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Sermon preached on Ephesians 2:8-10 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/28/2025 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
As we finish up this week working through chapter 2, verses 1-10, we come to verses 8-10. We get to focus today on what is arguably one of the best parts of the epistle, and even of the whole Bible. Here, we see so clearly that the gospel is about how we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Remember all those solas! This passage also clearly teaches that we are not saved by works, while simultaneously explaining that good works are a fruit of our salvation. We have been given a treasure to consider today. Our three points are very simply stated. We’ll consider Grace, then Faith, and then Works.
Let us begin with grace. Verse 8, “For by grace you have been saved.” The Greek word here for grace is charis. It is word about someone bestowing some favor, kindness, or benevolence upon another. In context, this is God bestowing such grace upon us as his elect. Our salvation, including our new birth, our forgiveness of sins, our sanctification, and eternal life, are all a gift of God’s grace and favor to us. In other words, this passage is not just talking about that common grace God gives to all people. Common grace includes our physical life and wellbeing, with the various temporal blessings we have in this life, like food and clothing. While the Bible does teach common grace, that’s not what this passage is talking about. No, this passage is talking about saving grace, the grace that grants us our salvation. By this grace, we are no longer under God’s wrath for sin. We won’t taste hell when we die. Our relationship with God has been restored, reconciled by the blood of Jesus. We will live forever in a glorified body with perfected souls in a new creation. Paul here is talking about such saving grace.
As Paul develops this teaching on saving grace throughout his letters, we can define it further as “unmerited favor”. This is important to understand because this Greek word charis in extra-biblical Greek is sometimes used to describe exchanges of reciprocal kindness. One person shows “charis” to another person with the expectation that they will then show “charis” back to them in return. In those secular contexts, charis can function more as a quid-pro-quo or even in some cases something like a bribe. That kind of “favor” is either merited favor or purchased favor. But that is clearly not the way Paul uses grace when it comes to our salvation. Nothing could be more clear throughout his epistles. Right here he makes it very clear with several complementary statements. Verse 8 goes on to say, “this is not your own doing” and “it is the gift of God” and “not a result of works” and “so that no one may boast.” Those four points explain the grace. The conclusion is “unmerited favor”.
Think briefly about each of those statements. “This is not your own doing.” In other words, we didn’t do something to warrant this favor and grace from God. Next, “it is the gift of God.” In other words, for God to give it to us as a gift, means he didn’t give it to us as a wage or reward or out of some obligation. Next, “not a result of works.” In other words, we didn’t work for this grace and favor. When you go work for your employer, you earn the wage they pay you at the end. Nothing about our salvation is the result of works that earned our salvation. Lastly, “so that no one may boast.” This is the logical conclusion of these clarifying statements. Since saving grace is unmerited favor from God, we can’t take any credit. If there is to be any boasting, it is to boast how gracious God is. There is no room for us to boast personally about our salvation because we didn’t do anything to contribute to it. Again, the conclusion here is that saving grace is God’s “unmerited favor” to us sinners that he chose to save.
Now that I made the case that this saving grace is “unmerited favor” let me perfect the definition by quoting Meredith Kline. He made the point that saving grace is not just unmerited favor, but that it is demerited favor. He’s absolutely right. In other words, our relationship before God was not just some blank slate when he decided to show us saving grace. It’s not like we were in the position of Adam and Eve before the fall. God didn’t have to show saving grace to them before the fall. Yes, before the fall, God showed Adam and Eve kindness and benevolence but that was not grace in the sense used here. But after the fall, none of us are in such a place. Our position before God wasn’t one with a mere absence of merit. It was one full of demerit. As this passage says, we were dead in our sin and trespasses. We walked in disobedience following Satan. We were by nature children of wrath! In other words, it wasn’t just that we hadn’t merited God’s blessings, it’s that we had merited his curses and his eternal damnation. That was our “own doing”, that we heaped more and more of God’s wrath upon us. Our works earned us God’s just condemnation. So, I have to heartily agree with Kline’s perfection of the definition of saving grace. Saving grace is not just unmerited favor but it is demerited favor – favor shown to people who had merited the opposite of favor! Praise be to God and his grace!
Let us now turn to our second point and consider faith. Verse 8 has those very important words of “through faith.” How do we take hold of this gift of grace? We receive it through faith. The prepositions are important here. We are saved “by” grace. That preposition explains that grace is the cause of our salvation, God’s saving action, grounded in the righteousness of Christ who lived and died for us. But we are saved “through” faith. That preposition explains faith is the instrument through which we receive God’s gracious gift, but not the cause of our salvation. The prepositions help us to distinguish between the cause of salvation and how it is received.
We just enjoyed Christmas. If you were a recipient of a Christmas present, the cause of why you received that present was because the giver bought it and presented it to you. You didn’t earn that gift, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been a gift. You could even say the cause of that gift was the grace or favor of the person giving it to you. But then you surely unwrapped that gift and found what was inside. The unwrapping became the instrument of you receiving that gift. Yet, like how faith is the God-ordained instrument for receiving his saving grace, our unwrapping of a Christmas gift didn’t suddenly mean that we earned that gift or did something to merit it. The cause remains in the grace of the giver. Unwrapping is merely instrumental to our enjoying the gift. Nonetheless, unwrapping is necessary if we are going to enjoy the gift. So too, we can say that faith is necessary in order to enjoy the benefits of the saving grace of God held out in Christ.
Paul gives a great illustration about faith being the instrument to receive God’s grace in Romans 4. Paul uses the example of Abraham. There, Paul says if Abraham was justified by works, then he would indeed having something to boast about. He instead quotes Genesis that speaks of how Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Paul is teaching that that Abraham was justified, i.e. declared to be righteous in God’s sight, not by any works that he did, but by believing God’s promise. Paul then explains the difference between a wage earned for working versus grace given as a gift. His point is that Father Abraham didn’t merit his salvation. He was justified not by works that he accomplished but through faith in which he received God’s grace as a gift. Abraham then becomes an early Old Testament example to talk about the nature of saving grace as that unmerited favor God shows to those sinners he chooses to save. This is also a wonderful reminder that the Old Testament saints were not saved by works as some people mistakenly think. Abraham was given the promise of the gospel in advance. He essentially believed in Jesus even long before Jesus came to fulfill the promise. Abraham received this saving grace even through faith, just like us.
Paul’s point in Romans 4 culminates with this verse in Romans 4:16. Talking of our salvation, he says, “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace.” What Paul is essentially saying is that God chose a very fitting instrument for our salvation – I am speaking of faith. Let me speak hypothetically for a moment. God’s saving grace would still be saving grace even if God had ordained some other instrument to receive the salvation. For example, he could have said to receive his saving grace we need to wash ten times in the Jordan River. If that, hypothetically speaking, were the instrument for our salvation, it wouldn’t change that salvation is by God’s grace. Washing ten times in a river might be an act of obedience, but it could never atone for all our damning sins and transgressions that we have committed. Nor could a single act of obedience ever replace a lifetime of perfect, perpetual obedience that we owe to God as his creatures. So, if God instrumentally allowed us to receive salvation by washing in a river, that salvation would still be by grace. Yet, we could imagine we might be tempted in that hypothetical scenario to think that somehow we then earned our salvation, because we did the washing in the river. So, Paul’s point in Romans 4:16 is that faith is such a fitting instrument because it keeps the focus on grace. There’s no work component about faith that we could mistake for our merit. Faith is something passive and receptive. We rest and trust in Jesus, not accomplish something to gain a reward. Let us appreciate the wisdom of God in choosing faith as the lone instrument to receive this gift of grace. Faith makes clear it depends upon grace!
Let us thus beware even turning faith into a work in our mind. Nothing in faith merits our salvation. Furthermore, remember the context when it says that this is a gift of God. The grammar is clear that this includes even our faith. By grace through faith – all of this is a gift from God. Otherwise, we would never have been born again and then believed in Jesus. By the time we turn and believe in Jesus, God’s grace has already begun to initially work inside us. Let us boast in the grace of God, not in our faith!
Let us turn now to our third point and think about works. Now, we’ve already been talking about works in contrast to grace through faith. Our first two points already made the strong case that it’s grace through faith that saves us, not by or through works. We don’t need to comment more on that contrast. What I rather want us to focus on this third point is that there is an important place for good works in the life of the Christian. In other words, I want us to turn to focus now on verse 10. It says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” This important point is given in the context of saying our salvation is not a result of our works. Rather, our salvation will result in our works. This teaches the doctrine of sanctification.
Sanctification is the teaching that God by his grace is at work in us to renew us in God’s image so that we are growing to live holy, godly lives. As it explains in verse 10, the fruit of this is that we will begin to walk in good works. We’ll begin to live differently than how we used to walk when we followed Satan and listened to the fallen world. This intended transformation is so very clear in context. This change is the natural continuation of our regeneration. It culminates in our glorification when we will be finally perfected, body and soul, in the age to come. But we see that this is described as God’s present work in us when it says in verse 9 that we are God’s workmanship. That could also be translated as God’s handiwork or God’s craftsmanship. I said it previously, that this says we are still works in progress. God is making us into something new and wonderful.
Verse 10 reminds us that this is all part of his predestined plans for us. He has prepared beforehand that we would walk in good works. We know God has foreordained all our days. He knows the end from the beginning, and all of history is working out his saving plans for us his elect. That includes this time of sanctification. He has planned not just the big picture of our sanctification, but the day-by-day ways that he is working to grow us and renew us.
This truth helps us to graciously correct one way that the gospel is sometimes erroneously truncated. It is often said that “God loves you just the way you are”. Now that statement is quite true from the standpoint of his saving grace, that he chose to love us and save us despite our fallen, sinful natures. If that is what someone means when they say, “God loves you just the way you are,” then I heartily say, “Amen!” But sometimes I’ve heard it said in a way that stops there. For example, I once heard a lesbian so-called pastor quote Jesus saying to the women caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you.” But she failed to continue the quote, where Jesus then told the woman to, “Go, and sin no more.” God’s saving work doesn’t stop at just forgiving us. He is making us anew. That is why the fitting response to the gospel is not just faith, but faith and repentance. Our repentance is our mind saying my old man was bad and wrong and I want God to change me into something beautiful and good. So, while God did love us despite the way we were, he says that now we are new creations. God is wondrously transforming us into something far better. So, God not only loves you just the way you are, but he’s also changing you to be the way he always intended for you to be. We are God’s workmanship.
This truth also helps to us to reject any temptation to say that a desire to keep God’s law is inconsistent with grace. No, in fact, God’s workmanship is growing you to love his law the way that you should. Learning to love God’s law doesn’t make you a Pharisee, as long as you keep works in the right place. A Pharisee tries to justify themselves by trusting in their own works. We must instead trust in Christ and in God’s grace. But verse 10 would tell us if we are trusting in God’s grace that we should seek good works. A zealous pursuit of good works is not inherently at odds with God’s grace. In fact, verse 10 tells us that such is a result of God’s grace in your life. Yes, there are moralists out there and we need to reject all forms of moralism. But faith in Christ tells us that God is at work in our souls to bring forth good works.
My encouragement for us on this third point is to bring the first two points to bear on this third point. See how God’s grace and your faith should encourage you to pursue a life of good works and godliness. God’s grace includes working good works in your life. Will you have faith to follow where he is leading you? Otherwise, why would you try to fight God? Likewise, since we see God’s grace so promised here, this tells you can have great confidence in your sanctification. Otherwise, why would you doubt God’s grace in your life? If you’ve had faith in this grace, to believe he has given you all this, should that faith not bring forth gratitude? Should not that gratitude seek to live now for the Lord? Otherwise, wouldn’t that be to mock God’s grace and take it all for granted? And since we’ve seen how we’ve been born again, and how God is now renewing our mind, would you still deny the goodness of God’s law? Would you still think sin is good? No, of course not. As Paul says in Romans 6:1, should we sin so that grace would abound? May it never be! This passage so wonderfully sums up that we are saved by grace and not works yet at the same time proclaims God’s design and work to make us a people who love and practice good works!
Trinity Presbyterian Church, today’s passage reminds us that we are new creations in Christ. We are made anew by God’s saving grace. We have been united to this new life in Christ through faith in his name. This passage then calls us walk anew, encouraging us that God is at work to bring this metamorphosis to completion.
What a fitting passage to use as we begin the new year. May this new year remind us that we Christians have been made anew with a call to live anew. Let us head into 2026 with the “new living” and “new thinking” and “new desires” that God is fashioning in us. As we see growth in this new year in living for him, let us in turn give him the glory and praise.
Amen.
Copyright © 2025 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
