For By Grace You Have Been Saved Through Faith, Ephesians 2: 1-10

Dan Doyle

This passage in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is both powerful and revealing of who we are in relation to God and his generous grace extended to us through his unbounded love and mercy toward us. Writing to the Ephesians from his prison cell in Rome, he begins with a joyful praise, filled with the recognition of how blessed we are to have been chosen by God “before the foundations of the world”, how he destined us for adoption and how through his will and by his grace, he gave us redemption through Jesus Christ. Paul had gotten word of the Ephesians’ faith and their love for one another, and he prays that God, “may [continue] to give [them] a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that, with the eyes of [their hearts] enlightened [they] may know what the hope to which he has called you…” (vs. 17-18).

The 2nd Chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians begins with a description of our nature and condition as a result of our fall from grace in Eden before God raised us again through Jesus Christ, His Son. “Brothers and Sisters, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived and followed the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient” (Eph. 2: 1-2). Paul continues, then writing, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by Christ you have been saved), raised us with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (vs. 4-7).

Does this mean that the Ephesians were no longer sinners, or us? No. We are those referred to here as ones that live ‘in the ages to come’. In countless ways, we still are often caught up in ‘following the age of this world and in the spirit now at work in the disobedient’. We still need the “eyes of our hearts enlightened with the spirit of wisdom and revelation that God, in his mercy and by his grace, still makes available to us through Jesus Christ. God still desires to show us the truth through the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness that we are saved. It is not that we have chosen God, but that God has freely chosen us out of his immeasurable love for us, that we are saved. And that love is not an abstract love, but a real, present, living, and active love. It is an intimate and redeeming love that was revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

What should our response be to such immeasurable grace? Indeed, how can we not respond to this but to give thanks to God in some meaningful way? Paul writes: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them” (v. 10). How do we give thanks then? By developing daily habits of prayer, study, and discernment, by humbly bending our minds, hearts, and wills to God’s immeasurably gracious and kind will. In doing so, we can come to know what the particular gifts are that God has given to each of us, through which he desires us to do those “good works that He has prepared for us in advance” in service to those who still have not heard of Jesus, to those who have walked away from God for whatever reason, to those in material, emotional, or spiritual need.

Augustine knew this struggle, how difficult it was to bend his will to God’s will, to recognize, to admit to his worldly desires and passions, and let go of his ego. At one point in his “Confessions”, he writes the following about his experience with this interior struggle: “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet.” Sound familiar? We, too, can often think this way when we are caught up in that great interior struggle between the pull and tug of our worldly desires and the better angel of our conscience. But when Augustine finally gave his will to God, he was able to write this with complete sincerity: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

How can a Christian who has come to know and experience God’s generous grace in his or her life not be filled with an overwhelming sense of thanksgiving and a growing desire to express that thanks by sharing that joy with all others in and through the “good works that God [has] prepared [for each one of us] in advance”? His grace is, after all, “immeasurable”. Once we experience the gift of it in our own hearts, minds, and souls, it also becomes uncontainable. It will simply overflow from within us through our love and service toward our brothers and sisters in all situations, places. and times. Blessed are you, Father, in all of your designs.