So please give your attention as I read God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word in your hearing, Ephesians 2, a short passage, verses 8-10, a very well-known passage as well. Paul here writes in verse 8, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. Well, of course, as we've been saying, today is Reformation Sunday. That's because 507 years ago, at least, on Thursday, on the 31st, that is the event which, by all commentators, scholars, point to as the event that triggered and sparked the Protestant Reformation. It is the event in which Martin Luther, a German monk in the Augustinian order, wrote out 95 theses, 95 points of dispute against the abuses of the church in his day. And he hammered these theses on the door of the church there in Wittenberg for the purpose of theological disputation. Now, unbeknownst to Luther, some very ambitious students of his took those theses down. translated them into German, printed them on at the time which was the brand new Gutenberg press so you can mass produce these things and distributed them out throughout the whole countryside so that now what was meant to be a dispute within scholarly circles was now being spread throughout for the common man to read as they could see now these abuses of the church of Rome in that day. Now the big controversy, of course, is something called the indulgence controversy. An indulgence was something that the church offered that you could make some kind of sacrifice for, usually through the giving of a financial gift, but you can give land, you could do other things. And an indulgence was given in order to lessen one's time in purgatory. So what the Pope would do with the indulgence would be anyone who has been granted an indulgence, the Pope would go into what was called the treasury of merit and would then give merit to those who lacked the merit in order to get to heaven. Now, again, all of this, we'll explain this a little bit more in a bit, but all of this is the background for the Reformation, this idea of the indulgence controversy as it was the The thing that sparked the Reformation is it sparked this idea of what is the ultimate authority in the church? Is it tradition or is it scripture? How is one made righteous before God? Is it by works or is it by faith? How does one receive merit before the Lord? Is it through these indulgences, through this merit that you work and earn and achieve on your own or is it through God's grace? And that's what we're gonna see here in this passage is in Ephesians 2 verses 8 through 10, it said, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, not of merit. Paul is quite clear. You have been saved by grace, not through works. You've been saved through faith, not through works. It is a gift, it is not something you can merit. And then we will look at verse 10 is, you see the proper ordering, the proper positioning, if you will, of works, which is not something that earns or merits salvation, but something that flows out of salvation in verse 10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. And the theme of this message this morning is simple. God graciously gives to us in Christ what we ourselves cannot merit. God graciously gives to us in Christ what we ourselves cannot merit. Now before I look at the text again, I want to look a little more deeper in this Reformation controversy over the subject of merit. Because last year when we had our Reformation Day, we looked at sola fide, or faith alone, which teaches the basic Christian truth that we are justified And that idea of justified is not something that you work in yourself, but it is a declaration. It is a declaration that God, the holy and righteous judge, makes. It is a forensic, if you will, declaration in a sort of a kind of a heavenly courtroom scene in which God declares us righteous. not on anything we have done, not on anything in which we could do or will do, but by faith alone. This righteousness is given to us through the means of faith. That was last year. So we are righteous not through works, but through faith alone. Now, if you study Reformation history, sola fide, or faith alone, is called the material cause of the Reformation. This was the heart of the matter. This was what the debate was over. How is one righteous before God? By works or by faith? It was the heart of the debate between Rome and the Protestant Reformers. Now when I say by works or by faith, I want to make sure I'm clear. Rome is not a works righteousness religion. It is a synergistic religion in which you have grace and works together. It's not that Rome denied grace, it's just they denied grace alone. In fact, if you go through all of the solas, it's not that they had a problem with faith, or with scripture, or with grace, it's the fact that they had a problem with the alone part of all that. That it is scripture alone, that it is faith alone, that it is grace alone. Now, as we said last year, we looked at sola fide, or faith alone. Closely connected to that is this idea of sola gratia, or grace alone. So if sola fide is we are justified through faith alone, not through works, sola gratia is that we are justified by grace alone, not by merit, or at least not by our merit. It is by the merits of Christ. The difference here is the difference between means and instrumentality. The means of our salvation is grace. The instrument through which we receive that grace is faith. Grace is delivered through faith and that is how we are saved. Rome would say that merit is delivered through works and therefore we sort of are meritorious on our own and thus are saved. An illustration I like to use is the illustration of an appliance. So you have a refrigerator, right? If you want to power that refrigerator, you need electricity. Electricity is what makes a refrigerator go. How is that electricity delivered? Through a power cord, right? The power cord has to be connected to the source of power so that the power can flow through the power cord. turn on and activate your appliance. So the power cord would be faith, and the electricity would be grace in that illustration. So in other words then for Rome, works were the instrument through which one achieved merit. Merit was the means by which one was justified. That's how Rome understood it. For the Protestants, faith was the instrument through which one achieved grace, and grace was the means by which one was justified. Now, the doctrine that developed in the Roman church, this really comes to its fullest flower during the medieval period, was one in which believers, again, with the assistance of divine grace, grace is not absent from the equation, with the assistance of divine grace, Given through the sacraments baptism Lord's Supper penance people are made righteous you are you are given? Saving grace through baptism you maintain saving grace through the Lord's Supper And if you fall from grace you restore that grace through penance, and that's where the indulgence is coming It's through penance So then again, from Rome's perspective, justification is something one becomes inherently. We become righteous. We become righteous through our own merits, and if we do not have enough merit, then that's where the indulgences come in, and you can dip into that treasury of merit to fill up where we are lacking. So justification occurs as believers with the assistance of divine grace given through the sacraments earn merit with God and thereby obligate God to reward our merit. This whole program puts God in a sense that he is obligated to reward our merit. Now where this treasury of merit comes in is If you look from Rome's perspective again, the ordinary Christian is not able to achieve enough merit on their own. So thankfully, you've got the merits of Jesus Christ, you've got the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and you've got the merits of the saints who had so much merit to spare, they had a treasury of merit, which then the Pope could dip into and say, through these indulgences, I will dip into the treasury of merit and will give you enough merit so that you can be sprung from purgatory. Because the idea of purgatory was, if you did not have enough merit to enter into heaven, you go into purgatory to work off that remaining sin until then you are cleansed and righteous. So this excess merit could then be applied to people like you and me, because we're not saints, we're not the Blessed Virgin Mary, we're not the Lord Jesus Christ. We could get this excess merit through the sale of an indulgence. And that's where the Protestant reformers argued vehemently against this teaching by going back to scripture. That's the formal cause of the Reformation. So if faith alone is the material cause, the stuff they were arguing over behind the scenes was where do we derive our authority? How do we determine which teaching is correct? Do we go back to the scriptures alone or do we go to the scriptures plus tradition? Paul in Romans 3 verses 21 through 25 writes this, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe for there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. That's Romans 3 verses 1 through 20, 21 through 25. Grace alone through the merits of Christ. Our confessions also teach this quite clearly. The Belgic Confession, Article 22, says in part on justification. We believe that to attain the true knowledge of this great mystery, the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts an upright faith which embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits, appropriates him, and seeks nothing more besides him. For must needs follow either that all things which are requisite to our salvation are not in Jesus Christ, or if all things are in him, that then those who possess Jesus Christ through faith have complete salvation in him. Therefore, for any to assert that Christ is not sufficient, but that something more is required besides him would be too gross a blasphemy, for hence it would follow that Christ was but half a Savior. That's article 22 of the Belgic Confession. It's basically saying this, either we are justified freely through faith in Christ alone, or Christ is not a full enough Savior. He's not a good enough Savior. You've got to add to that. And that's the whole thing behind what Paul argues so vehemently for in Galatians when he says to them, why are you so soon turning away from the grace of God that was delivered to you in the gospel? You are adding works to it, and when you do that, you have another gospel, a false gospel, one gospel that does not save. And anyone who preaches that kind of gospel, Paul says, should be anathema, should be cursed. Our very own Heidelberg Catechism, Lord say 23, question 60. How is one justified? That's the question it asks. Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ. So that although my conscience accuses me that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil, notwithstanding God without any merit of mine. any merit of mine. But only of mere grace grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, even so as if I had never had nor committed any sin, yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me, inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart. I don't think there's a better way to explain it than Heidelberg 60, to be perfectly honest. It's very clear. No merit of mine, only of mere grace. It is imputed to me. It is applied to me through the means of faith. And what do I get? I get all of Christ. I get his perfect satisfaction. I get his perfect righteousness. I get his perfect holiness. So that when God looks at me, it's not just that my sins are wiped out, but he looks at me and sees one who has perfectly kept the law. but not in my own work, but because of Christ's merit given to me, and the only thing I need to do is receive that with a believing heart. The Bible, the Reformed confessions are very clear on this. Justification, Another way of saying it, salvation is a gracious gift of God that is received through faith. It is the merits of Christ and Christ alone that save. Our works merit nothing. If we are trying to earn our own merit, you're gonna be on a little hamster wheel on which you will never ever get off because you will never ever be able to merit enough. And beloved, this is not a secondary issue over which Christians can agree to disagree, right? You can't just say, well, okay, you know, grace alone is good for you. We'll continue to do grace and merit and faith and works. It's like, no, this is the very heart of the gospel message. If we get this wrong, the difference here is not whether or not, you know, it's like you get baby sweat or you don't get baby sweat, or you believe in a premillennial rapture, or you don't believe in a premillennial rapture. The difference here is between heaven and hell. The difference is between heaven and hell. You get this wrong, you get the gospel wrong, you get the gospel wrong, it is the difference, quite literally, between heaven and hell. Again, which is why Paul, in Galatians 1, gets to the heart of the matter when he says, when you are messing around with the gospel, anyone who preaches something other than what you received, let that person be accursed. I've always found it interesting that of all the letters Paul writes to these churches, it is the one to the Galatians that he spends like the least amount of time in introduction. You know, most of these letters, you get a long introduction, you get a nice prayer where he thanks God for them. I mean, even the Corinthian church, which had all kinds of problems in it, they had, I mean, if there was one church They had everything wrong. I mean, I think Corinth would have been that church. They had so many things wrong. But even there, Paul spends at least like 10 or 11 verses saying, hi, how are you? I pray for you. I thank God for you, and so on and so forth. When he's with the Galatians, he's like, OK, hi, I'm Paul. Let me get down to tax now. We need to get down to business because you are flirting with a false gospel. It is the difference between heaven and hell. And that is why. there was a reformation. That is why this was such a big deal. This is not something we can just sort of gloss over. Well, now let's look at our passage. So we look first, verses eight and nine, saved by grace through faith. We're going to see this critical reformation doctrine, sola gratia, here, or grace alone, taught very clearly in this passage. And we're also going to see the crucial distinction here between faith and works. And we have to get that distinction correct. If you get that distinction wrong, again, you fall into error. Now, before we really dig into this passage, I don't want to just pull this out of context and not at least give you a brief context of where we are in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. It's a prison epistle that Paul wrote when he was in prison under house arrest in Rome. It would have been closer to the end of his life in the early 60s. He wrote it, believed to be to the church in Ephesus, though maybe also some surrounding churches as well. And it's a letter that proclaims quite clearly the glory of Christ in the life of the church. That is the overall theme of the book of Ephesians. And in Ephesians 1, he speaks of how this church, the church of Jesus Christ is one that was chosen by the Father before the foundation of the world, how it was redeemed by the blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and how the church is sealed for our eternal inheritance by the Holy Spirit, which is sort of like the engagement ring that God gives to us. And then when you get to Ephesians 2, we see that this eternal plan of redemption is put into practice as those chosen by the Father before the creation of the world are made alive together with Christ. That's what you see in verse five of chapter two. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ. And then you have there that by grace you've been saved as comes from verse eight. We see that all of these then people who have been made alive together with Christ, as you see in the latter half of the chapter, verses 11 through 22, are being built into one new man. Jew and Gentile are being formed into one new body. A holy temple unto the Lord, which is founded upon the foundation of Christ as the cornerstone and the apostles and the prophets. Now the heart of the salvation message is found in verses 8 through 10, where it begins by saying, for by grace you have been saved through faith. That word grace, Charis, that's the name of Clara Gross's granddaughter, Charis, grace. By that word, grace just speaks of God's favor, God's unmerited favor, favor that you cannot earn. It is favor that is graciously given by God. Grace is God's good favor freely given to unworthy sinners. As Paul says in 2 Timothy 1.9, God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. Grace is God's unmerited good favor bestowed upon unworthy sinners. So Paul says, for by grace you have been saved. That word there essentially means to deliver. Oftentimes it's used to speak in the Old Testament of like delivery of, you know, people from bondage, from people from danger. But in the New Testament, it has a more eternal perspective when we're talking about delivered from sin, delivered from judgment, delivered from death, and delivered unto eternal life. And in fact, the way it is structured here in the language, not to get too technical with it, but it is one of these verbs that speaks of a past action that has ongoing effects even now. You have been saved, and that continues now, so that you are still saved. It's not something that happens once, 2,000 years ago on a cross, and then has no further effect. In fact, you can literally translate verse 8, for by grace, you are having been saved. I know it's kind of awkward to say it that way, but that's kind of the idea. You are having been saved. You are still having been saved. Tomorrow, next week, next year, 10 years from now, should the Lord tarry, you will still having been saved. So by grace, you have been saved, and then through faith. Again, this is the instrument. This is how this grace is delivered to us. It is delivered through the open hand of faith, or as they would say, the empty hand that receives God's gracious gift. Now to underscore the graciousness of our salvation, Paul emphasizes that this salvation by grace through faith is not of or not from yourselves. You cannot work for it, you cannot earn it, you cannot do anything to achieve it. It does not come from you. It does not come out of you. It is a gift. That word there, gift, it means, guess what? Gift. What is a gift? It is something that is given. Do you earn a gift? No. It is something that is freely given. Now, I know here in the Midwest, we have this thing with gifts where if I give you a gift, you kind of feel obligated to give me a gift back. That's kind of an interesting way of looking at things. It's a gift. God does not expect you to give something back to him in order to pay him back, right? It is graciously given. It is a gift. And not only is salvation not of ourselves, it is also not from or out of works. Nothing we do, our obedience to the Lord, nothing we could do or earn can work for this, can produce this out of ourselves. Romans 4, verses 4 and 5 are wonderful on this. Where Paul there, after coming out of Romans 3, seeks to explain this idea of justification by faith, says, Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him, God, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Paul there using the language of works and wages and gift and salvation. If you work for it, then it's owed to you. That's what I said earlier when the whole idea of this idea of accruing merit is in a sense, perversely puts God in a sense indebted to us. Like if we somehow merit it, God then is obligated to give us something. And here, Paul's like, no, no, if you work, your wages, that's not a gift. If you work, your wages are what it's owed to you. And fortunately, what he says earlier in Romans three is, what do we do? Well, our work is sin and our wages is death, right? That's the problem. But God, who justifies the ungodly, those who are sinners, that's us, that faith is accounted as righteousness. Salvation doesn't come from within, nor can we earn or merit it through any of our works. And what does that do for us? Well, it leaves us with no room to boast. End of verse nine, lest anyone should boast. That word there, boast, just to brag, to glory. In other words, no one is gonna be up in heaven saying, I did it, I got here, I climbed the mountain, I scaled the heights, I weathered the storm, I so on and so forth, I did it. No one's going to be up in heaven saying that. What are we going to be doing in heaven? Well, if you look at the image of Revelation 4 and 5, we're going to be throwing ourselves down at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, casting our crowns before Him, saying, worthy are you, O Lord, the Lamb who was slain before the beginning of time, because of what you have done for us. No boasting. Romans 3.27, Paul says, where's boasting? It is excluded. By what law? A law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Now, I'm no church historian, and I don't even play one on TV, but it seems incredible to me, it really does, it seems incredible to me how Rome or anyone else can miss the clear teaching of scripture on this point, except for the fact that we always like to try to sneak works back in with grace. We always try to backdoor works. Even Protestants try to backdoor works into salvation. And it seems like it makes sense, right? It seems like we have to do something, because there's so many commands in the Bible, like, well, we got to do something, right? So somehow we are kind of cooperating with God in this sense. All that does is sort of... It's a way to kind of grab glory. It's a way to boast. We want to share in the glory. We want to boast. We want to say we did something. Okay. You know, even some Protestants will say, okay, well, sure, we're saved by faith, but somehow I do something to keep myself saved. Right? Right. And God's going to say, no, no, no boasting for you. No glory for you. It is all to me. So it just seems incredible again to me that how anyone can miss this, except for the fact that our own fallenness seeks to try to sneak works back in through the back door. Paul's quite clear, not of works lest anyone should boast. Well, then where do works come in? Well, that's verse 10. Because when the gospel is presented correctly, it will open one up to the charge of antinomianism, big fancy word that just means you're against the law, you're against works. So if you present the gospel correctly as a gospel of God's free grace, people are gonna say, well then, we can live any way we want, right? Because that's what happens at the end of Romans chapter five. Paul there is talking about the connection between Jesus and Adam, and he says, where sin abounds, grace super abounds to cover that sin. So then, the fleshly mind, In fact, my own mind would often think this way too. It's like, so we've got a situation here where I like to sin. God likes to show grace. And the more I sin, the more God's grace will cover that sin. So I'm going to just sin like a dog and God is going to get all kinds of glory because he gets to shower grace on me. And Paul will say in Romans six, verse one, shall we continue in sin that grace may bound? And his answer is by no means. by no means. Salvation by grace through faith alone is not a get-out-of-hell-free card, which allows you to do whatever you want, so you could just say, I've got the card, I can get in, all my sins are covered. No. Because the message of salvation by grace through faith, not of works, inevitably raises the question, then why do we do good works? And that's where, again, Heidelberg Catechism is so good. Lords Day 32, Question 86. If we are saved by grace through faith, why then do we do good works? And here the question is answered because Christ having redeemed and delivered us by his blood, also renews us by his Holy Spirit after his own image. So I'm gonna stop there for a moment. So it's not just wiping the slate clean that Jesus does. He also does a work of renewal in us. He recreates us. We become, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, new creations. The old is gone, the new has come. And the process of sanctification comes in, and the Holy Spirit works in us to change us, slowly and painfully oftentimes, and oftentimes far more slowly than I would like, but to conform us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ, his dear Son. So the Holy Spirit, we are renewed by the Holy Spirit after the image of Christ so that we may testify by the whole of our conduct, our gratitude to God for his blessing, so there's thankfulness, that he may be praised by us, so that glory and praise, that everyone may be assured in himself of his faith, so our assurance is strengthened by our good works. It's not the ground of our good works, or it is not the ground of our assurance, but it certainly strengthens our assurance, and by the fruits thereof, By our godly conversation, others may be gained to Christ. So the catechism gives us four reasons why we do good works. because we've been renewed. So we do it out of gratitude and thankfulness for what God has done. We do it so that we may show praise and glory to God. We do this so that our assurance of faith may be strengthened. And we do it so that we can win others. So our good works, as Luther would say, God does not need your good works, your neighbor does. So our good works then are to draw others. That's what Jesus says, do your good works before men so that men may glorify your father who is in heaven. So Paul is quick in verse 10 here to dismiss the charge of antinomianism or free grace or no works when he says, we are his workmanship. We are God's workmanship. We are created in Christ Jesus. And don't miss the connection with verse five where he says, we are made alive together with Christ. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are God's workmanship. We are, in a sense, God's do-it-yourself project. God is working in us. God is working in us. And as I said, sometimes that process is slow and painful and agonizing. because we often wanna go back to our old ways. A lot of ways we're like the Israelites and the wilderness going back, oh, Egypt, oh, the lox and the bagels and at least we had a place to sleep and we had three square meals and Moses would say, and slavery. But we had all the onions and the leeks and slavery. In other words, why would we go back to that life? It's a life of slavery to sin. Being saved by grace brings with it sanctification. We are now God's do-it-yourself project. It's through the Holy Spirit we are being conformed into the image of Jesus Christ, as Paul says in Romans 8.29. And it's a work that not only God starts, but will complete, as Paul says in Philippians 1.6. Unlike a lot of the projects I do, I start them and kind of leave them. God, he's gonna finish what he starts. He says, I know that the good work that was begun in you will be completed on the day of Christ Jesus. And God is now working in us, and he works in us to will and to work for his good pleasure. That's what Paul will say in Philippians 2.13. So because we have been made alive together with Christ, Paul says we are created now in Christ Jesus for good works. That is what the new creation is. We are new creation people being conformed to the image of Christ by the Spirit, doing the works that God has given us to do. The good works that Rome, in a sense, had mistakenly believed earned merit with God and worked toward our justification are, in fact, the result of having been saved by grace. That's where works come in. Because we have been saved by grace, then we do good works. The good works are those that God has sovereignly ordained for us to do. So salvation, our assurance of salvation, and Christian orthodoxy, I would contend, depends on getting the gospel right. We are saved by grace, through faith, unto good works. And if we miss the proper place of good works in this equation, we empty the gospel of its saving power. Now as we bring this to a close, I cannot commend enough the fact that we need to thank God for the Protestant reformers. We need to thank God for men like John Calvin, for Martin Luther, for Philip Melanchthon, for Theodore Beza, for all of these guys. They are men with feet of clay like us. They're not holy in the sense that they are perfect. But we need to thank God because God did a work of restoration in that period. It was a rediscovery of the gospel. And one of the slogans that came out of the Reformation is a Latin phrase, post tenebras lux, which translated means after darkness, light. The light of the gospel has shown after a long period of it being obscured in darkness. Now I know we all know this message, right? This message has been proclaimed from this pulpit not only by me on countless occasions, but I'm sure by all of the ministers who have preceded me have preached this message of salvation by grace through faith to the point where Yes, we know this. Yes, we know this message. But I pray to God that we will never get tired of hearing this message. That we will never tire of hearing the message that we are saved by grace, through faith, not of works. And if we do get tired of it, shame on us if we do. because the gospel is good news. The gospel is good news and we need to hear it every day because it is through the proclamation that we are not only redeemed and forgiven, but also sanctified unto good works by grace through faith, not of works. Let me close with some words of gospel comfort. Again, Romans 4 verse 5, but to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his or her faith is accounted for righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21, for he made him, that is God made Christ, who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Then finally Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. Let us never get tired of hearing the good news of the gospel that we are saved by grace through faith, not of works. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, not only for the gospel, but for all those, Lord, who have labored in proclaiming this message. For all those, Lord, who have given their lives for the proclamation of this message. For all those, Lord, who have done the work of translating your word into language we can understand for dying for the sake of the gospel. Lord, let us never grow tired of hearing the good news because we will inevitably attempt to fall back into some kind of works that is just our nature. But Lord, you have recreated us by your spirit. You are conforming us into the image of your son. And it's all through the gospel. The gospel is not only the pardon of our sin, but it is also the power of our living as well. So Lord, I pray that you will impress this upon the hearts of those here, that you will bless us, not only the remainder of this day, but throughout this week and in weeks to come, should you tarry, that we continue to look to you for our salvation and then to work for the good of our neighbor, and to give you the thanks. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.