Grace, Through Faith, the Gift of God

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1–10

Read Ephesians 2:1–10 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in offenses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you are saved!

(Ephesians 2:4–5)

The Heart of the Letter

The opening of chapter two stands at the center of the letter. The chapter divisions in our Bibles were not in Paul’s manuscript; he writes one long flow. But if we had to put a finger on the passage that has done the most work for the Lutheran tradition, that has shaped catechisms and confessions and sermons across five centuries, that has been quoted from Reformation pulpits and pulpits ever since, it would be Ephesians 2:1–10. This is sola gratia and sola fide in the apostle’s own words. This is the doctrine the Reformation insisted on, in the form Paul gave it to us. And it is given to us here as the answer to a diagnosis we have not yet heard.

Paul is going to spend three verses telling us something about ourselves before he tells us about God. We need to listen patiently. The good news is best heard against the right background, and the background is bleak. The Lutheran tradition has always insisted that the gospel is rightly received as deliverance where the law has exposed the sinner’s need, that the news of grace lands as good news on those who have heard the news of their condition. Paul orders his sentences this way, setting the announcement of grace against the full diagnosis of death in sin. So will we.

We will treat the diagnosis in verses 1–3 first. We will sit with the great pivot of verse 4, the two-word turning point on which the whole gospel hinges. We will trace what God has done in verses 5–7, what principle Paul names in verses 8–9, and what purpose follows in verse 10. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, will be our guide where it helps. It is one of the longest articles in the Lutheran Confessions, written to defend the doctrine of justification that Paul sets out in this passage.

Dead in Offenses and Sins

Paul begins with a diagnosis. He tells the saints they were dead, though before the diagnosis is over he will include himself and use the first-person plural.

Notice the word: dead. Not sick, not weak, not inclined to sin. Dead. The image is medical and forensic at once. A dead body cannot heal itself. A dead body cannot breathe, cannot speak, cannot will, cannot move. Whatever a dead body needs to live, it must receive from outside itself. There is no inner spark waiting to be fanned, no buried capacity waiting to be developed. There is only death.

This is the Lutheran teaching on the condition of fallen humanity, and this verse is one of its chief sources. The Augsburg Confession, Article II, teaches that since the fall of Adam all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin, that is, without fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence. The Formula of Concord, Article II, on free will, presses the matter further: in spiritual things, the unregenerate person has no power to begin or to work in any way toward conversion. The will is not merely weakened. It is dead to the good. Dead is what Paul says, and dead is what Lutheran teaching has confessed after him.

What does this death look like in life? Paul names three patterns the dead are walking in. His verb in verse 2 is peripateō, “walk”; the NET renders it “lived.”

The first is the pattern of the world. Paul says the saints once lived “according to this world’s present path” (Ephesians 2:2). The world is not just a place; it is an order, a pattern, a way of organizing life that runs in defiance of God’s good purpose. To walk according to the world is to take one’s bearings from what the world esteems, fears, desires, and pursues. The dead do not see this for what it is. They take it for normal. They follow the current.

The second is the pattern of the spiritual ruler: “the ruler of the domain of the air,” in Paul’s striking phrase, the spirit “that is now energizing the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). This is the devil, though Paul does not use that name here. The same letter will return to this enemy in chapter six, when Paul exhorts the saints to put on the full armor of God against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. Here he names the enemy as the unseen architect of the world’s pattern. The dead do not see this either. They cannot see it, because they are working from the inside of the system the enemy has shaped.

The third is the pattern of the flesh. Paul says “all of us,” and now he includes himself, “formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind” (Ephesians 2:3). The flesh in Paul’s vocabulary is not the same as the body. The body is good; God made it. The flesh is the body and mind in service to sin, the self turned away from God and toward its own appetites. Paul includes himself. He does not stand above the diagnosis.

And the verdict is total. Paul ends his diagnosis by saying we were by nature children of wrath, “even as the rest” (Ephesians 2:3), in the natural condition all humanity shares. By nature. Not by accident, not by upbringing, not by social conditioning. By nature. This is who we were. The wrath of God is not an emotion God works Himself into; it is His holy and just opposition to sin and to those who love it. We were on the wrong side of that wrath, and we belonged there by what we were.

It is hard for modern ears to hear this. The age in which we live prefers diagnoses that flatter rather than diagnoses that wound. But Paul is not interested in flattering us. He is interested in telling us the truth, and the truth is dark, and the truth is not the whole story. He has spent three verses telling us about ourselves. Now he will spend seven verses telling us about God.

But God

But God.

Two words. The pivot of the entire passage. The pivot, in many ways, of the entire gospel.

It is hard to overstate the weight these two words carry. Everything before them is dead, dark, lost: walking in the world’s pattern, in the enemy’s pattern, in the flesh’s pattern, under the wrath of God by nature. Everything after them is mercy, love, life, the saints raised and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, kept for the praise of God’s grace in the ages to come. The conjunction is but. The change in subject is God. He is the One who reverses what could not be reversed from below.

Notice that nothing has happened yet to change us. We have not repented. We have not turned. We have not chosen. We are still dead. And it is precisely there, not after we have done something but while we are still in the diagnosis, that God moves. “Even though we were dead in offenses,” Paul says, He “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). The order of the verbs matters. God’s mercy precedes our response. The dead do not respond before they are made alive.

This is the Lutheran doctrine of monergism, the teaching that conversion is the work of one, and it is given to us here in the syntax of Paul’s sentence. The cause of the saint’s salvation is not the saint. It is God. Specifically, it is God’s mercy and God’s love. Paul names both. He is “rich in mercy.” He acts “because of his great love with which he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4). The reason He acts is not in us. The reason He acts is in Him.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, written by Melanchthon to defend the Lutheran teaching on justification, draws on this passage, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone, sola fide, draws deeply on these words. Whatever the saint has, the saint has because God moved first, because God moved freely, and because God moved in mercy and in love. The saint’s faith is the receiving hand, not the contributing hand. And even the receiving hand, as we will see in verse 8, is given by God.

Made Alive Together with Christ

Paul does not say merely that God made us alive. He says God “made us alive together with Christ.” The phrase is precise.

The saint’s resurrection is not a separate event from Christ’s resurrection. It is participation in Christ’s resurrection. When God raised Christ from the dead, in some real sense He raised the saint. The saint who is in Christ has already crossed from death to life because the body to which the saint belongs, Christ’s body, named at the end of chapter one, has already been raised. Paul’s companion letter names the place where God joins the sinner to that resurrection: “Having been buried with him in baptism, you also have been raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12). The empty tomb of Easter morning is the baptized saint’s empty tomb too.

And Paul does not stop with resurrection. He adds two more verbs. God raised us up with Him. God seated us with Him in the heavenly realms. The same trajectory Paul traced for Christ at the end of chapter one (raised from the dead, seated at the right hand, exalted above every power) is now traced for the saints in chapter two. What is true of Christ is true of those who are in Him. The saint is not just rescued from below. The saint is lifted to where Christ is.

Notice where this seating happens: “in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). The same realm Paul named in 1:3 (“every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms”) and 1:20 (Christ seated “at his right hand in the heavenly realms”) appears here for the third time. The realm where Christ now reigns is the realm where the saints already have their standing. They have not been left below. They have been seated above, in Christ, even while they continue to walk visibly on the earth. This is not only a future hope. This is a present reality.

What is this for? Paul tells us in verse 7. God’s purpose is “to demonstrate in the coming ages the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” God’s purpose in saving us is the display of His own grace. The saints are exhibits of mercy. The age to come will be filled with the demonstration of what God did in Christ, and the saints, raised and seated and kept, are the demonstration. This is breathtaking. The Christian’s eternity is not merely her own enjoyment of God; it is also God’s eternal showcasing of His own goodness, with the saint as the visible evidence.

This is what the glorious Father is doing. This is what the saint has been brought into. Now Paul names the principle behind it.

For by Grace You Are Saved Through Faith

For by grace.

Three words. The second pivot of the passage. The principle Paul has been driving toward.

Paul has already said in verse 5 that the saints are saved by grace, almost in passing, as a parenthetical aside; the NET sets it off with dashes and an exclamation point. Now in verse 8 he returns to the phrase and unpacks it: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). This is the locus classicus of the Lutheran doctrine of justification. It is a verse the Reformers returned to again and again. It states the doctrine that the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, was written to defend. It is the verse that catechisms summarize and that the hymns of the Reformation echo. We owe it slow attention.

Begin with the means. By grace. Through faith. Two prepositions, two distinct things. By grace: the cause is God’s unmerited favor in Christ. Through faith: the instrument is the saint’s trust in that favor. The two are not the same. Grace is what God gives. Faith is the empty hand by which the saint receives. And the empty hand contributes nothing; there is nothing in the receiving that adds to what is given. The saint contributes her need. God contributes everything else.

Then Paul forecloses any boasting. The salvation just named, he says, is “not from yourselves.” It is the gift of God. What is the this that Paul says is not from ourselves? Greek scholars have debated this for centuries. The grammar is ambiguous. The pronoun is neuter, while the Greek words for grace and faith are feminine, so many readers take it to point to the whole of what Paul has just said. It could refer to the saving (it is not your own doing that you have been saved), to the grace (it is not your own doing that grace has come to you), or to the faith (it is not your own doing that you have faith). The Lutheran tradition has read it broadly. All of it is gift. The salvation is gift. The grace is gift. The faith itself is gift. None of it is the saint’s contribution.

Why does Paul press the point so hard? Because the human heart cannot leave it alone. We will find a way to insert ourselves into the equation if we possibly can. We will say we earned it, or we deserved it, or we cooperated with it, or at least we chose it when others did not. Paul shuts every door. Not from ourselves. Not from works. No room for boasting. The saint stands before God with empty hands and full mercy, and there is no place left for the saint to claim credit. This is humbling, and it is also liberating. The saint who knows this is free from the exhausting and impossible labor of saving herself. She can rest. Christ has done it.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession spends most of Article IV defending exactly this point against those who insisted that good works must be added to faith for justification. The Reformers refused. The believer obtains forgiveness of sins through faith alone in Christ, apart from the law, apart from her own works. That is the Lutheran position, drawn from this verse. Faith alone: sola fide. Grace alone: sola gratia. Christ alone: solus Christus. Three of the Reformation’s great solas are here, in two verses of Paul.

It is worth pausing to feel the pastoral weight of this. The Christian who has heard this passage rightly need not live in doubt about her standing before God. Her standing does not rest on her performance, her consistency, her growth, or even her felt assurance. It rests on what God has done for her in Christ, given to her by grace, received by faith that He Himself gave her. This is the gospel’s deepest comfort. The saint who is troubled about her salvation should not search her own heart for hidden strength. She should look where her salvation is kept: outside herself, in Christ’s promise, spoken to her in the Word, poured over her in Baptism, placed in her mouth in the Supper, and pronounced over her in the absolution. Her assurance rests there, not on her grip. At the same time, this promise must never be turned into permission for unrepentant sin. Scripture warns that some fall away, and the Confessions teach that those who forsake repentance and faith can lose the Holy Spirit (the Augsburg Confession, Article XII; the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article II). So the terrified conscience is sent to Christ, and the secure and hardened conscience is called to repentance.

Created for Good Works

But Paul is not finished. There is one more verse, and it is the one many readers stop at when they want to insert works back into the equation. We must not stop at it the wrong way, but we must stop at it.

“For we are his creative work,” Paul says, “having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them” (Ephesians 2:10).

The Greek word the NET renders creative work (older translations say workmanship) is poiēma, the word from which English gets poem. The saints are God’s poiēma. He has made them. They are His handiwork, His art, His composition. The same God who created the world has created the new creation in Christ, and the saints are the work He has made. The saint is not a self-made man or a self-improved woman. The saint is a poem God has written. She did not write herself. She is being read.

And what is the saint made for? Good works. Note the order. Paul does not say the saint is created by good works. He says the saint is created for good works. Works are not the cause of creation; works are the purpose of creation. The saint who has been saved by grace through faith is then placed in a life of good works, prepared in advance by God Himself. Paul’s Greek says literally that we should walk in them (peripateō); the NET renders it “so we can do them.” The walk is the fruit, not the root.

The Lutheran tradition has always insisted on this distinction, and it has always insisted on both halves of it. Faith is alone in justification; that is the Apology, Article IV, repeating Paul. But faith is not alone in the life of the Christian. Where there is real faith, there will be real works, planted by the Spirit, prepared by the Father, walked in by the saint. The Augsburg Confession, Article VI, on the new obedience, confesses this directly: faith should produce good fruits and good works, and a Christian should do all the good works that God has commanded, for God’s sake, but not trust in those works to merit grace before God.

The order is the gospel’s order. First grace, then faith, then works. First God’s mercy, then the saint’s empty hand, then the saint’s full life. Paul has given us the whole order in ten verses. The order does not change because the gospel does not change.

And the works are prepared beforehand. This too is a comfort. The saint does not have to invent her own good works. God has prepared them. They are waiting in the saint’s vocation, in her family, in her congregation, in her work, in the people God places in her path. The saint’s job is not to manufacture good works but to walk in the ones God has set out for her. And He has set them out generously. There is more good work in any saint’s life than the saint will ever exhaust.

So the section ends. The diagnosis was total. The pivot was God. The action was His mercy. The principle was grace through faith. The purpose is the saint’s life of good works in Christ. The Lutheran heart of the letter has been heard.

For Discussion

1. Paul says the saints were dead in their offenses and sins. Modern readers often soften this language to “wounded” or “weak” or “broken.” Why does Paul use the strongest word he can? What is at stake in keeping the language strong?

2. Paul names three patterns the dead walk in: the world, the ruler of the domain of the air, and the flesh. Which of the three is most visible to you in the world around you? Which is hardest to see in your own life?

3. The two words but God are the pivot of the gospel. Where in your own life have you experienced this pivot? Where do you most need to remember that the pivot has already happened?

4. Paul says God made us alive together with Christ. The saint’s resurrection is participation in Christ’s resurrection. How does it change your prayers and your view of your own life to remember that you have already been raised with Him?

5. The Lutheran tradition has read Paul’s this in verse 8 as comprehensive: what the saint did not contribute includes not just the salvation and the grace but the faith itself. What in you resists this? Where are you tempted to insert yourself back into the equation?

6. The saints are God’s poiēma, His creative work, His poem. They are created for good works prepared in advance. What good works do you think God may have prepared for you, in your vocation, your family, your congregation, that you have not yet seen as God-given?

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, You who are rich in mercy, who loved us even when we were dead in our sins, You have made us alive together with Christ. We were walking in the world’s pattern, the enemy’s pattern, the flesh’s pattern, and in Your mercy You set us in a new place: alive with Christ, raised with Him, seated with Him in the heavenly realms. We did not earn this. We did not deserve it. We did not choose ourselves into it. By grace we are saved through faith, and even the faith we have was Your gift to us. Keep us in this knowledge. Keep our hands empty before You and our hearts full of Your mercy. And lead us into the good works You have prepared for us in our callings, that we may walk in them, to the praise of the glory of Your grace. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Looking Ahead

Next session we read Ephesians 2:11–22. Paul has just announced that the saints are saved by grace through faith. He now turns to the second great work that announcement entailed: the bringing of Jew and Gentile into “one new man,” one new humanity, in the body of Christ. Christ “destroyed the middle wall of partition, the hostility” (Ephesians 2:14). The far have been brought near. The two have been made one. And the new humanity that results is described in language drawn from the temple of the old covenant: “a holy temple in the Lord,” “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21–22). The vertical reconciliation of saint to God in 2:1–10 produces, in 2:11–22, the horizontal reconciliation of saint to saint in the household of God.

Before next session, read Ephesians 2:11–22 at least twice. Read it once for sense. Read it a second time looking for the word peace. Paul uses it four times in this short passage, and it carries the whole weight of what Christ has done. Notice also the architectural language toward the end: foundation, cornerstone, building, temple, dwelling place. Paul builds a temple in three verses. We will follow him brick by brick.