Please turn in your Bible to Ephesians 2. Today, we are going to look at the doctrine, the teaching of the Bible, on grace, because it is extremely important.
The Bible talks about the grace of God repeatedly. Over and over again, we find Scripture that points out that God’s salvation plan is a salvation of grace. We are saved by grace, the Bible says, and that is what we read here in Ephesians 2:8:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
This is how God saves people. It is by grace. It has to be by grace. It can not be any other way because men, each one of us, every human being, are sinners. We are desperately wicked. We have fallen into sin and, as a result, we are spiritually dead.
People try to please God, at least according to their own ideas. Out in the world, the world has their own ideas of what will please God. They are just a good person. They do not kill anybody. They do not steal. They do not commit adultery, at least their own idea of what that means. They have certain basic guidelines that society runs by, and they think that if they are within those guidelines, if they do not transgress the law of the land, to a certain degree, that this makes them a good person.
Go out and ask ten people on the street, “Are you a good person?” Most of them are going to say, “I am not that bad.” Actually, you might get ten out of ten responses like that. “I am not that bad, you know,” and they are going to tell you what they do right, what they do good. “You know, I am not that bad. I have not killed anybody. I am not a terrorist. You know, I would not poison the water system,”—things like that.
They are basing their understanding of their own selves and where they stand before God on the morality of our day, and they are looking at how there are very terrible and evil and wicked people in the world who are doing horrible things—you can read about it in your daily newspaper or hear it on the TV news. “People are doing these awful things, and I am not one of them. I am not participating in that. They are the bad people. They are the terrorists that are going to Hell, but I am not like that. I am not like that at all. I am basically a good person.”
This is how the world operates. So they think that they are going to Heaven. They think that God is pleased with them. They think that if they were to die that they would not go to Hell but that they would go to live forever in Heaven, if they even have that understanding of Heaven.
Yet, this is not the Bible’s teaching. This is not what the Bible declares or what God says in His Word. The Bible says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” This means everyone—every human being. There is nobody who has not sinned, who has not transgressed the Law of God in at least one point.
The Bible is very clear that God’s standard is total perfection: a perfection that we have no way of really grasping or grabbing hold of, a perfection that is so pure and so holy and so just that if you sin in one point, once, for a moment in your life, you have broken it and you are impure. You are imperfect, you have transgressed the Law of God, you now stand guilty and responsible as a creature created in the image of God for your sin that God is now going to judge. He must judge it because you have broken the Law of God.
This is where mankind stands. We are all in the same predicament. We are all in the same situation. We are all sinners. There is not one better than another.
In society, you have different classes of people, different structures, where some are rich and some are poor, but the one equalizer and the one thing that makes us all the same is that we have all sinned and we have all offended God. So it does not matter what our standing is in the world or how our fellowman views us.
Men look at other men and when they see a good person—a fine, honest individual, a nice guy, somebody who would lend you money and be there when you call and when you are in trouble—they think that surely this person has to be right with God. Yet, they are looking at it from their own perspective, from man’s perspective.
From God’s perspective, it is just another sinner, just another person who has rebelled against Him and is subject to His wrath. This is how the Bible paints the picture.
Men try to do things like certain acts or good deeds or works, in order to try and guarantee or assure themselves a place in Heaven. They begin to try to appease God in certain ways by doing good deeds. So you have people who maybe give a lot of money to charity. They will give a great deal of money to charitable organizations, and in that way, think that they are pleasing to God. Or you will have people who will go and devote their lives, maybe to help a poverty-stricken nation. They will go there and they may even spend their whole lives, entirely devoted to helping the poor and to feeding the hungry and to dispensing medicine to the sick. Yet, even if they did this their whole life, for 20, 30, 40 years, they are still a sinner. Not one action that they took, not one bit of their own work has changed this or has made God see them in a different light—they are still a sinner subject to His wrath and subject to spend an eternity in Hell.
This is how the Bible describes things, so our situation is really desperate. We are under His wrath and there is nothing that we can do to come out from under it. There is nothing that we can do to change the fact that unless God somehow, miraculously, pulls us out of the fire, we are going down into the pit of Hell. Here is where the grace of God comes in and the mercy of God, as it says in Ephesians 2:8:
For by grace are ye saved through faith…
“By grace”—grace means that we did not do anything; we did not earn it and we certainly do not deserve it. God did not look out upon the masses of mankind—the billions of people—and see one over here who is more moral or of a better character or a little bit more obedient to His Word. He looked out and He saw only evil continually in every heart that He looked at. Over billions of people, He saw only evil continually—day after day, sin after sin, is all that the infinite eyes of God were able to see. So, as He looks over this great multitude of people, He determines to save some “by grace.”
This means, there is nothing that you could ever do that could ever please God, that is going to satisfy the Law, that is going to take away His wrath from upon you. But by His determinate counsel, He is going to send His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will take the sins of certain ones upon Himself and He will pay for their sins. He will suffer in their place, on their behalf. He will die for the sins of certain ones, certain individuals, out of mankind. Then God will come into those individuals’ lives through the Gospel and He will draw them to Himself and apply His Word to their hearts. They will become saved and they will experience the grace of God.
Why does God choose “Joe” and not choose his brother “John?” We do not know. The only thing that the Bible tells us is that it is “according to His good pleasure.” That is, He so desired. There is nothing in “Joe” over “John.” Actually, as you look at them as they grow up, “John” might be a much nicer person. He might be someone who would never steal, where “Joe” is a thief. “John” might be someone who would never tell a lie, where “Joe” is the biggest liar around. You could look at them and you could ask, “Why would God choose ‘Joe’ over ‘John’?”
We do not have an answer except that God, in eternity past, predestinated certain ones to salvation before anyone was ever born. Before anyone had done any good or any evil, before man was even upon the face of the earth, God decided to save “Joe” and to bypass “John”—exactly as with Jacob and Esau, where God saved Jacob, “Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated.”
God is free to choose whom He will. He is God. He is sovereign. He is the One who created everyone, and if He allowed us all to just continue in our way, we would all end up in Hell, and nobody could complain. Nobody could say that He was unjust or unfair or that it was not right. “Here we are. We sinned against You and You are casting us all down to Hell?” That would be fair, would it not? That would be very fair of God to do—just like the fallen angels.
How many angels did God save? Not a one, of the fallen angels—of Satan and the demons that fell from their standing. They were created good, just like man. They were created responsible to God to obey Him. Because they disobeyed, God cast them down to Hell. God judged them. There is no salvation plan for any angel.
Christ did not come and take upon Himself the form of an angel. He took upon Himself the “seed of Abraham.” He took upon Him man’s nature, so that He could only die for man. But does anyone say that it is not fair that none of the demons have any possibility of salvation? “It is not fair! You did not provide for any one of the demons!” No one says that at all.
What do we say? What do we really think when we think that Satan has no chance of salvation and the demons have no chance of salvation? “Good for them!” We know how evil they are and we know how much pain they have inflicted upon the human race, so we think that it is their just desserts that God is going to throw them into Hell. Does anyone shed a tear for Satan or any of the fallen angels? No.
This is exactly the same situation for every one of us, if God determined not to save any of us. We may not view it that way, but the fact is that we are just as guilty as they, and if God threw us all into Hell, it would be according to Justice. It would be our just desserts, just as all the demons are cast into Hell. However, God in His mercy, and according to His infinite love, has determined to save some.
Many people do not like hearing that word “some.” They will fight and holler, “Well, God has to save everyone if He is going to be a fair God!” But that is not so. He is sovereign. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is like a king who has a thousand rebels in prison who have all risen up in treason against the kingdom itself and against the glorious king who is reigning over all. The sentence is that all of their heads are to come off, but the king just determines to allow one to be spared because he is merciful. He does not know which one. At first, there are a thousand of them, but he goes, and according to his own good pleasure, for his own purposes, he chooses one. “You come forth. You will not die. You will not lose your head.”
This is how sovereign God is, and it is all according to His good pleasure—who is saved and who is not saved. This is what we are reading when we are reading about the grace of God, as we find in Ephesians 2:8.
Over in Romans 3, we read what we have been talking about and what the Bible teaches. It says in Romans 3:23-24:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
You see, it is freely given; it is a gift of God. He has chosen certain ones to receive it. Even the reception of the gift is given to them. It is the grace that is in Christ Jesus. That is where the fountain of grace can be found. Jesus is the personification of grace. In the Gospel of John, we read, “The Word was made flesh…full of grace and truth.” He is grace Himself.
So, Jesus, as He accomplished His earthly ministry, went about and certain blind people would approach Him and He would heal their blindness. He would heal the leper. He would heal the one with an infirmity. He would raise the dead—demonstrating that He was grace; He was favor Himself. Whomever He determined, He could bestow His grace upon.
Not in every case, when Jesus healed someone physically, did He actually save them spiritually. But in every case, it was the picture of this—it was the picture of God saving sinners. Grace went forth from Him. He could make the blind see and cleanse the leper and He could make the deaf hear. It all points to the fact that God can save sinners—that He can save anyone whom He determines.
The wonderful thing is, as we are hearing the Gospel and hearing the Bible, we can also begin to cry out to God and beseech Him, “Jesus, Thou Son of David.” Like blind Bartimaeus, who heard that Jesus was on the road and going by, who cried out, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!”
We can go to God—to the “Throne of Grace” as it is called in Hebrews 4—and we can boldly approach. The fact that we go at all is bold, because God really should destroy us on sight, but we can go to Him and we can come unto the King and we can cry out for mercy, as a prisoner in the dungeon. We can beseech Him that He might have mercy on us and that He might save us and that He might give us the gift of eternal life.
Yes, but God is only going to save His people, His elect. That is true, but we do not know who they are. We do not know whom God determined to save. We do not know who amongst us are the elect of God are and who are not. That is really in God’s complete control, and that is where we need to leave it. We do not ever make a decision or a judgment about ourselves, “I am not one of His elect.” We are not permitted to do this because we are not the ones with the knowledge—God possesses the knowledge of each and every one of His elect.
We can go with the hope and we can approach Him with the hope that we might be one of those elect, because we qualify. Christ came to save sinners and not the righteous. He came to save sinners, and who among us does not qualify? Who does not fit that description?
Actually, the one whom God is dealing with begins to learn that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom “I am chief.” We begin to see our sins to such a degree that we realize that we have offended greatly against God’s Law.
We can go to God and we can cry out to Him, beseeching Him for mercy, with a real hope, a real hope, that God might—there is a possibility—He might save us. He might save us. He has sent forth the Gospel into the world, and it is by the Gospel that anyone is saved. We are hearing the Gospel and we are sinners. So, there is the possibility.
Then let me go to God. Let me go to Him as the prodigal son and say, “Father, I have sinned before Heaven and earth and I am not worthy to be called Thy son.” As close as we can get is far off, but it could be that the Father might see us and have compassion and come running towards us.
This is the language of the Bible. God often encourages us to go to Him in prayer and to approach Him in our sinful state.
Here in Romans 3:25, it says:
Whom God…
Speaking of Jesus:
…hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood…
John did a good study last week on the word “propitiation.” He pointed out that this word “propitiation” means “Mercy Seat.” It is the same word found in Hebrews that is translated as “mercyseat.”
God has sent forth the Lord Jesus to be a Mercy Seat. The Mercy Seat was inside the Holy of Holies that covered over the Ark of the Testimony, inside which was the Ten Commandments representing the Law of God. It is that Law that is condemning us and is holding us accountable to it and that will exact eternal punishment for offending it. Yet Christ is the Mercy Seat that is placed over the Law. He is the covering that goes over the Law.
Once a year, the High Priest would go inside the Holy of Holies with the blood of the sacrificial animal and sprinkle it over upon the Mercy Seat—pointing to the atoning work of the Messiah, of Jesus Himself, that would satisfy the Law of Demands, as Christ paid the penalty for His people in full and now they are recipients of His grace.
While we are in the book of Romans, let us turn to Romans 11. In Romans 11:5, it says:
Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
We mentioned earlier that the remnant out of the whole of the world is by the election of God, which is according to grace. That is, God found nothing within them. Individually or personally, there is nothing within a person that would make God decide to save them. They are filthy, spiritually, and desperately wicked. This is all that God sees in every single human being since the Fall. So He has elected some to salvation, and it is an election of grace.
Then we read in Romans 11:6:
And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
God is, again and again, pointing out that it is not by works.
The world has its ways of trying to do good works to get right with God. Well, so do Christians. There are multitudes who call themselves “Christians.” They think, “Well, if I get baptized, this is all that I have to do and I will be right with God.” Or, “If I partake of the Lord’s Table, then I will be right with God.” Or even, “If I just go to church regularly on Sunday, then I will be right with God.” Even some who are more knowledgeable realize, “I have to share the Gospel, so if I get the Gospel out, I will be right with God.”
Yet there is nothing, nothing, that anyone can do in Christ’s Name—that is calling themselves a Christian—that would please God, apart from the faith of Christ in saving them. There is nothing that anybody can do that will ever save them.
This is just the way it is. This is how the Bible lays it out. It is all in vain. It is a vain attempt to get right with God by doing good deeds and works. It never works. It never accomplishes its purpose. Jesus pointed this out in Matthew 7:22-23:
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
So it is very common—it is not a few; it is many who will say, “We did it in Your Name. We are a Christian”—whatever denomination does not matter. Even outside of the church, it is possible for someone to still be actively working in certain aspects of the Christian life.
Yet without salvation, without being born again, it is all vanity; it is all fruitless; it is all emptiness because, “Ye must be born again.” There is really no way of getting around this—“Ye must be born again.” God must give you His grace. You must be someone who has received the grace of God, who has truly been acted upon by the Word of God in salvation.
This will be pleasing to God. This will bring you into His favor. This will cause you to experience eternal life. Anything short of this will maybe look good to those around you and to other Christians and in your own eyes, but it comes under the heading of “works,” because a “work” is just simply trying to keep the Law of God—whatever Law it might be.
The whole Bible is a Law Book. So when God told the church, during the Church Age, to have baptism and people, rightly, had their children baptized, that was a work. Or when God commands us to repent and people try to keep that Law by turning away from one or two or a few sins, they are doing a work. When God says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” this is part of the Law Book, the Bible, so therefore, this is the Law.
Anyone who thinks, “I am going to believe. I am going to keep this Law,” they, therefore, are placing themselves under the curse. They are placing themselves under the responsibility of keeping the whole Law of God. We read about this in Galatians 3:10:
For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
Many people are deceived in this way. They think that all they have to do is walk down the aisle—perform that work. All they have to do is to say the sinner’s prayer—do that work. All they have to do is accept the Lord Jesus Christ—do that work. In doing so, they are, thereby, placing themselves under the Law and under the obligation to obey the whole Bible and every Law.
Of course, no one can do this, so you are going to be under the curse and you are going to come under God’s wrath and you will be one of those standing there on that Day, saying, “Lord, Lord, I do not understand. I am a Christian. Look at what I did.”
Herein lies the problem. You are trying to get God to look at your works—your works, your actions, your deeds—and this will not please God. It is only, as we read in Galatians 2:16, this very important verse. This is what pleases God:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law…
And this is the whole Bible.
…but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
There is the grace of God; there is salvation. Jesus was faithful. He obeyed the Law perfectly. He satisfied the Law’s demands completely. It is by the faith of Christ that a sinner can become saved.
Nothing that we do in any shape or form, in any way at all, comes into view. As a matter of fact, if we are trying to add just a little bit of our own work, then this is just going to give us a more severe judgment because it is greater sin.
I hope that everyone remembers the story in the Old Testament of the man who picked up a few sticks on the Sabbath day. The judgment of God was that he be stoned to death. Why? Why? Because the seventh-day Sabbath was a picture of rest.
What were you not to do on the Sabbath day? “You will do no servile work therein.” You will perform no work, whatsoever, on the Sabbath, because it points to the fact that the work will be done by Christ. He will do all of the necessary work to save His people, and God, being a jealous God, will not allow anyone else to do any work and to contribute anything at all. So that seventh-day Sabbath was a sign that pointed to Jesus accomplishing all for the sake of His elect.
When that poor man just wandered out there in the wilderness and picked up a few sticks, he did not think anything of it—neither would we. He just picked up a few sticks. All of a sudden, somebody saw him and it was brought to Moses’ attention. They brought it to God’s attention and God determined that he be stoned to death. He will die because he was trying to add the slightest bit of his own work.
So it is with any of us. If any of us are thinking that we can do the least thing, then it is a terrible tragedy because we will come under the judgment of God if we are trying to add to our salvation in any way.
Let us go to James 2. I want to go there just because a lot of people may think of this because we are talking about works. There is a verse here that really has to be faced in James 2. It says in James 2:21:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
We are learning from the Bible that we can not do anything—there is nothing that we can do to become justified. Actually, Galatians 2:16 flat-out declares that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” This verse in James contradicts this idea, on the surface.
Abraham became justified, “when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar.” God commanded Abraham to do that. He told Abraham to take Isaac, his only son, to mount Moriah and sacrifice him. Abraham obeyed God.
Remember, this is the definition of a “work.” The Law tells us what to do, and if we obey it in any form, it is a “work.”
So Abraham was doing the work of offering his son, Isaac, upon the altar. Yet, amazingly, it says that he was justified by works. Amazingly, this is an incredible statement—that Abraham, our father, was justified by works when he did this.
Some people point to this and they say, “See, you got it all wrong. You can contribute. You can add a little something to God’s grace. You can have a role in your own justification.”
This is why some people in the past, some theologians, have looked at the Epistle of James and have thought, “This does not belong in the Bible. This little book does not belong in the Bible.” There are some well-known theologians of the past, at least one that I can think of, who is reported to have made that kind of a statement because he realized that it is justification by faith alone. Yet, in James, it says that Abraham was “justified by works.”
The answer to what this verse is saying when it says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works?”, the answer is, yes. Yes, but not his works—not his works. He was justified by the work of Jesus Christ—the work of Jesus Christ. James 2:18 says:
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works…
Who is this man? Who is this man this is speaking? Is it anyone here? Is anyone here going to say this to anyone else?
We know that good works do follow believers and that good works do accompany a Christian life. After salvation, God will produce good fruit in someone’s life, but would anyone be bold enough to say, as it reads, “Thou hast faith, and I have works”?
Does it not sound prideful, almost boasting? Except it is not boasting and it is not prideful, if the man speaking is Christ Himself. It is Jesus Himself.
Yea, a man may say…
And that “man” is Jesus.
…Thou hast faith…
You say that you are a Christian—millions do, hundreds of millions do. Okay, you say that you are a Christian. But:
…I have works…
You see, Christ is the One who took the sins of this one and that one. He is the One who paid the penalty for them and was under the wrath of God. He is the One who was obedient unto death. He has works.
…show me thy faith without thy works…
You can profess up and down and insist all that you want until you are blue in the face and you can have a million other people sign on the dotted line and agree with you that you are a Christian. Yet if Jesus did not die for you, you are not. It is as simple as that.
If Christ did not take your sins upon Himself and die for those sins through those wonderful works of God, you are not a child of God. So, the Man, Jesus, is saying,
…show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.
Did that not demonstrate the wonderful faith of God, the wonderful faith of Jesus, when He was obedient unto death—when He did live out His earthly ministry in absolute perfection to the will of God? Certainly, we can see His faith in view through His works.
Then we read in verse 19:
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
Why bring this up in this spot? Why bring this up? “Thou believest that there is one God…the devils also believe.”
Remember what we talked about earlier—did God die for any devils? No, absolutely none of them. “Well, you believe that there is One God. You have that faith, and so do the devils.” They recognized Jesus. They recognized that He was God, but that did not save any of them, because there were no works done on their behalf. God did not save any of them, so they have absolutely no works.
Then we read in verse 20:
But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
Again, you can do everything and anything. You can start from a young age and go until the day of your death, trying and working hard to be a moral, good person—but without the work of Christ, it is vain. As it says here, “Faith without works is dead.” You are still spiritually dead. You need to be born again. There has been no change within your heart.
Then we read in verse 21:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
The answer is that yes, he was. He was justified by the work of the Lord Jesus, at that point in time. You see, God is getting a little tricky and trying to cover it up, in the sense that the Bible is written, in some cases, to foster unbelief, where the ungodly can go their own way. God has written the Bible in that fashion. So He is making this statement:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
Immediately, we think of the grand and glorious act of offering Isaac and we are forgetting that it can not save anyone or justify anyone—that it is only the work of Christ that justifies. So, yes, he was a saved man, at that point in time, when Isaac was offered upon the altar.
It is the same case with Rahab in verse 25:
Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?
Yes, she became a saved woman. God had mercy upon her. At that point in time, we know that the work of Christ was applied to her and her sins were washed away—she was saved by grace. Yet the receiving of the messengers is just a window dressing and it leads people down a totally different direction and they get a totally different idea. It is always by the grace of God and it is never, ever by our own work. We are saved by the work of Christ.