Eternity Daily Bible Study No. 232

Life In Christ –  10

GRACE & WORKS

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Ephesians 2:8-10
(8)  For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,
(9)  not of works, lest anyone should boast.
(10)  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

We are not saved by good works, but we are saved in order to do good works.

Works are powerless to save us because we cannot deal with our sin nature by ourselves. No amount of good works can change our basic nature. We need the cross to deal with it and crucify it.  

Works are also powerless because we cannot deal with our guilt by “doing good”. You cannot make up for a traffic fine by helping a old lady across the road – you still have to pay $50. Guilt is not erased by goodness; guilt is only erased by forgiveness.

So works cannot deal with either our sin or our guilt. So works cannot get us to Heaven. 

There is nothing in us that can generate salvation. No amount of thinking, feeling, working, fasting, or learning will save us if it is done apart from God. People exhaust themselves on pilgrimages and religious exercises without ever finding God. A Japanese Buddhist just finished seven years of running around the mountains on a spiritual exercise that few survive because it is so arduous. He covered thousands of miles, sometimes running 80 or 100 miles a day, at the end of it all was he saved? No. This seems unfair that a sincere person can put in so much effort and not be born-again while a drunk can hear the gospel and be saved in an instant. But that is the way of grace. 

The Jews, in Paul’s day were sincere, and they had the Scriptures and “the right God”, but they were not saved. Lets see what Paul says about this:
Romans 10:1-10
(1)  Brothers, truly my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is for it to be saved.
(2)  For I bear record to them that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
(3)  For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.

People who try to establish their own righteousness – through good works or earning merit, can never earn enough merit. They fail, because they ignore the true source of merit for us – Christ Jesus. They ignore God’s merit system and make up their own. But God does not validate their system. God wants them to submit to His system – faith in Christ Jesus.

Paul continues:

(4)  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes.
(5)  For Moses writes of the righteousness which is of the Law, "The man who does those things shall live by them."
(6)  But the righteousness of faith says this: "Do not say in your heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?" that is, to bring Christ down;
(7)  or "Who shall descend into the deep?"; that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.
(8)  But what does it say? "The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart"; that is, the Word of Faith which we proclaim;
(9)  Because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.
(10)  For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation.

Christ is the end of “the law of righteousness”- that is the law that you have to be perfectly righteous to get into Heaven. That law is over and finished and done away with. Christians are under the law of grace.

We do not have to “ascend” through meditation or contemplation – because that would require Christ to come down to a level we could ascend to, And He is far above that. Not do we have to go into the deep and find Christ with “deep things” such as the Qabbalah – for Christ has passed through that realm and conquered it. He does not have to be brought up from the “deep things” for he has risen from the dead and we will not find Him there any more. He does not need to be raised again. Christ is not in the heights we can reach, or in the depths. Rather He is near us in the Word.

Salvation is by faith in the Word: 
 Romans 10:8 “But what does it say? "The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart"; that is, the Word of Faith which we proclaim;”. 
Simple faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ is the means of salvation and this faith is not in us, but is a gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8,9   For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,  not of works, lest anyone should boast.

This is so no-one can stand before God’s throne boastfully and say “ I earned my eternal life, I earned the Holy Spirit, I earned salvation and all the gifts of God ”. Such a boast would be the worst kind of blasphemy. 

But works are not the problem – rather human boastfulness is. God saves us by grace so that we will not boast, not so that we will not work.  In fact we are made for good works. We are supposed to do them; they are the natural outflow of a God-indwelt life. They are evidence of a new creation and they are God’s plan for us from long ago.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

The new creation is a loving incarnation of Christ in us, as His temple, and as His vessel. We are the way Christ is carried into the world. In fact we are God’s workmanship, His masterpiece, His good-works-performing creature. And from long ago He set out what we should do.  Once we are saved a new being is formed in us, and that new being wants to do good. The doing good comes after grace, as its fruit, not before grace as a way of earning it. Freely given grace brings salvation, and salvation brings Christ in us and Christ in us does good deeds.

We are not saved by good works, but we are saved in order to do good works.

Blessings,

John Edmiston <johned@aibi.ph>

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