What does it mean to be saved by grace?

The concluding verses of the section (8-10) show that salvation is entirely by grace on God's part, pure favor at a time when we deserved wrath and judgment. "Through faith" is the means by which we receive such grace, faith being not in itself a thing of merit, but that which rightly recognizes all merit in the Lord Jesus Christ, having confidence simply in Himself. "And that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Even faith to believe is seen as God's gift for in our natural state faith was far from us. God alone has worked marvelously in changing matters, giving us faith and salvation by grace, and indeed every spiritual blessing.

Verse 9 firmly guards against the human natural thought to add works to grace and faith: "not of works, lest anyone should boast." All occasion for people's self exaltation is utterly taken away. We are reduced to our true place and God is exalted. Believers are seen to be "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus" (v.10). Precious work of new creation, by power infinitely higher than all human work! Let us delight to think of what it means to be the subjects of God's miraculous work. Yet His work in us is "for good works" (v.10), for good works are the proper result after God's work has brought salvation. Yet God has before prepared even these good works for us to walk in. Therefore, if we believers do good works, we have nothing to boast of, nor do we have any excuse for not doing them.

I say, this is a fine example of grace, and is important, because we are told in the New Testament that we are saved by grace: "By grace are ye saved, through faith;" but perhaps few things are so little understood as grace. It is said by some that grace means that God will do His part, if we will do ours; but this entirely destroys the thought of grace. Others say, that it means unmerited love; but it means more than this, for it brings favour and blessing to those who only deserve punishment and destruction; it brings eternal life and glory to such as have merited eternal death and banishment; and flows freely to us through the smitten Son of God, who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. It is the death of Christ, then, that is here typified by the smitten rock. There the stripes that we deserved were laid upon Him, and thence the water of life flows freely. "From all His wounds new blessings flow, A sea of joy without a shore."

It is by grace that we are saved, and grace is more than unmerited favour; it is what God is for us according to His own thoughts about us; it is His love in its mighty activities working to bring us into full reconciliation to Himself. Thus He has saved us, and we must not lose the sense of the greatness of this salvation through familiarity with the word as it is commonly used. God’s glory is in it; it is the display of the exceeding riches of His grace. His great love wherewith He loved us is behind it, and the power that raised up Christ from the dead has accomplished it.

I maintain, therefore, that the salvation spoken of in Ephesians is already complete for him that believes; so absolute indeed, that none can add anything to it, because it would be adding something to Christ, and to what Christ has done. And this may not be, cannot be, seeing that it is all the free, unmerited, unmingled mercy of God. And this is the great thing for the soul. Am I able, without question of what I am, or what I hope to be, or what I ought to do for God, to trust Him now? Can I rest all that I have been and am upon Christ, without any promises or pledges of mine — without any hope or thought of what I may do, because God might take me away in a moment? Can I rest entirely and implicitly in Him? Think of the case of the dying thief, which is a living and notable testimony of salvation by grace throughout all ages. Others may have a work to do afterwards; but there we have one who was an object of grace in the last hours of his life. And there is no other way. Had he lived for a thousand years afterwards, he would not have been a whit more secure by grace than he was then. It is of great moment to bring our souls to the touchstone from time to time — whether we are resting solely upon the grace of God toward us, not upon what people call grace in us, i.e., our faithfulness toward Him. For this is a common notion of grace. They mean a great change that has taken place in the heart in respect of God. This, however, is not what God calls grace, but what He has given gratuitously in the work that Christ has done for sin. "By grace are ye saved through faith." The Spirit shuts out all thought of man's contributing the faith or taking any credit because coming to Christ; for He says immediately after, "And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." This probably refers, not only to the salvation, but to the faith; it was all the gift of God, and not man's production: "Not of works, lest any man should boast." On the contrary, instead of being a question of our works, we are God's handiwork, the new creation for His own praise. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." There you have a most plain proof that there could be no carelessness as to the walk of the believer; but the same verse cuts off all thought that man's doing can be the ground or means of salvation.

Here, then, we have the believer the workmanship of God in Christ, and this "unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." This is a very remarkable expression, and one that we cannot too much weigh. It is not the good works of the law — not those which might seem so in human judgment, but an offering of a new character, heavenly and of grace, which was in God's mind and all determined about us before the scene existed into which we are now brought. The same God who had a purpose of saving us and blessing us with Christ before the world was made, had a certain line of walk, a special course of action, in which He expected the recipients of such favour to walk. It is not the thought of the good we ought to do as men, as a means of showing that we are willing to obey God under the law. It is not loving God, and one's neighbour as oneself simply, but another type and display of love altogether. It flows from our new relationships, and if it be exercised in loving God and loving those around us, it is according to the rich love which God Himself has shown us in Christ. It is not merely duty, let it be the very highest form of obligation. If a man were to walk merely in this, though ever so well, he would fall short of what a Christian ought to be, and they are not the "good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." The law was brought in by Israel's presumption and self-conceit; it was not something that God had before ordained for His people to walk in. Therefore it is said in Romans, that law came in by the way (περεισῆλθεν). It was a thing that entered incidentally, as a sort of parenthesis brought in for a special but very momentous purpose. And it has done its work, and the believer, even if he had been under it, is brought clear out of it and made alive to God. He has a new husband, and is dead to the old one. But here the truth is put in a very beautiful form, in harmony with the character of the whole epistle. As the calling and the purpose and all that God thought about us were before the world was, so even the character of the believer's walk was ordained before ever we came into the world and is in its own nature entirely above it. It is a question of our manifesting God aright, as He is now displaying Himself. "Be ye followers of God as dear children."

This will show the importance of leaving room for salvation in every way that Scripture looks at it. In the largest part of Scripture it is not regarded after the Ephesian manner, but in the way I have been describing in Romans, etc. No question is fairly raised of falling away when the apostle speaks of salvation in this sense; but the fact is, that all the result of the blessing — all the fulness of the deliverance, is not yet our portion. And who can say that it is? Here we are suffering still: then we shall be out of the scene of temptation altogether. In Ephesians, when looking at the character of our life, he says, it is entirely outside all danger, all temptation, and everything of the sort. "By grace ye are saved." By this he means that we have been and are saved; that is, we have the present enjoyment of that which is already past and complete before God. It is a fact accomplished, because it is in Christ, and everything here is regarded as being in Christ, as, for instance, our peace. Hence He is called "our peace" further on. Hence, too, so truly is the salvation viewed as being in Christ, that, the Saviour being seated on high, we are said to be (not in process of salvation, but) completely saved, so as to need nothing more as far as this is concerned. In full accordance with this it was added, that God "has raised us up together, and made us sit together in 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 through Christ Jesus." What plainer than the completeness of the salvation? How manifestly it has a character of association with Christ, that is entirely beyond all human conception! It is easy to conceive that such a blessedness might be by and by; but the wonderful thing is, that this could be predicated of poor, weak Christians in the world now. If we dwell much upon human things, they become cheap and common, and we cease to wonder; but with this glorious work of God in His beloved Son, the more we think of it, the more we stand amazed before it. Observe, too, it is for this very purpose: "that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." That is, it is not merely God looking at us, and giving us what we need, but God acting for the indulgence of His own affections through His Son. God says, as it were, I want to show what I am, not merely to supply what you want. Thus it is God rising up to the height of His own goodness, and acting from what He is, entirely irrespective of what we are, save that we become the occasion for God to show His matchless love; and this, not merely now, but "in the ages to come," or, as I suppose, for unlimited time.

(Vv. 8, 9). All is brought to pass by the grace of God, and every blessing we enjoy is the gift of God. The very faith by which salvation is received is the gift of God. The works of man have no place in securing this blessedness; all is of God, and hence there is no room for man to boast.

(V. 10). This leads to a further truth. Not only are our works shut out — for God has done all the work — but we also are His workmanship, and, as such, we form part of a new creation in Christ Jesus. If, however, the works of the law are excluded as a means of salvation, we are not to infer that works have no place in the Christian life. There are indeed works suited to the place of blessing into which we are brought, which God has before prepared that we should walk in them. These works will come before us in the later part of the Epistle, in which we are exhorted to walk worthy of the vocation, and to walk in love, to walk as children of light, and to walk carefully (Ephesians 4:1; Ephesians 5:2, 8, 15).

The contemplation of it leads the Apostle to again emphasize the fact that our salvation is all of grace. He had stated this previously, in verse 5, in a parenthetical way. In verse 8 he enlarges upon this important fact, and adds that it is also through faith. The grace is God's: the faith is ours. Yet even our faith is not of ourselves. Faith is not a natural product of the human heart. The weeds that grow by nature in the heart of man are detailed for us in Romans 3:9-19. Faith is no weed at all, but rather a choice flower which once planted by the heavenly Father can never be rooted up. It is the gift of God.

Now this necessarily excludes works; that is, works done in order to obtain life and blessing. The only works of which we were capable were those detailed in verses 2 and 3, and in those works we were spiritually dead. God Himself is the Worker and we are His workmanship; a very different thing. Further, the work necessary was nothing short of creation. How obvious then that human works must be excluded.

“By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matt. 7:20), is a test so obvious that it needs no proving. If a young man or woman professes to be converted, it will certainly be evidenced by a change of life. It is true that salvation is by grace alone, through faith, “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:9). It is equally true that believers “are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). These works do not procure salvation in the smallest degree, but are the evidence that we are saved. They are the product, not of the old nature, not of the flesh, but of the new nature, the new man “created in Christ Jesus.” The very grace of God that has brought us salvation teaches us “that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world” (Titus 2:12).

Nor is there the smallest excuse for imagining discrepancy between the teaching of Romans 3, 4, and James 2 on faith, however common the idea was of old as it is now. The object before each writer is wholly different. The apostle Paul unfolds to the Roman saints how an ungodly man is justified, and declares that it is by faith. The apostle James lays down to the twelve tribes that a dead faith, destitute of works, is vain, and that the only faith of real account is that which is displayed in ways which glorify God. Living faith produces living works. He is exposing the worthlessness of an intellectual reception of the gospel, which had even then grown up among the Jews. We see the same principle during our Lord's ministry, and His repudiation of such faith. See John 2:23-25; John 6:66; John 15. Nor is the self-same truth lacking even in the Epistle to the Romans, as in Rom. 1:18 (latter half), and also Rom. 2:5-11. He is destitute of living faith who does not walk in the ways, and by the word and Spirit, of God. "For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Rom. 8:13). So thoroughly is the great apostle of the Gentiles at one with this pillar of the circumcision, when the occasion of a godly walk calls for notice in the very Epistle which ignorant haste conceives to stand opposed. All the truth of God is in harmony, whether doctrinal, or ethical as this Epistle is eminently.

“Saved … not of works”! not on the principle of works. And why? Because if my works could save me, then I might boast indeed. There would be no sin in my pride. I could claim heaven on the ground of my worthiness, and rightly allow in myself for ever any amount of the very thing which, of all others, is detestable to God; that which lies at the root of all sin—pride or self-sufficiency. But this is impossible. I can no more give myself new birth than bring myself into the world. I am indebted to God for the new birth as for the breath of my nostrils. Life, whether natural or divine, is alike the gift of God; only to communicate the latter there is the necessity of something besides the exercise of divine power. In order to give Adam life natural, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, “and man became a living soul;” whilst in order to give life divine there was the necessity for the death of Christ, to be accomplished in God’s due time, both as the propitiation for our sins, and as the corn of wheat which, through death, might bring forth much fruit. Without dying the corn of wheat would have abode alone, and life and pardon there would have been for none. In giving natural life God displayed but an act of power; but to give divine life the question of sin had to be raised, and in the cross was fully settled. The first was only physical, the second was moral and spiritual. And, in this respect, the new creation transcends the old. In the old we witness God’s power and wisdom; but in the new we see His righteousness, truth, love, and grace. The old is subject to vanity; the new is indestructible.

If our works had any part in this creation, there would be the elements of failure in it; and hence it is “not of works.” But the fact that it is only and wholly of grace makes it absolutely certain and stable. The secret of much of the doubting that exists as to salvation, is simply because “works” are introduced more or less as part of the plan.