And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved -6 and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
How do we even begin to try and define the word “grace?” It is a word we are all familiar with, but is it really possible for our finite minds to fully understand the grace of God? The answer to that question is, of course, a resounding no, yet the saving grace of God is one of the great treasures of the Bible, and the reality that we are saved by the grace of God alone was one of the key doctrines to come out of the Reformation in the 16th century.
John 1:16, speaking of Jesus, says, “From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” In the New Testament there are 21 letters written to either Churches or individuals, and all but 5 of them begin with the writers greeting their readers with the grace of God. The very last verse of the Bible says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.”
The reformers understood that the grace of God was central to the Bible’s teaching on salvation, which is why Sola Gratia - by grace alone - is one of what has become known as the 5 Solas of the Reformation. We are saved by the grace of God alone.
That word “alone” is what set the early reformers apart from the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Sola Gratia teaches that sinners are saved by the grace of God, His unmerited favour, alone. We have nothing and we contribute nothing towards the gift of grace which God gives us. Also, contrary to what many believe, we do not cooperate with God in order to earn our salvation. You’ve probably heard the illustration before that if there are 100 steps between you and God, He has taken 99 of them, and all you need to do is take that 1 remaining step towards Him in order to be saved. That’s not true. God takes all 100 steps, because dead people can’t walk (we’ll get into what that means in a moment.)
Salvation, from beginning to end, is the sovereign gift of God to lost sinners who are unworthy and undeserving of salvation. God owes us nothing.
In Ephesians 1, the apostle Paul begins to spell out in great detail the gracious plan of salvation. He writes in verse 3 that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” and he makes it very clear in his opening greeting to the Church in Ephesus that it is only by the grace of God we are saved. He writes in verses 13 and 14, “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.”
In Ephesians 2:1-10, twice Paul writes, “by grace you have been saved.” (Verses 5 and 8). He uses graphic language to explain just what the saving grace of God does and how it works, by using the contrast between death and life.
Verse 1: “You were dead in trespasses and sins.”
Verse 4-5: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
If we are ever to come to an understanding of the grace of God, we need to understand the difference between what it means to be dead and what it means to be alive.
Before the moment of our salvation, we may be physically alive, but spiritually we are dead. In fact, we are born spiritually dead. You’ll remember we looked at the Fall in Genesis 3 last week.
In chapter 2:17 God said to Adam, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” We know how events unfolded, and as a result of the Fall, spiritual death has been passed on to every human being who has ever lived, with the one exception of Jesus Himself.
What do we mean when we say we are spiritually dead? It means we are under condemnation. Before coming to faith, we are dead in trespasses and sins as Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:1. Death, as God warned Adam, is the penalty for sin. God created us, and we are accountable to Him. When we break His law, we stand guilty and condemned before Him. In verses 2 and 3, Paul writes that prior to our salvation, we were “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Here Paul teaches that we followed and served 3 masters - the world, the flesh and the Devil.
And the result of us being spiritually dead is that we are under wrath. Verse 3 again: We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” This is what it means to be born in sin. As David wrote in Psalm 51:5, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
You might also have heard the Church being described as a hospital for the spiritually sick, but Paul doesn’t say we are sick. He teaches that apart from Christ, we are dead. We’re not in a hospital, lying in a sick-bed. No, we’re in a morgue, lying on a slab. This is our true state before salvation, and this is why we need God to take all 100 of those metaphorical steps towards us, because dead men don’t walk.
The first 3 verses of Ephesians 2 tell us the awful truth of just who we are, and how sin has destroyed us. The next time you hear someone say that we’re all basically good people with the odd hiccup here and there, read Ephesians 2:1-3.
But don’t stop there, because Paul continues by focusing on the Gospel - the good news of what God has done for us in Christ, and how it is all by His grace alone - Sola Gratia. The first 2 words of verse 4 set the scene for what is to come: “But God.”
From verse 4 to 10, Paul points us to at least three things about the grace of God in the rest of this passage.
Firstly, he speaks of what God has done for us. Verses 5 and 6: God “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.” Don’t miss the awesome truth of what God has done here. Not only did God raise Jesus from the dead on the third day, but He has “made us alive together with Christ.” In His grace, He has raised the spiritually dead. In our sins we were children of wrath and spiritually dead, but now He has raised the dead. That is what God has done for His elect. He hasn’t made a few improvements. He hasn’t made some necessary modifications in order to make us better people. No - He has raised the spiritually dead. He has made the dead alive.
Secondly, Paul teaches why God has raised the spiritually dead. He begins by making it clear that it is not because of anything we have done. Verses 8 and 9: “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Paul writes in verse 4 that God has raised us because He is “rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us.” That’s why He has raised us to new life - because He is rich in mercy and because of His great love for us.
And thirdly, Paul tells us what God has done this for. It was, as verse 7 says, “So that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” The question now is, just how does God show the immeasurable riches of His grace? The answer is in verse 10. We were “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Our lives are now to be lived for Him, instead of ourselves. Remember, we do good works not in order to be saved, but because we are saved.
So in Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul tells us why God has chosen to save us, but the important point he makes is that we are not saved because of anything we’ve done, or because God has seen something in us that makes us worth saving. We are saved by the sovereign grace of God alone - Sola Gratia.
In Luke 18, Jesus taught the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple. It’s a parable we are familiar with, but as with all of Jesus’ parables, we need to understand who His audience was in order to understand the true message of the parable, and this one in Luke 18 is a perfect example. Yes, it’s a parable about prayer, but first and foremost, it is a parable about how the grace of God alone saves the lost. Jesus told this story to some Pharisees, and verse 9 is the key to the true meaning of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
It was not unusual to see a Pharisee praying in the temple. In fact, it was expected, as they were the pious and religious, but for a tax collector to even dare approach the temple, let alone pray in public was something completely out of the ordinary. Jesus would certainly have caught the attention of the Pharisees who heard this parable first hand. For Him to suggest that a tax collector would enter the temple was scandalous enough, so there was no doubt that they would be listening to His every word.
Tax collectors were basically sub-contractors to the Roman authorities, which is the main reason they were so hated by their fellow Jews. Most of them would add on as much extra taxes for themselves as they wanted. So long as the Romans received their dues, the Jewish tax collectors had carte blanche to skim as much off the top as they liked.
So when Jesus said that the second man in the parable to pray was a tax collector, his listeners would have been more than a little annoyed and puzzled. Religious people like Pharisees were expected to be found in the temple praying, but not tax collectors.
The ESV translates the first part of verse 11, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus.” The NASB says, “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself.” This is an important detail. The implication is that while outwardly praying to God, the Pharisee was really talking out loud to himself about himself so that others could hear what he prayed. Of course, there was no confession in his prayer. Why would he need to confess? He was, after all, a righteous man (in his eyes, at least).
There is no hint of awe or reverence for a holy God in his prayer. Instead, it was all about himself, and how wonderful he was. Verse 11: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men,” and then he goes on to list the other men he was not like: “extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”
This is a common human trait. When we want to feel good about ourselves, we compare ourselves to the riff-raff whom we consider to be lower on the social ladder than we are. In this parable the Pharisee compared himself with other people, but none of them were what might be considered holy or godly people. And he certainly didn’t compare himself with the holiness of God.
But he wasn’t finished. He goes on to commend his good works to God. Verse 12: “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” The Jews were only required to fast one day each year - on the Day of Atonement - and according to Deuteronomy 14, they were to tithe from their crops only, but this super-spiritual Pharisee fasted twice a week, and tithed on everything. You can almost sense him saying that God was so lucky to have him…
The great mistake of the Pharisee in this parable was that he approached God with his own righteousness and his own good works. Not only did he mistakenly believe that this was the basis on which God would accept him, but he also looked down on those whom he considered to be beneath him. This is why verse 9 is so important when it comes to grasping the true meaning of this parable. Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.”
One of the great lessons to come out of the Reformation was our need to see just how like the Pharisees we are. The Church up until then had taught that we had to contribute to our salvation. The grace of God had to be supplemented. Sola gratia, grace alone, was not enough.
Now, 500 years later, we are part of the Reformed Church, and our message remains grace alone, but is that what we really believe, or are we like the Pharisee in Luke 18 who feels we need to contribute something to our own salvation? We want to contribute our own works and good deeds in order to please God. We do good deeds not in order to be saved, but because we are saved, but we tend to get it the wrong way around.
All of these things are works-righteousness. Thinking our good deeds will please or impress God, and thinking we are better than others will not save us.
Compare the prayer of the Pharisee to the prayer of the tax collector.
Verse 13: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast.” Being a despised tax collector, he would probably have been excommunicated and banished from the court of the Jews, so he would have been no closer than the outer perimeter, the court of the Gentiles. This is why he was “standing far off.” In those days, prayers were usually prayed with the eyes open, and looking up towards God, but he was so ashamed of his sins that he stood there with his eyes looking down, as in self-accusation and despair, he beat his breast. This was true confession and contrition.
He continues by praying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” He knew he was guilty before a holy God, and rather than compare himself to others who were worse than him, he simply begged God for mercy. He knew that he was a guilty sinner who deserved God’s wrath and judgment. He knew that he stood condemned for all of his sins before the judgment seat of God. He did not ask for justice. Instead, he begged God for mercy.
There were no excuses. He didn’t try to blame others or tell God that at least he wasn’t as bad as some of the other tax collectors. He just threw himself before the mercy of God.
What happened as the Church began the Reformation in the mid 1500’s was that people began to be taught that we are sinners in need of the mercy of God, and no amount of good deeds or self righteousness can save us. Romans 3:10-12 tells us the true story of lost sinners. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
The only way sinners are saved is by the unmerited grace of God. God, by His grace alone, saves sinners.
Speaking of the tax collector in verse 14, Jesus said, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.” Remember that justified and justification are legal terms. It means that when we believe in the saving work of Jesus on the cross and turn to God in repentance and faith, the Judge grants us forgiveness by His grace alone, and He declares us to be not guilty.
It is by the grace of God, and the grace of God alone that God draws us to Himself as He forgives us, declares us to be righteous in His sight, and adopts us as His own.
The reformer Martin Luther wrote, “God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realises that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another - God alone.”
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Ephesians 2:1-10
Discuss the sharp contrast between the first 3 verses and the general attitude that we are basically good people.
There is a common idea among many Christians that we co-operate with God when we come to salvation. (An often-heard illustration is that God takes 99 of the 100 steps towards us, and it is up to us to take the final step).
How does this false understanding of the Gospel message contradict Scripture?
Discuss the numerous points Paul makes in the rest of this passage in order to stress that we are saved by grace alone, paying particular attention to verses 8 and 9.
Compare verse 10 with James 2:14-16
How do we “get the balance right” when it comes to understanding the need for Christians to do good works?
Read Luke 18:9-14
How does this parable help us to understand the doctrine that we are saved only by the sovereign grace of God?