God's Sovereign Pride Crusher - Brandon Scalf

To get the gospel half right is to get the gospel all wrong.

To misunderstand or to mostly understand the gospel of grace is to misunderstand it completely.

In other words, if you misunderstand the gospel of grace, it is the difference between death and life.

It is the difference between heaven and hell. It is the difference between right and wrong.

There are many things that you can get wrong theologically and still stand at the foot of Jesus in eternity future.

And you will be welcomed in to the gates of heaven. But the gospel of grace itself is so important that in the book of Galatians, the apostle

Paul, who wrote the book of Ephesians, said if anyone preaches a gospel that is contrary to the one that I preached to you, let him be accursed.

And then he repeats this same exact thing after saying it already in verse nine of chapter one, as we have said before, namely one verse above.

So I say again now, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.

You see, Paul here is pronouncing judgment on those who would preach or understand the gospel in a way that runs contrary to the gospel that he and his fellow apostles preached.

And that is one of grace. It is one of grace alone.

So matter of fact, this is so important that this is the reason that we are sitting in the chairs that we are sitting in today.

What do I mean by that? Part of the Protestant Reformation and history past was to settle this very issue because the

Roman Catholic Church had perverted grace, much like the Galatians had perverted grace.

They were adding merit and other things. Yeah, yeah, we'll give lip service to the idea that grace saves us, but we also want to make sure that you understand that things that we do also help accompany that reality.

But the Protestant Reformation helped us to recover what was lost on many fronts, but one of them being what we know is sola gratia, that is saved, that we are saved by grace alone.

Charles Spurgeon once said of this reality that if you search Scripture and you must, if you read it with a candid mind, you must be persuaded that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is the greatest doctrine of the word of God.

Friends, the reality is the doctrine of grace alone is one that if we misunderstand, we miss everything.

And so today we're going to look at Ephesians chapter two, verses eight and nine, and we're going to see that it is all of grace.

Salvation is all of grace. So if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

And just so we can be caught up in the flow of Paul's argument, I will start reading in verse one of chapter two.

This is the word of the Lord. And you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Let God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen. Amen, please have a seat.

In order for us to understand this properly, we need to understand where we've been.

And where we've been has altered, I hope, the way that we view salvation.

But more than that, I hope it's altered the way that we have seen the God of salvation.

In verses three through 14, there is this beautiful picture of God's loving action towards sinners from the perspective of heaven.

Namely, that the Father has chosen a people for himself, that the

Son has accomplished redemption on behalf of those people that the Father has chosen, and that the

Holy Spirit has applied the salvation that has been purchased by the

Son and planned by the Father. That our salvation is one gigantic Trinitarian effort to put right what once went wrong.

And then, of course, we move our way into Ephesians chapter two, and we move from the air, as it were, to the ground.

We see what it looks like from our perspective. Namely, that human beings, all of mankind, are born into sin.

That we are, according to Ephesians chapter two, verse one, spiritually dead and physically dying.

That we are hedged in on all sides. That we are influenced by the world. That we are pressured by the devil.

And that we give ourselves over to the desires of our sinful and rebellious hearts.

And, of course, this means only one thing. That we stand in the path of the wrath of God.

That God burns with anger. As Psalm five says, God hates all who do iniquity.

And because God is just, he cannot just let sin slide. He can't approve of it, he can't dwell with it, he can't give it the go -ahead, and he can't just forgive it.

Because if he were to just forgive it, as if it never happened, then he would cease being good, and he would cease being the

God who has been presented to us by special revelation and the scriptures.

But the good news is that God has done something.

And we see that at the beginning of verse four of chapter two when these incredible two words are inserted into our theology.

But God, because God is kind, because God is loving, he has extended to us a myriad of spiritual blessings.

As a matter of fact, Ephesians chapter one verse three says that he has given us in Christ every spiritual blessing.

But the spiritual blessings that were talked about last week were that, namely, he made us alive, verse five.

That is, he regenerated us. He took our dead hearts and gave them a new spiritual pulse where they now respond to spiritual stimuli.

They now love God. They now cherish

God. They now want to study his word, to live a life that is honoring to him.

And not only that, but we have been plucked from the world spiritually as we were raised with Christ at his ascension and seated with him on his throne in the heavenly places to dwell with him in victory as we push his kingdom forth in the world.

And he did all of this, verse seven says, so that he could flex his godness so that we might worship him forever, that we might behold his glory and that we might stand in awe of him.

But the question that we have to ask at this point is how do we take everything that we've just been told about how

God saves and who he saves, how do we take that information and apply it to ourselves?

In other words, how do we know if that is true of us? How do we know if we are in fact saved?

Or how do we know that we have been but Godded? How do we know that we have been the ones whom

God has stepped into this everlasting chasm and built a bridge?

How do we know? How do we know? Well, that is the very question that Paul is going to help us answer today.

And he does this, if you look at our text here in verse eight by saying the same thing over and over in different ways.

More pointedly, he gives us two positive assertions and two negative desire, excuse me.

He gives us two positive assertions and two negative denials that point to the same exact reality.

These two verses are split right down the middle so that there is no confusion about who is saved and how they are saved.

In other words, what he's about to do is he's going to say the people who are saved, they are saved in this way.

And the people who are saved, they are not saved in this way. And so as we look at our text, the first thing that I want you to see is that Paul wants it to be irrefutably clear that salvation is by grace.

That salvation is by grace.

Look with me at verse nine, it says, or verse eight rather. For by grace you have been saved.

Now, before we can look at the word grace, we have to understand that the thrust of this passage is speaking about salvation.

If you are saved, you are saved. Now, I know you might be thinking,

I hope you didn't pay all of that seminary money to come up with that assertion, it's right there.

Yes, but you need to understand that you have been rescued and there's implications for that that pour forth out of this passage.

You weren't helped, you weren't encouraged, you weren't pushed along by encouraging and quaint messages, you weren't self -helped, you were rescued from the precipice of hell.

You were running in your rebellion against God and he saved you.

And if we understand that, the rest of this begins to make a little more sense.

You have been saved. And we see this from the perspective of heaven in three through 14, we see this in Paul's prayer in verses 15 through 23.

And we've seen it the last couple of weeks as we have looked at verses four through six.

There is a definitive reality to the saint who has been saved and being saved.

There's nothing that can change that. If you have been saved, you will always be saved and you are being saved.

As a matter of fact, you could translate this very sentence. For by grace, you are saved.

In fact, many commentators will translate it that way. And the reason for that is because this specific phrase is in the perfect tense.

And that means this. There is an emphasis happening. There is an emphasizing of a completed action.

Of course, we all understand that. But the specific tense in the Greek means that there is continuing results.

So in other words, not only have you been saved, but you are continually being saved.

You have been saved, if you are saved at all, from God's wrath. And God continues in safekeeping of you.

You need grace to get saved. And you need grace, in other words, to continue being saved.

As a matter of fact, Christian, the longer you are saved, the more aware you become of the reality of your needing saving.

If you are not, as you are traveling through this Christian life, being more overwhelmed daily of your need for salvation,

I don't know that you are saved in the first place. God's greatness and our need of him ever deepens the longer that we walk with him.

So we have been saved and we are being saved. And it is imperative that we understand that we are saved by grace.

Now, if you remember, we have seen the words grace a couple times. As a matter of fact, last week, we saw in verse five of chapter two, where there was this insertion, almost like a throwaway kind of phrase in the middle of him telling us all of these cool things that have happened to us by virtue of God stepping in to the chasm.

In verse five, it says, even when we were dead in our transgressions, that God made us alive together with Christ.

And then Paul says, by grace you have been saved and raised us up. You see what

Paul was doing there, which he can't stop talking about now, is helping us to understand that God making us alive, regenerated us, was all of grace.

That it was all of God's doing. And so when we get down here to verse eight, after salvation has been seen from a

Trinitarian perspective, and as we have seen it from a personal and subjective perspective, he wants us to understand without a shadow of a doubt that all of this is of God.

It's from God, it's for God, it's to God, and we have nothing to offer by way of help.

As Jonathan Edwards has said, the only thing that we have ever offered to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.

And friends, the reality is, I wanted to call this sermon the most offensive doctrine in Christianity.

And the reason that I wanted to call it this, even though I didn't wind up calling it that, is because the sinful heart is so wicked that we can't help but think, even though we may not say it with our lips, that we help

God save us, or that we're better than other people, or that we have this thing figured out, not understanding the reality that anything, as Paul has said elsewhere, that we receive is of grace.

This has been the controversy of many of the battles in throughout church history, namely, as I've already mentioned, the

Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Church has so profoundly corrupted the gospel that while it did speak of the salvation achieved by grace, it actually taught that grace alone was not enough when you actually get down to it.

The teaching was affirmed, that is, that works needed to be added at the

Council of Trent in the 1540s. And I want you to hear, I want you to hear what the

Roman Catholic Church said in relationship to grace. And I want you to think about what

I read at the introduction, namely, what Paul had to say about those who preached a different gospel.

They said, if anyone sayeth that the sacraments of the new law are not necessary unto salvation, and that without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification, let him be anathema.

In other words, if anyone says that works do not help or add to salvation through faith alone, let him be damned.

And so people ask, oftentimes, if we say something negative about the Roman Catholic Church or we throw a

Reformation Day party, why would you do such a thing? Here's why. Because they perverted the gospel of Jesus Christ and pronounced curses on everyone who believes the one and true gospel from their own documents.

They are not friends of ours, they are enemies of Christ. Now, does that mean that every single person who is in the

Roman Catholic Church is unsaved? No, of course not, it's not what

I'm saying. But they're saved in spite of the Catholic teaching, not because of it.

To get the gospel almost right is to get the gospel completely wrong.

And when you understand that gospel is by grace, that is by unmerited favor extended to us in loving kindness, then you properly understand grace.

And grace puts God where he belongs, uniquely and alone on the throne of the cosmos, and puts believing sinners where they belong at his feet in humble adoration.

When you understand that salvation is by grace, that it is from God, that you did absolutely nothing to merit it, and that he extends it to you because of his goodness and his loving kindness, that it all leads to the worship of the one true king on the throne who has made salvation possible.

So you see, friends, for by grace you have been saved if you have been saved at all.

So how do you grab hold of that grace?

How do you tap into that grace? Maybe that's a question that we might have. How do we appropriate that grace?

These are theological terms that people have wrestled with throughout the church age.

But I might encourage you to ask it this way, to guard you from error. How does a salvation as great and free as the gospel of grace become mine personally?

That leads me to my second point, which is that salvation is through faith. So salvation is by grace, but it is through faith.

It is through faith. Look with me again at our theme verse, verse eight.

For grace, for by grace you have been saved through faith. Now, this phrase, through faith, is very important to examine.

And just to kind of put all the cards on the table, I wanna just say this, that faith, as it is presented here in this text and throughout the entire

Bible, does not save you. Now, I've said that in churches,

I've said that in pulpits, and I've been pulled to the side by the pastor, and some of them angry, acting as if I was perverting the gospel in some sort of way.

But that's the truth. Faith does not save us.

We are not saved by faith, we are saved through faith. Faith, in other words, is the instrument by which we receive the grace of Christ.

It is the subjective cause. There is an objective reality, and we, by faith, receive the gift of salvation by grace.

We receive the grace of God by faith. And so if we are going to understand this, we need to understand what is the definition of faith.

Well, Hebrews chapter 11 says that it is assurance of things hoped for, the competence of things not seen.

And of course, that is true, because we do not see Jesus. We cannot see God. All of these things that we must grab hold of must be done by faith.

We see now by faith, and eventually we will see with our eyes.

Understanding faith is incredibly important, because without faith, it is impossible to please

God. Hebrews chapter 11, six makes this clear. Without faith, we cannot be saved,

John 3, 16. Without faith, the Christian life cannot be what God intends it to be. John 10, 10.

So, what is faith? Well, I'll start by saying what faith is not. One, it's not salvation.

It is the instrument by which God uses to bind us self to his promises, namely found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

But more importantly, or maybe not more importantly, but also, as Christians, we aren't to have faith in just anything.

In other words, we're not to have faith in faith itself.

Now, that might seem kind of strange to say, but that's the way in which a majority of Christians, self -proclaiming, seem to take these kinds of verses.

By grace through faith. I mean, how many times have you talked to Christians and you've heard them say, well, you just gotta have faith.

It's almost like the Christian equivalent of good vibes. You know what I mean? Like, there's no real substance to it.

It's just, if you have faith in your life, well, then all of itself will work itself out.

God will just bring me through this. But how do you know that?

Faith, if it doesn't have Christ in it, and you don't have the right definition of it, it's not that helpful.

For many Christians, or many self -proclaimed Christian, faith is just another way to say wishful thinking or a gut feeling.

But faith is so much more than that. So in summary, faith in faith does not save a sinner.

Faith in Christ does not even save a sinner. Let me pause there. Faith in faith doesn't save a sinner.

I think that's obvious. But faith in Christ does not even save a sinner.

It's crucial that we understand the next thing that I'm about to say. Christ saves sinners through faith.

Does that make sense? Believing that Jesus is the

Christ, the belief itself, the faith in it, doesn't save you.

Christ, by his virtue in Mary, by his person and work, by his blood, and the grace extended to you, that he purchased by absorbing the wrath of God on your behalf is what saves you.

And faith is the instrument that God uses to bind you to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So what is faith? Here's my definition. Faith is the spirit -enabled clinging to the promises of God, particularly in the person and work of Christ.

It is Christ -reliant, and it is not self -reliant. In other words, faith's distinguishing feature is that it looks to Christ, not the self.

So in other words, if you are looking to your faith to save you, you're looking to your ability to have that faith to save you.

You're not looking to Christ. You're not clinging to Christ.

Here are some diagnostic questions to maybe get to the heart of the matter. Is your faith in Jesus Christ, or in your darkest of moments, even if you wouldn't put it in these words, is it in your wobbliness of your own faith?

In other words, do you feel more close to God and his promises when you are obeying him?

When you are doing well? When you are feeling most loved? Or are you consistent in all of those things?

Or we can even begin to twist the knife further. Is your faith in how well you can articulate the gospel or understand it?

Now, of course, you need to get the gospel right. But the gospel, though, one of my professors,

Dr. Stephen Lawson, always says, the gospel is easy to understand, it's just hard to swallow.

So is your faith in how well you can articulate or understand the gospel, or is it in the God of the gospel of grace who provided a substitute for you?

Is it how many books or degrees you might have? Or how well you work?

Or how well you display what manliness looks like? Is it in the evangelism that you do?

It is in the doctrines that you hold, how well you care for your family, what your financial security is, when you look at it from a very on the boots, on the ground kind of, with your boots on perspective, what ultimately are you resting in for your salvation?

Now, I know on paper, many of us are not gonna check any of these boxes. But when we think about, when we get moving, and we start living life, do we not start adding into the box?

Faithfulness looks like faith, plus me doing all of these other things, right?

I'm a good Christian if I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I can articulate the gospel really well.

I have faith in Christ, and I'm getting healthy, I'm going to the gym all the time, and I'm stewarding my body well.

I have faith in Christ, and I've read all these books, and I have these Bible degrees. I have my faith in Christ, and I'm a faithful evangelist.

I have faith in Christ, and my family has ordered it in such a way. I'm very self -sacrificial. I'm very all of these things.

And when I do that, God smiles upon me. And when

I'm doing these things the right way at the right time, I can really rest. I can really rest.

But the entire point of faith is that it offers you rest. And as we will see, it's a very passive, though active kind of a deal.

Faith is not a work because it is also a gift.

Here's what it means, friends. To have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ means that you burn every other bridge behind you.

There's nothing else, nothing else.

It's like the cliche illustration of a parachute.

Faith is kind of like a parachute. Faith in Christ is like putting on a parachute and jumping out of a plane.

When you jump out of a plane, or if you get on a plane, for that matter, you are trusting that that is going to hold you.

It's going to save you. It's gonna protect you. And so faith itself is not gonna get the job done, but faith in Christ, the object of your faith, is what matters.

I can have faith that a parachute stuffed with a lasagna will save me on the way out, but if that parachute fails me, then my faith was placed in the wrong thing.

Children, would you look at me? I want you to think about, if you will, a chair.

Faith is kind of like a chair. You know how when you sit on a chair, you're sitting in a chair right now?

You're trusting that that is going to hold you up and that you're not gonna fall through it. And much like that, you have to live your life by faith that is trusting that God will be like that chair, that he will hold you up, that he is reliable, that he will not let you down, and you have to reject all of the other voices that might come your way that say, no, that's not true.

And we all must do the same thing. Now, not only is faith needed, not only is faith the instrument that God uses to bind us to his grace, but it's a gift of God.

Now, look back with me here at this theme verse that says in verse eight, for by grace you have been saved through faith, comma, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

It is the gift of God. Now, the question that we have to ask exegetically when we get to this point is, what is not of ourselves?

Is it grace or is it faith? Well, when you look at the grammar and syntax, this is not really clarified for us.

Throughout church history, some people have said, well, most certainly the thing that is not of ourselves is grace.

And while others have said, no, no, no, no, it is the faith that is not of ourselves.

As a matter of fact, John Calvin said it was speaking of faith. While other reformers and other

Puritans have said, no, of course it's grace. But the most robust consensus throughout church history, and I think this is the right position, is that it's speaking about salvation from top to bottom.

It is the summary statement of all of it. It is that salvation, for by grace, actually what you should know here is in the

Greek, it's actually the grace, for by the grace you have been saved. It's speaking of the grace that has just been spoken about, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not of your doing. What is not of your doing?

All of it. All of it. The grace that you have been saved by and the faith that you have been given.

So friends, even your faith is a gift, a very real and present gift.

So not only did God show grace and extend favor to the un - and ill -deserving, by making it possible for them to be saved by slaughtering his son and extending redemption through his blood to his people, but the very faith, the very thing that binds you to himself, he gives you as well.

So why are you sitting next to people who may not know the gospel, may not know the Lord Jesus Christ? Because God in his sovereign choice has decided not to extend to them in his kindness that reality, that treasure, but he has to you.

So you didn't believe or have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ because you were smarter than the other guys, because God condescended and gave you the gift of faith.

So did God save us by grace? Did he save us through faith?

And is all of that of him? Yes. Every last drop of our salvation down to our very faith is of God by grace.

In other words, when we accept the finished work of Christ on our behalf, we act by the faith that has been supplied by God's grace.

Not only does God give us saving faith, but God strengthens our saving faith. He is the one who stabilizes our weak knees and puts steel in our spine when we need him.

God is the one from beginning in to who sustains our salvation.

Look with me again in our theme verse. For by grace you have been saved, it says through faith, and this is not of yourself, it is the gift of God.

And verse nine says, it is not of works so that no one may boast.

Now we move from the two assertions to the two negative denials.

The first one being, of course, that salvation is not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God. At the risk of sounding redundant, it is important for you to realize that salvation is not of yourselves.

Salvation did not originate with man, in other words. It is not

God's salvation planned by men. In fact, this is the very thing that separates all other religions from Christianity.

All other religions are trying to teach that you need to either be like God or ascend to God.

But in Christianity, God plans salvation and condescends to save man.

First Corinthians 4 .7, Paul says, for who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive?

And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? In other words, the salvation by grace through faith that has been given to us is from God.

Not only is it of God, but it's from God. John Calvin commenting on these matters says, let us know that faith is not given to all, but it is a singular gift that God keeps as a treasure for those who is chosen.

And let us know that our duty is to cleave to him, knowing that while none of us gains faith by his own effort, but God has enlightened us and given us eyes by his

Holy Spirit and in so doing has declared his power so that we know that the gospel comes not from men, but from him.

Gospel or God coming in power through the gospel is proof that it did not come from man.

The Holy Spirit working in our hearts, it is not from man. It is the gift of God. It is one where he extends to us a very precious gift.

Now, Paul goes into this in great detail in other books of the Bible. And he talks about this idea of a gift being given.

Now, there is a lot of discussion as to how much of this word grace plays into salvation as a whole.

If you speak, if you think about things like N .T. Wright and the new perspective on Paul, or Barclay wrote a book called

Paul and the Gift, and they're kind of trying to tease out different ideas about how important grace actually was.

I think we're touching on the edge of finding out that it's very important. But to the

Jews, especially, and he's going to touch on it a little bit because the entire book of Ephesians is about how

God has created one new people, the church, bringing the Gentiles into the fold of God's chosen people.

But grace was not a foreign concept to the Jewish people. But the way in which

Paul talks about grace would have been very foreign. And Paul does this, right?

He uses words from the culture to help us understand what salvation looks like. Justification being a prime example.

Justification is a word that he took from the legal system. To help us understand what it looks like to be absolved of sin and to be justified.

Grace is very similar. And grace, or the word gift, charis here, is a word that would have been understood to mean a gift, of course.

An unmerited gift to some degree. But the way in which the ancient world worked is that they would give gifts to one another depending on their societal placement, as it were.

So for example, I could give you a gift in the ancient world, but say you were a king.

It had to be a kingly gift or a governor. It needed to be one that was suitable for someone of that prestige.

But if I was to give you a gift and you were poor, if you were a pauper, as it were, it would need to be one fitting for that socioeconomic bracket.

And so when Paul interjects this word, he's basically trying to help us understand, and helping them understand, actually, more so, is that God has flipped everything on its head and he is giving the most unworthy the greatest of gifts.

And that it is all of God and from God and to God.

The next thing we see is salvation is not of works. Salvation is not of works.

That is the second negative denial. He goes on here in verse nine.

Not of works so that no one may boast. So that no one may boast.

So not only is salvation, not only does it not originate in man, it is not dependent upon man.

Nothing that we can do to add to it, namely works of the law or righteous things, can make us any more acceptable in the sight of God.

Now, there is a place for works and that's next week. We are saved to good works.

We are not saved by good works. And Paul is essentially saying the same thing here.

We are saved by grace through faith. It is not man's gospel.

It is God's gospel. It doesn't originate with man. It is not dependent upon man.

That's why Paul says in Romans 3 .20 and in Romans 3 .28, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight.

For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

I once had a mentor, a preaching mentor tell me, if you're not preaching the gospel and at times sounding like an antinomian, you're not preaching the gospel.

And in the same breath of the air, he also said, at times if you preach the gospel and you don't sound like a legalist, you also might not be preaching the gospel.

Here's what I'm trying to say, is that there is nothing, nothing, this is what

Paul is saying, nothing that you can do to add to your salvation. There's nothing that you can do to help him save you.

He saves by grace through faith that he has given you. Works here is a broad term referring to human effort, which is the same as works of the law in the

Jewish context. Romans 4 .5, Paul says, but to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

He's borrowing this, of course, from the Old Testament. Abraham was justified before the law came to be by faith, by trusting

God. And this is the same way, and this is the argument that Paul is giving in Romans chapter four, by the way, the same way that God saved

Abraham is the same way that he has saved everybody else ever since. By grace alone through faith.

And it's then that righteousness is applied. Now he's speaking to Gentiles, and so Paul does not dive into this kind of works of the law kind of drum beating because the

Ephesian church were largely Gentiles and they had no category for what he would be talking about.

Some people have concluded that that means that Paul didn't write this letter because he didn't speak of salvation in the exact same way.

Where is all of this talk of justification? And so on and so forth. Well, it's in the content of the last chapter and a half.

First of all, second of all, he's contextualizing speaking to an audience that would have no category for that kind of a thing.

And he's going to explain it in a way that is absolutely helpful. What this means practically is that church membership doesn't save you.

Baptism doesn't save you. Depending on what tradition you are in, confirmation doesn't save you.

Giving to charity doesn't save you, doesn't help save you. There's no work that can be added no matter how good of a neighbor you are, no matter how good of a church member you are, no matter how good of a mom or dad you are.

It's not adding to your salvation. Remember, because we're dead and dead people cannot add anything to anything at all.

All they can do is be dead. Isaiah, the prophet,

God says to Isaiah that their righteous deeds,

Israel's righteous deeds were like filthy menstrual rags in his sight.

That's the Hebrew. Namely pointing to the reality that no amount of good work that we do would ever cause us to be pleasing in his sight because we are dead in our transgressions and sins.

But in his goodness and in his kindness, he extends to us grace and faith, which leads me to my last and final point.

The salvation by grace through faith humbles the sinner. It humbles the sinner.

Now the inclination of the unregenerate heart and the inclination of those still clinging to the old man when they hear such things is, yeah, but.

But to those who clearly and perceptively by the gift of the Holy Spirit understand that salvation is all of grace.

It pushes us to the dirt and helps us to worship there. Look with me here at our text again in verse nine.

This is not of works so that, if you remember last week, this is what we would call a purpose clause, so that no one may boast.

Why does God save us by grace through faith and why is that salvation a gift to us?

And why is salvation not from man or not dependent upon him to help out?

Why is it, in other words, monergistic so that no one may boast, so that no one can look around and go, look what

I did. This is why faith is even a gift because if you were responsible for your own faith, well, at least you had the wherewithal to have the faith in Jesus Christ.

It protects us from spiritual pride. It protects us from thinking that we're smarter, that we're better, and that we're more deserving of salvation than anyone else.

Now, most of us are not going to say that, most of us are not going to write on paper, I think that I am more deserving of salvation than anybody else.

But I guarantee most of us, at one point or another, have thought to themselves,

I thank God I'm not like that. But Paul says in the

New Testament, I am what I am by the grace of God.

You are, every single one of you, myself included, are what we are by the grace of God and the grace of God alone.

And this helps us to think about salvation in terms of our friends and our families. Oftentimes, I have lamented that the people that I love seem to have wavering or non -existent faith, or if it's there, it's very small, and we're like, why can't you just figure this out?

And in that moment, we forget the gospel of grace. Because not only does the

Bible say that our faith is a gift, but the measure of our faith is a gift. You see, when

God is the one who extends his grace, and he is responsible for the faith, then every single ways in which we can lift ourselves up and our haughty pride is completely removed, and we stand as witnesses of the beacon that is the cross that says, none of you could do this without me.

None of you could do this without me extending to you a perfect record that you could not attain on your own.

Not one of you could do this apart from my condescension of grace. Not one of you could do this without my spiritual reviving.

Not one of you could do this without my spiritual defibrillator. Not one of you could do this apart from me working and acting on your behalf.

George Whitefield says it like this, to help prevent spiritual pride, let us remember that we did not choose

Christ, but we were chosen by him. We have nothing but what we have been given to us.

The free grace of God has alone made the difference between us and others. And if God was to leave us to the deceitfulness of our own hearts for even one moment, we would become weak and wicked like other men.

We should further consider that being proud of grace is the quickest way to diminish it. Do you want to know how to pervert the grace of Christ?

Treat it like it's not grace. Treat it like you deserve it, but you could be like Paul and not do such a thing.

In 1 Corinthians 1 29, he tells us that God chose us, the despised and weak of the world, so that no flesh can boast before God.

If you understand grace, then God has sovereignly placed a beautiful pride crusher in your heart.

And he reminds you that we are all in this together and that God is beautiful and God is wonderful and God is amazing.

We are not to boast in any salvation because it's of and from and to God.

But we are to boast in some things, namely in God. 1 Corinthians 1 31,

Paul says, just as it is written, quoting from the Old Testament, let him who boasts boast in the

Lord. So in other words, if you're going to open up your mouth and you're going to say some things, namely, if you're going to boast, boast about what

God has done. Boast about who God is. In Romans 5 11, he reiterates this truth.

And he says, and not only this, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation, the gospel of grace, the once alienated, now reconciled.

Let's boast of what God has done. Not what I have done.

Galatians 6 14, but may it never be that I would boast. You see, Paul is praying that he would not boast.

Do you pray that? Do you pray that you would not thank yourself better than the people next to you? But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our

Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Friends, if you have something to boast about outside of Christ, outside of his work, let me say it plainly.

Let me say it emphatically. Let me say it bluntly. And let me say it pleadingly.

You are not a Christian. You are not a

Christian. Because the Christians only boast is what

God has done for him in Christ. The grace that he has extended to ill and undeserving sinners.

And it is our faith, our belief in that reality, burning every other bridge behind us and living in light of that, that we are truly and forever

Christians. And nobody who tastes that reality can ever lay it down.

So what do we do? How do we apply this? I have a few uses here to close out our time together.

The first one being is, do not turn from grace to law. Do not turn from grace to law.

In his argument in Romans four that we mentioned just a second ago, Paul is kind of sketching out this situation with Abraham.

And he says in verse two of chapter four, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

You see, once you have tasted grace, to then begin to trust in other things is either to reveal you never tasted grace or to diminish its work in your life.

And you don't want to trade grace for law. Because law shows us sin and the law is just and it is fair.

And everybody who lives according to the law, Paul says, will be judged by the law. And who does not measure up to the law?

Every single one of us. Paul makes the argument in Romans five, we all fall short of the glory of God.

We all sin, we all break the law. And so if you want fair, go the law route, but you won't see

Jesus. Do not turn from grace and start trusting in your works.

Start trusting in the things that you can add. Secondly, give grace because you have been shown grace.

He who has been graced much will give much grace. For those who are judgmental, for those who think that they are better than everybody else, or even when those feelings pop up in our sinful hearts, it's a revelation to us that we actually are forgetting grace or we misunderstand it entirely.

Thirdly, let grace humble you. Let it continually show you your weakness.

Let it continually drive you to worship God. Let it continue to be the pride crusher of your life.

Fourthly, and finally, look to the God of grace in Christ.

Look to the God of... I cannot speak today. Look to the

God of grace in Christ. The only way to protect yourself from thinking wrongly about the gospel and trying to add to your own salvation even in your own heart, because I'm sure none of us are going to go out there preaching a heretical gospel, is to continually and constantly look to the one who has given us so much, who has extended to us so much grace, even so much so that the very faith that he uses to bind us to that grace in Christ is given to us.

Friends, we are saved by grace through faith.

And this is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, so that not one of us can boast.

And that, my friends, is a salvation worth having. That is the only salvation that we have.

So love it, live it, live in light of it, proclaim it, cherish it.