Ephesians 2:1-9--By Grace Through Faith

By Grace Through Faith​
2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved-- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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This passage should sound familiar after all of our time in Galatians recently, so I don't know that I'll spend a lot of time here as this seems like the "Cliff's Notes" version of the entire argument that Paul made in Galatians.

First, the real gospel recognizes man's true position before God--dead in our trespasses (the lines we crossed when we broke God's Law) and sins (anything we do are are that falls short of God's perfect, holy nature and name, since we were created to be image-bearers of Him).

Second, our flesh (the "natural man") has been corrupted by sin and caused us to walk in rebellion and be a part of the kingdom of darkness and follow the devil, Satan, the prince of the power of the air.  He is the one at work in the sons of disobedience as opposed to the way that God the Holy Spirit is at work in those that are the sons and daughters of God.  Remember that Satan wants to be like God and tries to counterfeit everything God says and does--he will even make an "unholy trinity" in the last days.

While in sin, we were enslaved to the passions of the flesh--we could not help but respond to our evil, depraved desires, and sin caused our minds to be depraved.  Because we rebelled against the law that we knew, we were all condemned and deserving of God's wrath.  No one could meet the standard except God Himself.

So, God being rich in mercy and because of the great love with which He loved us, even while we were still enemies with Him in our state of being dead in our trespasses and sins, caused us to repent and believe so that He took that which was dead and made it alive in Christ (by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone).

As a result of Christ's finished work on the cross that paid the blood-price and death penalty for our sin, we were declared "not guilty" and given the righteousness of Christ as Christ took our unrighteousness on Himself and put it to death. Through this act, we raised to walk in newness of life like Christ with a nature (and eventually a body) made for heaven that will be like the Resurrection body of Christ, and we will be seated (our work will be finished too, but also a symbol of power and authority) with Christ in the heavenly places as we receive our eternal inheritance and reward.

The Father, Son and Spirit planned this together from the very beginning so that God might reconcile a remnant of men to Himself in a way that would glorify the Name of God and would specifically exalt the name and works of the Son--the salvation of those who belong to the Son (the Church) is the Father's way of showing His immeasurable richness of His grace and His kindness towards the Son.  When people see how much God the Father loves us on Jesus' behalf, they should understand how much the Father loves the Son.

Notice I didn't mention one thing that you ever did to earn, gain or keep your salvation in this whole post because that isn't the real gospel (again, read the posts from our study of Galatians).  A gospel founded in any way upon good works is no gospel at all because it's not "good news" since our works of the flesh are all corrupted and fall short of God's perfect standard and can in no way please or satisfy God--it is only the work of God Himself through Christ and secured by the Holy Spirt that will be pleasing to God.  We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.  God did all the work and offers salvation as a "free" gift--I put "free" in quotation marks as there is an exchange that takes place-you must give Christ all of your old sin nature, not holding any of it back) so that you can receive all of His righteousness.  It is not a result of your good works at all and therefore, none of us can boast about anything related to our salvation other than maybe us boasting about how great Jesus Christ is.