often make the mistake of saying, “Thank You, Lord, for saving me; I will take it from here.” But the truth is, we need more grace. We need grace to preserve the eternal life we have received, grace to serve Him, and new grace to seek Him every morning. We need grace when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are weak, and when we are burdened for souls. We cannot even pray properly without the gift of a “prayer-grace.” We must wait for the grace that will be granted on the day the Lord is revealed so that we may meet Him in mercy.
This beautifully captures our constant need. It is God’s grace alone that protects us from spoiling His work in our hearts. When we bring in our own merit or effort, thinking we can run our Christian life in our own strength, we destroy the work of grace within us. These verses help us realize our deep, desperate, and constant need for His unmerited favor.
The Six Headings of Grace
To understand these verses, we will break them into six headings using the word GRACE as our guide:
- G – God’s Miracle: Verse 8 says, “You have been saved.”
- R – Root Cause of the Miracle: “By grace.”
- A – Accepted Means: “Through faith.” (The source of this means is the “gift of God,” and the unaccepted means is “not of yourselves.”)
- C – Credit-Free Zone: “Not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
- E – Evidence of Grace: Verse 10 tells us, “For we are His workmanship, created… for good works.”
If there are no good works, there may not be God’s workmanship. We grasp these verses through these headings: what happened (we are saved), why it happened (by grace), how it happened (through faith), who did not do it (not of yourself), and what the evidence is (good works). Today, we will cover the first two.
1. G – God’s Miracle: “You Have Been Saved”
All the transformation we saw in verses 1–7—how we were once utterly dead but were quickened, raised, and seated with Christ—can be summed up in one word: Saved.
The word “saved” is often made very cheap today. Most of us have grown up in church communities where we have heard it all our lives, yet very few understand the wonder of it. It is one of the most precious and rich words in the Bible, with roots reaching back to Genesis and forward into eternity.
The Snowball Effect
In English, we speak of the “Snowball Effect”—something that starts small but picks up weight and size as it rolls down a mountain until it becomes a massive avalanche that covers the entire landscape.
The word “saved” is exactly like that. After mankind fell in Genesis 3, God rolled a “small snowball” with the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. That ball rolled through the history of the Exodus, visibly showing the invisible horrors of sin through Egyptian bondage and the mighty miracles God performed to deliver His people by the Passover blood. At that time, to be “saved” meant to be delivered from physical bondage.
The ball kept rolling, becoming bigger through the era of the judges and kings, pointing to a coming King. At that time, “saved” meant having a King who defeats your enemies and leads you to your inheritance. The ball grew faster through the prophets who spoke clearly of a new covenant of salvation by grace. It was no longer just about Egypt or the Philistines; it was about being delivered from the Fall and all the effects of sin.
When the fullness of time came in the Gospels, that snowball became a mountain. When Christ’s birth was announced, it was said, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall SAVE His people from their sins.” That word “save” on the first page of the New Testament is not a brand-new snowball; it is the tremendous mountain that grew from that small promise in Genesis. Finally, the avalanche covered the entire landscape in the Book of Acts and the Epistles. The promise went through the whole world: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”
When Paul says, “You have been saved,” he is dropping the full weight of the entire Bible on that word. It covers every effect of the Fall in our souls, our families, and every area of our lives.
Saved “From” and Saved “To”
To be saved is to be rescued from the curse of sin and released into the rich blessings of grace.
- Negative Blessings (The 3 Ps): We are saved from the Penalty of past sin, delivered from the Power of present sin, and will be delivered from the Presence of all sin in the future. We are saved from the wrath of God, which reaches its climax in the eternal judgment of the lake of fire.
- Positive Blessings: God did not just lift us out of the pit and leave us there; He lifted us to the highest, most consummate blessings. He gave us a new identity. We are no longer associated with Adam; we are in Christ. He raised us and seated us with Him.
The Grammar of Salvation
There are two marvelous grammatical forms in the phrase “you have been saved” that make it rich:
- Passive Voice: Paul uses a passive participle. Think of being in an operating theater under anesthesia. You are passive; the surgeon is active. You did nothing for your salvation; it was entirely God’s active work in you.
- Perfect Tense: He says “have been saved,” not just “are saved.” This indicates a finished action with lasting results. It carries a blessed certainty, a thrilling finality, and a holy infallibility. It is a done deal. All the future benefits are already included in this certain salvation.
2. R – Root Cause: “By Grace”
We are saved by hearing the gospel, through the work of the Holy Spirit, and by the work of Christ. However, Paul identifies Grace as the root cause. He was so eager to say this that he even inserted it as a parenthetical statement back in verse 5.
Paul emphasizes this in the original Greek by adding the definite article: “By THE grace you have been saved,” pointing back to the specific grace mentioned in verse 7. He also places the word “grace” at the very beginning of the sentence to show its importance.
What is Grace?
Grace is the sweetest word of eternity. A simple definition is: The free, unmerited favor of God to us in Christ Jesus. It is God’s sovereign disposition to bestow saving mercy upon hell-deserving rebels. It is His kind intention to raise sinners from the dung heap and set them among princes. It is expressed not because of what we are, but in spite of what we are.
Grace is not just a king being kind to poor subjects; grace is a king coming to rebel enemies who want to destroy him, pardoning them, inviting them into his household, and making them heirs to his kingdom.
Grace is always in strict opposition to works and human merit. These two can never live together. When you try to join them, it is like trying to make God and the devil friends. Romans 4:4 tells us that if it is of grace, it is no longer of works. The moment you mix in human endeavor or performance, it ceases to be grace. Grace is either pure, undeserved favor, or it is not grace at all.
The “Unfairness” of Grace
If you did anything to earn it, it is not grace. Grace means you get the opposite of what you deserve.
- Consider a thief who has hurt and killed people. On death row, he trusts Christ and is forgiven. He goes to heaven. We might say, “That’s not fair!”
- Consider a religious man who fasts, tithes, and is faithful in marriage, yet he trusts in his own works and goes to hell. We might say, “That’s not fair!”
But these are not made-up stories. The thief was on the cross next to Jesus, and Jesus paid his debt. The religious man was the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable who thought himself righteous but was not justified.
If God were “fair,” we would all go to hell because we have all sinned. God did not compromise His justice to forgive us; Jesus paid the penalty on the cross. In this way, God is both just and the justifier of those who have faith. Grace has been rightly described as: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. We naturally resist this because it robs us of our pride, but there is no other way to be saved. It is by grace alone.
We have seen the monumental importance of these three verses for both the personal Christian life and the life of the church. Our fall is so deep that God must not only let His pure grace flow toward us, but He must also guard that flow continuously so that we do not spoil it with our own depravity.
Think of the old hymns that celebrate how God’s grace is greater than our very lives. We often make the mistake of saying, “Thank You, Lord, for saving me; I will take it from here.” But the truth is, we need grace for every moment. We need grace to preserve the eternal life we have received, grace to serve Him, and new grace to seek Him every morning. We need grace when our hearts are heavy and when our bodies are weak. We cannot even pray properly without the “gift of prayer-grace.” We must wait for the grace that will be granted on the day the Lord is revealed so that we may meet Him in mercy.
The Six Headings of Grace
To understand these verses, we break the word GRACE into six headings:
- G – God’s Miracle: “You have been saved” (vs. 8).
- R – Root Cause of the Miracle: “By grace.”
- A – Accepted Means: “Through faith.” This is a gift of God, not of yourselves.
- C – Credit-Free Zone: “Not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
- E – Evidence of Grace: “For we are His workmanship, created… for good works” (vs. 10).
If there are no good works, there is no evidence of God’s workmanship. Today, we focus on the first two: the Miracle and the Root Cause.
I. G – God’s Miracle: A New Identity
When Paul says, “You have been saved,” he is describing a total transformation. We were once utterly dead, but God quickened, raised, and seated us with Christ. This is not just a theological doctrine; it is the foundation of your identity.
You are no longer associated with the fallen condition of Adam; you are in Christ, and Christ is your life. You face every day not as a child of a fallen race, but as a son or daughter of the living God. If you do not see yourself as an accepted person by His grace, you will fall into the “performance trap.” You will attempt to add works to your acceptance, becoming caught in a web of perfectionism and constant guilt because you cannot live up to your own ideals.
What delivers you is the fact of your new identity. You are raised with Him. His power is available in the ordinary circumstances of your life. You are made to sit with Him in heavenly places, which means you can rest in Him. You can relax and let Him carry the load, freed from the strain and anxiety of the outcome. It is His responsibility to work it out. You do not need a “new experience”; you only need to understand more fully what God has already done and live in that light.
II. R – Root Cause: The Measure of Truth
We can use this standard of “Grace Alone” as a scale to measure our hearts, our teaching, and our ministry.
1. Measuring Teaching
Every religious teaching that does not measure up to this scale must be rejected.
- Romanism: While they speak of Christ, they add works to the root cause. Official Roman Catholic theology mandates physical participation in sacraments to maintain salvation. The Council of Trent even pronounced a curse (anathema) on anyone who claims to have the assurance of salvation here and now.
- Arminianism: This view treats grace as a “cooperative effort” to wake up a sleeping man. It ignores the fact that we were dead in sin. It makes the final decision rest on the human will, leaving plenty of room for human boasting.
- Pentecostalism & Prosperity: These often focus so much on experience or “seed-sowing” that they lose the gift. They teach that you are kept saved by your “fervency” or “unlocked” blessings through financial sacrifice. This turns God into a vending machine and leads to pride in those who “perform” well.
- Liberalism: This reduces salvation to self-help and “good vibes,” ignoring the need for deliverance from sin.
2. Measuring Our Ministry
Our ministry is to stand as a tower and proclaim to a sin-sick generation that there is salvation by grace. In a world of war and crumbling institutions, salvation by grace is the one thing that will never fail because it is bound up in a God who never changes.
III. An Earnest Appeal
To the Sinner: How long will you struggle in sin? God does not ask you to provide even one percent of the effort. He invites you to collapse into a grace that has already paid the full price.
To our Unbelieving Friends: You may seek worldly riches—houses, cars, and assets—but one missile or one stopped breath, and they are gone. You will die an eternal beggar. Why seek shadows when you can have eternal riches? If you reject God’s kindness, you are simply storing up wrath for the day of judgment. God is not stingy; He is exceeding rich in grace.
A Note on the Church: We see the stupidity of any theology that divides God’s plan. Paul, a Jew, includes himself with the Gentile Ephesians when he says God raised “us” up. There are not two salvations—one for the Jew and one for the Gentile. There is only one way: through Christ and the glorification of His Church.
It is foolish to think that any secular state is the primary plan of God. We see world leaders today blaspheming Christ, claiming that “evil will overcome good” if one is ruthless enough. How arrogant to speak this way about the King of Kings! Do not be deceived by the raw power of this world. God’s primary plan is His Church, and His tool is His exceeding grace.
May God open our hearts to grasp this truth and enjoy the full joy of our salvation.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.