Salvation Explained (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Ephesians 2:8-10 and the Five Solas

If you have your Bibles open, please turn them to Ephesians chapter 2 and hold your place at verse 8. I was out last week, but the weeks prior to that I had started a new series for the month of October looking at what are known as the five solas.

And the five solas are what are known as the battle cries of the Reformation. These were the five specific arguments that the Reformers would develop in their arguments, discussions, debates, and battles against the false teachings that had invaded and taken root in the Roman church.

And we believe as a church, we believe and are committed to these five solas. We believe they properly articulate the Biblical teaching on salvation. And if you're not remembering what they are, I'll remind you, and they're on the board here, that the five solas, and we have broken them down into three categories, is we have our salvation grounded in sola scriptura.

Scriptura means scripture. And what that means is that we base what we believe about God and about salvation on scripture alone. That does not mean that we ignore church history. That does not mean that we would write off creeds and confessions as being unvaluable because they do have value demonstrating the history of the church and what has been believed and taught by those who came before us.

But when it comes down to what binds the conscience of man, it is not the traditions of men, but it is the word of God. Martin Luther said, my conscience is captive to the word of God. And that lays the foundation for sola scriptura.

Salvation is grounded in scripture alone. Well, today we are going to look at the next three of these five solas, and getting all three of these into one message is a chore. You're welcome. No, it's work because I would desire to do a sermon for all three, but it is also my desire to get back into a biblical exposition of a book of the Bible.

And if I continue to stretch out these topical series, I'll be in them longer than I want to be in. My goal is to be in 2 Corinthians in November. So we will do three solas today, and then next week we will look at the final sola, soli deo gloria, which says all of this is for God's glory alone.

But today we're going to look at salvation explained, and salvation explained is sola gratia, which means by grace alone, sola fide, which means through faith alone, and solus Christus, which means in Christ alone.

Those three statements are summed up, I believe, most articulately by the Apostle Paul in our passage this morning, so I invite you to stand as we read from Ephesians chapter 2. We give honor and reverence to God's word by standing when it is read, and we read, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. What a glorious word. May we pray, Father, as I seek to give an exposition of this word as well as understanding these three solas, I pray again that you would keep me from error, for Lord God I am fallible and able to preach error and I don't want to, so for the sake of your name and my conscience and your people, keep me from error today and open the hearts of your people to hear the truth, and if there are those here who do not know Christ, Lord, that today might be the day of salvation for them.

In Christ's name, amen. As I was considering this series several months ago, as I was preparing, knowing that it was coming, I always ask myself, how much do I need to repeat? The Apostle Peter in his letter said that he repeated because we needed to be reminded of things that are important.

Martin Luther, the great Reformed preacher of the 16th century, said to his congregation, every week I preach the gospel because every week you forget, and so I am reminded that even though today I may say many things that you have heard before and many things in a way that you've heard them before, that it is not my job to be creative in the pulpit, but it is my job to be accurate, and it is my job to remind you of things that you may already know.

So if you hear something today that you've heard before, may God be glorified in it because we need always to be reminded of those things which are essential. And when it comes to the question and the concept of salvation, we could ask the question, why does this matter?

Why Salvation Matters for Everyone

Why is this the thing that we hear repeated so often? Why is this the thing that we always go back to? Well, beloved, it is because it is among the things that are most important for us to consider. I made a screen on this.

I said, why does salvation matter? Well, salvation matters first because everyone knows that God exists. Do you realize the Bible teaches that? The Bible doesn't teach that we have to go out into the world and convince men of God's existence.

The Bible says that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them in the things that have been made, and therefore they are without excuse.

That's Romans chapter 1 beginning at verse 18. It says, all men know God exists and therefore they are without excuse. No one will face the Lord on judgment day and say, you gave me not enough evidence for your existence.

So salvation is important because everyone knows God exists and there is no excuse. But it is also important because everyone has sinned against God. My class this morning, I'm grateful to be able to teach alongside Brother Mike Ward, the teenage class, and this morning we were in Romans chapter 3, and we were reminded again of that verse that most of us probably, if you grew up in church and Sunday school, you probably learned Romans 3 .23 that says what?

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. See the reality is, not only do all men know God exists and therefore there are no excuses, but everyone has sinned against God and there are no exceptions.

No man in this room or woman could stand up and say, I am without sin. It would be a fool's errand to even try. So everyone knows God exists, therefore there is no excuse. Everyone has sinned against God, therefore there is no exception.

And everyone deserves God's punishment. Boy, how popular is that? I don't get invited many places and that's probably one of the reasons. Because proclaiming that God's wrath is deserved by men is not popular today.

People want to proclaim a God who is more like St. Nicholas than he is like Jesus, willing to have you come sit on his lap and tell you what you want for Christmas and tell you how good you are if you're a good little boy or girl.

That's the idea. You know, this past week, Rachel, one of our worship team members, you all know Rachel, Rachel sent a song and we sang it a while back. We haven't sung it in a while, but we may sing it soon.

But it's a song that was written by James Pettigrew Boyce. James Pettigrew Boyce was the first president of the Southern Baptist Seminary in Kentucky. And the song is entitled, Lord, I Deserve Thy Deepest Wrath.

Now you're not going to hear Hillsong sing that. You're not going to hear that at Elevation Church. But it's Lord, I deserve thy deepest wrath, how faithless I have been. That's what we need to be reminded of.

That we deserve God's wrath. And there is no escape from deserving God's wrath. Now there is an escape from it, we're going to talk about it in a minute. But there's no escape from deserving it. There's no escape in yourself.

And the most serious problem that we have, and again, some of you have heard me say this before, and I'm not going to continue apologizing for repetition, because repetition is the key to learning, and the key to learning is repetition.

But the most serious problem that you and I have is that God is good. See, people tout that, oh, God is good, and that's good. And we might think of that as a relief, but that is not a relief. In fact, the word God in the English language comes from a derivative of good one.

That's what God, that's what the word God means, is good one. This is why when we say God's speed, good speed, that's the idea, it's good. The word God means good. God is the good one. He is the one who is good.

And we would say, well, that's good that God is good. Well, the problem with that is you're not. God is holy, and we are unholy. God is righteous, and we are unrighteous. God is good, and we are not. And because God is a good judge, he will deal with our sin.

Only a bad judge allows for crimes to go unanswered. Only a judge who is willing to take a bribe or willing to turn his eyes away from justice is willing to have a criminal stand before him and not level the weight of justice against that criminal.

And you and I who stand having broken the law of God will stand before the throne of God, and the judge of all the universe will do right. And the most desperately wicked thing that a person can think is that they are saved by what they do.

The most desperately wicked thing a person can imagine is that salvation is accomplished by something that they have done. But I want to tell you, my friends, my beloved brethren, if you ask the average person, and I know this by sheer example of my own life going out and witnessing.

Brother Mike would know this for sure because he's done it so much in his life. When you ask the average person why God should allow you into heaven, their answer is, because I'm a good person, or because I do this, or because I do that.

They try to find something within themselves upon which to hang their own righteousness. But remember, God is good. You aren't. Remember when the rich young man ran to Jesus? I just taught on this last Wednesday night.

The rich young man ran to Jesus and he said, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, Why do you call me good? There is none good but God alone. Now Jesus was not denying his own divinity.

He was not denying his own goodness. But what he was doing is he was challenging that young man's understanding of goodness. You see, what people don't realize in that story is that young man thought Jesus was good, but he also thought he was good.

Because when Jesus said, Keep the commandments, do this, do that, and he named some of the commandments, that young man said, All these I have kept from my youth. Liar, liar, pants on fire. You have not kept them from your youth, but you proclaim your own righteousness.

The proverb says that. It says almost every man will proclaim his own righteousness. Believe they are saved by what they do. And so if I could tell you anything today about the five solas, the one overarching message of the five solas is this, is that salvation cannot be earned.

Salvation cannot be deserved by what you do. The Bible says there is one wage that you deserve, and it is the wages of sin, and the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. And that is where the distinction lies.

The distinction lies between what you are owed and what you are given. What you are owed is what you work for. It's what your wages deserve. And the wages that you deserve is death and hell. And if you've never come to that honest conclusion that what you deserve is hell, then I don't understand how you understand grace.

Because if you've not come to the conclusion that you deserve hell, then what is amazing about grace? God didn't save a hell-bound wretched sinner. He saved a good old boy. You know one of the things that bothers me?

And if you say this and you've said it before, please know that I'm not trying to be corrective in this. You say what you want. But I don't like this, and I'll tell you why. I don't like it when people say, well, good people go to hell.

I know what you mean. What you mean is, oh, well, a person who doesn't believe in Jesus but is generally good goes to hell. But you see, what you do is you confuse people. Because when you say good people go to hell, what that sounds like is that God's not just.

What you should understand is there is no good person. There is none good. No, not one. There is none righteous. There is none who understand. There is none who seeks after God. All have gone their own way.

The venom of asps is under their list. They run to shed blood, and the fear of God is not within them. They are not good. God does not send good men and women to hell. He sends wretched sinners to hell.

John Newton knew that when he wrote Amazing Grace because he said, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. He didn't say that saved a good person. There was one good man, and we crucified him.

And the rest of us deserved his cross. We deserve the cross of Christ, and he took it in our stead. That is what we have to understand. If you are holding on to any vestige of your own goodness for your salvation, you have yet to understand the grace of God in Christ.

Salvation comes when we recognize that nothing in my hand I bring. Only to the cross I cling. There is no goodness in me. People don't want to hear that. People don't like that. But that is the message of the gospel.

Dead in Sin, But God, and Saved by Grace

If you have your Bibles to Ephesians 2 .8, I just want to bring you back up to verse 1. Before I give an exposition of verses 8 to 10, I just want us to read down to that verse. Because verse 1 of chapter 2, Paul is describing the condition of man's heart.

And he says in verse 1, You were dead in your trespasses and sins 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, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

That's a pretty picture, isn't it? You were dead in sin, Satan-loving, following after the world, and you had your desires being carried out, and you were children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind.

You say, well, that's good. Man, I'm no worse than anybody else. No, you're all bad. That's the thing. It's like, oh, well, we're just like everybody else. Well, everybody's bad. So I've met some really super-duper people.

I've met some super-nice people. Man, I just know so many people that are great. They're super-duper. Yeah, I've met nice people, too. It's funny, I like this illustration. I say all pirates treat each other well when they're on the same ship.

But they're still pirates. Pirates have laws that they live by. When they live on the ship, they have the ones who have to clean, the ones who have to cook, the ones who have to drive the ship. They have their rules that they live by because pirates have to live under certain rules or the ship won't go anywhere, right?

There's got to be a captain. There's got to be your deckhand. You've got all these guys, but at the same time, they're all maritime criminals. They're always pirates. Paul does not paint a flattering picture of humanity, but he does paint a very beautiful picture of God.

Let's look at verse 4. But God. The two words upon which your salvation hinges, by the way. I will say this. One thing about Set Free that I like is one of the shirts they make, they wear a lot of shirts.

They like to print shirts with stuff on them, and one of the shirts that they have on the back just says, But God. But God. And the idea is that, is all of our lives would be going straight to the pit and fire of hell.

But God. It wasn't but Keith. It wasn't but you. It was but God intervened. I didn't intervene in my life at 19 years old. I didn't come in and change my heart. All I did was realize that I was dead in sin and going to die and go to hell.

And I remember, you ever had that realization? You ever sat up in bed at night and said, You know what? If I stop breathing right now, I'm going to wake up in hell. I'll never forget. Two weeks of my life, the most miserable two weeks of my life, was when I was 19 years old.

I'd been married for just a few months to my wife. And she had gotten saved just a little before I did. And I realized that if I died, I was going to go to hell. I remember, I didn't eat for two weeks, and trust me, it's a big deal.

I didn't want to eat. I didn't want to do anything. I was so miserable, realizing my condition before God. And I needed to know there was hope. I needed to know that salvation was available. And I needed to know the gospel.

And I needed to know Christ. But God. Not but me. But God. And what does it say? It says, But God, being rich in mercy. Now again, I don't have time to exegete all this, because I want to look at 8 through 10.

But mercy is important, because mercy means He's not giving us what we deserve. Because what we deserve is that hell that I talked about. What we deserve is that punishment I talked about. What we deserve is God's judgment.

But God being rich in mercy means He's not applying that judgment immediately. But being rich in mercy, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved.

And by the way, that phrase, by grace, you have been saved, it's like Paul is holding it in. It's like he's pushing. You ever take a balloon and just push it into your chest? And like you hold it and it pops, right?

Paul has been pushing this in. And now he's like saying, But God, who is rich in mercy, even when we're dead in our trespasses, made us alive, boom, by grace. It's like it just can't not come out of him.

By grace, you have been saved. And raised up with Him. And seated us with Him in the heavenly places. You realize that currently, if you are in Christ, you are seated with Christ in heavenly places in the economy of God.

Because you are in Him. And He is seated at the right hand of God. I don't have time to get into what makes that great, but that's pretty great. So that in the coming ages, He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And then comes to our passage for the day. For by grace. And by the way, I asked my class this morning, What is grace? What is it? I would ask you today, What is grace? And I know sometimes we get our answers which are, like people say, God's riches at Christ's expense.

That's one that people come up with. It's like an acronym. Other people say unmerited favor, which is probably the most dictionary-like definition. If you were to look it up in a dictionary or a concordance or one of those books, you might find it say unmerited favor.

But the word grace, kariti in Greek, comes from the root keres, which means gift. And here's how we distinguish that. In another passage in Romans, Paul says, For the wages of sin is death, but the keres, the gift, of God is eternal life.

See, grace is a gift. For by God's gift, for by God's grace, for through his unmerited favor, you have been saved. And you know why that stress is so important? Because it takes it off of you. Salvation was not earned by anything that you have done.

And it will never be earned by anything that you could do. It is by grace. And I will say this, by grace alone. In the Roman Catholic system, and by the way, we are Protestant, which means we are part of the tradition that broke away from Rome in the 16th century.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, there had arisen the idea, and it still remains, that while our punishment is received by Christ, our merit is produced by us. And therefore, while we can have our punishment taken, we still have merit that we can accomplish.

And what they believe is they believe in the idea that certain men and women who came before us, saints and leaders and teachers and popes and others, have had such an abundance of this merit, that they have what is known as the thesaurus meritorum, which is known as the treasury of merit, which simply exists in some ethereal plane, according to Roman Catholics, where the merits of those who came before us can be applied to us.

And therefore, if you lack some merit, you can seek that merit from others who have come before, from Mary and the saints and the apostles. And there's a Greek word for that. What is it, church? Baloney.

It's absolute baloney. It's garbage. It's not true. There is no thesaurus meritorum that has within it the merits of the saints and the apostles and Mary, because the only merit that applies to our salvation is the merit of Christ.

It is not ours, and it is not theirs. By the way, this is what makes the concept of purgatory so repugnant, because purgatory says that when you die, that you have to go to a place where you continually are purged until such time as you are made right to enter the kingdom of God.

That is false. The idea that there is something that has to be done by you. No, Paul said it is by grace you have been saved, by the gift of God that you have been saved. And by the way, important, but don't miss this, for by grace you have been saved.

We could say it this way, and it's true. You have been saved, you're being saved, and you will be saved. You've been justified, you're being justified, you will be justified. You've been sanctified, you're being sanctified, and you will be sanctified.

So there is a process that God is working out in our lives, but the salvation that we receive, the salvation that we receive is done because it is done in Christ and not us. So he can say by grace you have been saved.

Romans chapter 5 verse 1, therefore, having been justified. Not going to be, but having been. Our justification work was done on the cross when Christ died. He paid the penalty for our justification. That is done, beloved.

That is not something that we do. That is something that has been done and accomplished outside of ourselves. For by grace you have been saved. But then the next phrase, through what? Faith. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

Faith, Repentance, and Trust in Christ Alone

What is faith? Well, we can make faith very simple. Faith means to believe in something. Faith means to trust in something. Mr. Lance built us two beautiful stools. I don't know if anyone saw them today when you came in.

We have these two. I mean, he's such a fine craftsman, and he built these wonderful stools. And you know the first thing I did? I demonstrated my faith. I went and sat on them. And I had to have faith in the craftsmanship of Lance because I wanted to know that it would hold me.

And I perched myself like a gargoyle first thing this morning right there. And it held me well. So my faith was vindicated. But you understand, when we talk about faith, some people misunderstand faith.

Some people misunderstand faith as simply saying, I believe in something. But the Bible tells us that there are people who say they believe in Jesus who don't really believe in Jesus. The Bible says there are people who, like seed that falls in the weeds, spring up for a moment, but then when the sun beats down on them, they wither and die because they have no what?

Root. So faith is more than just saying, I believe. Faith is something that changes your life. Faith is something that causes you to turn from one direction and go in another direction. And that's where I would say faith and repentance go together.

People say repentance has no place in the gospel. I say you don't know the gospel. Because if your gospel doesn't include turn from your sin and turn to Christ, then you're not preaching the gospel. And so faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin.

You turn from your sin. You turn from your rejection. You turn from worldly things. And you turn to Christ. And you look to him for salvation and him alone. That's faith. The other night when we were at the fair, Mike used my favorite analogy, so I'll use it too.

And that's the analogy of the parachute. And by the way, if you're ever sharing the gospel with someone, feel free to use this analogy. Because what is faith? The Bible says put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you were in a plane and that plane was going down and someone handed you a parachute and said put this on, and you said no thanks, you'd be a fool. But if all you did was put it on and stayed in the plane, you're still a fool.

You put it on and you jump and you trust the parachute. My favorite definition of the word faith is trust. It's trust. That Christ has done the work for me. That Christ has died in my place and I now give him my all.

I trust him with everything. I don't trust partly my goodness and partly his goodness because that would be foolish. That's like staying in the plane. No, no, no. I've got to trust in him alone. I've got to give everything to him.

By the way, not too many people have more faith than skydivers because they'll just jump out of the plane. They just trust that parachute's going to open. Do you trust Christ is going to save you on the day of judgment?

That his goodness is going to be good enough for you? And that his righteousness is going to be good enough for you? Paul says, For by grace are you saved. Through faith. It's through trusting in that grace.

It's through trusting in that work. It's through trusting in the substitutionary atonement of Christ. I know that's a big word. That's a big phrase and some of you may not know what it means but let me break it down simply.

Substitution means to put one thing in place of another. We know what that means. Atonement means to bring two things that are at odds with one another back together. Two things that are at war to make them at peace with one another.

To make separate at one. That's where the word atone means. At one meant. And so Christ through his death on the cross takes God and man who were separated by sin deserving of God's wrath. Christ says, I take the wrath.

I drink it down. I receive the punishment. And now you and God can be at one because of me. So you are saved by grace alone. Through faith alone. In Christ alone. In Christ alone. My hope is found. He is my light.

My strength. My song. My cornerstone. My solid ground. Right? That's who Christ is. It's him alone. Paul says, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that is not your own doing. I don't have time.

I wish I did. We should go another hour but I guess I could. But for the sake of time I will say this. From a linguistic perspective when he says that is not your own doing he's saying none of it is your doing.

Grace is not because of what you did. And beloved, even faith is not what you did. You know why you had faith? Because God changed your heart. Faith. Do you believe? Yes, you believe. Why do you believe?

Because God gave you the ability. Jesus said, No man can come unto me unless my Father who sent me grant it to him. You didn't come on your own initiative. You didn't rise up on your own steam. Therefore you can say it is all a gift of grace.

It's all a gift of God because it all comes from him. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God not of works. Lest any man should boast. I tell you, what does Paul say?

I will boast in nothing except the cross of Christ. I will boast in nothing except what Jesus has done for me. And then he tells us how works play into this because don't for a second think that I'm telling you that works don't matter.

Don't think for a second that I'm telling you that you can go out and live as the world and do as the world does and do the evil things that the world does and think that that's pleasing to God. No, Christ did not save you to live as the world but Christ saved you because he had planned good works for you.

It says it right here in the text. It says, For we are his workmanship. The word workmanship there. We are his creation, his masterpiece. What he did, Christ made you created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand.

Beforehand what? Before the foundation of the world God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. That is what God has done. He has prepared you in Christ Jesus to do good works. You say, Well, you said good works don't matter.

No, I said good works don't save. It's not the same thing. What we do does matter. I talked to my class about this this morning. There used to be an old song that we would sing and I don't know how many of you remember this song.

It would say, We are one in the spirit. We are one in the Lord. Anybody? We are one in the spirit. We are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity will one day be restored. And they'll know we are Christians by our love.

By our love. Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love. It's a very simple song. But what it was saying is what Jesus said. By this will all men know that you are my disciples because you love one another.

What does Paul say? The greatest work that we can do. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal, right? If I don't love, even if I have faith to move mountains, but I have not love, it profits nothing.

So do not leave this place today with the concept that because we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, that that means that we are not to live a changed life. No, Christ changes our life.

And this is what our new life is. Our new life is a life of trust. Trust and obey. Boy, I'm all in the hymns today. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. We are called to do that.

Not because it earns our salvation, but because we are living for the one who through his work has saved us completely. Beloved, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And next week we will see it is all for his glory alone.

The Gospel Produces Good Works and a Changed Life

Let us pray. Father, I thank you for the word and I thank you for your truth. And though, Lord, so much more we could say on this, I do pray that what we have said has been meaningful and that we would be reminded, Lord, like the man who went to the temple to pray and the one said, I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like other men and I don't do like other men, but the man who stood outside, the tax collector, beat his chest and he said, Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner.

Lord, if there are those today who know that they are sinners, who know they deserve the wrath of God and they are beating their breasts and they are saying, Lord, have mercy upon me, I pray, God, that you would have mercy upon them and give them the gift of eternal life today.

And, Lord, that no one in this room would trust in himself but would trust fully and completely in the finished work of Christ and I pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.