Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:3-7
… So it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works so that no one can boast.
Ephesians 2:7-9
Before we look at God’s sovereign Grace, let me repeat a couple of fundamentals.
- God is God and there is no fault in Him. Otherwise, He could not be God
- The Bible is the Word of God, and therefore must be true in every way, otherwise, again, God could not be God.
In other words “God is sovereign” and therefore any apparent contradictions, and there are a few, we find in Bible are as a result of our lack of knowledge or our misunderstanding of the word of God.
That said – I am contaminated by sin, both inherited from Adam, and by my sinful actions, The wages of this combined sin is death. (Romans 6:23) but “.…in the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith.” (Ephesians 2:28), so let’s be absolutely clear, we have been saved as:-
- God chose me, before the creation of the world. Before man was created and definitely millennia before I could possibly choose Him.
- As a free gift.
- All I need to do is believe Jesus died for me (and everyone else) – FAITH and that faith comes from God, not me.
- It is not by our own doing, we cannot save ourselves,
- It is not a result of our works – it is a gift
- IT IS BY FAITH WE ARE SAVED AND BY FAITH ALONE (the second verse above)
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:28)
Jesus, himself, said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.“(John 14:6). In summary, Only Jesus saves and we can only be saved by Jesus.
One of my favourite passages is Romans 6:1&2 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?“. Now wait a minute, I thought we were saved by Grace, by God himself and there was nothing I need to do, except sit back and wait to be taken home. Paul seems to be saying I have got to stop sinning. I do have a part to play in my salvation. I have to believe Jesus died, as a free gift, to redeem my sin, Take my word for it, that DOES change you. To know that we have a Father that loves us so much that he is willing to die for us just so that we can be with Him for all eternity. That changes a person.
If I continue living in sin at best I would be dishonouring Jesus and saying to him it is a waste of time you dying for me. The implication. of that is death (eternal separation from God). So we have an apparent contradiction we are saved by faith alone, but we must stop sinning?
Ephesians 2:10 confirms this with“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”. So we can’t sit back with our feet up, we have “Good Works” to do.
A friend of mine and an elder of my Church, who is also a nuclear physicist, and the inspiration for this Blog, explained it to me like this: “Light provably is a wave, it has a frequency and an amplitude, but, light is also made up of particles, photons. Both are true of light, we may not understand it, but we have to deal with the fact that it just is. “Grace” is so hard to understand, but I have faith that when I meet Jesus, I will be able to see the whole picture and see that both sides of this are 100% true.
In closing, what does this mean to me! It means that I can relax in the sure knowledge that my sovereign God chose me, and realising that choice has changed me so that I no longer want to sin, and can’t help loving God back. Now I can stop worrying about this apparent contradiction because God has got it all in hand.
It has taken me a surprisingly long time to write this Blog and in the meantime, the friend I mentioned above has preached an absolutely marvellous sermon on the Grace of God predestining and choosing us before the creation of the world. I strongly recommend you watch it.
