God Saves

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But I want to remind us this morning of a simple truth, God saves, is the title of this morning's message.
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So again, if you've got your Bibles with you, make your way to Ephesians chapter 2.
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We live in a materialistic society.
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Our society is more concerned about the possessions and worldly status than we are about spiritual matters.
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In 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 through 17 we read that Christians are not to love the world for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
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And we read that this system of the world is going to pass away.
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Since Christians struggle with the war between the spirit and the flesh, as Paul describes in Galatians 5, we also struggle with the temptations of the world.
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As others have said, Christians are to be in the world but not of the world.
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However, living a life in such tension is no easy task.
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From time to time we need to be reminded of the reality of the struggle and why the battle is worth the effort.
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To make our situation more difficult, many people in our society reject the idea that there is only one way to know God.
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A claim of exclusivity is viewed as arrogance.
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For Christians, though, we do not see such a claim as arrogant, rather we are simply quoting our Lord who said of himself, according to John 14 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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No one comes to the Father but by me.
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So our time of study this morning is not intended to make known some new great truth, but to remind us once again of the great gospel message, that God has not merely made salvation possible, but that he saves his people.
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So let us begin our time of study this morning by asking the question, how are people saved? We ask this question because this is the core question of Christianity.
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God has created the heavens and the earth, and since he is the creator, he has the right to determine how people as part of his creation can stand before him and be declared righteous.
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According to the Bible, he has established the standard by which our lives are weighed and the destiny of our souls is determined.
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Our conscience tells us, and scripture confirms, that we have transgressed or sinned against this standard.
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Because we have transgressed the standard, we are condemned before his law.
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How then can we be saved or delivered from the penalty we have earned for our transgressions? To this question there are only three possible answers.
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Either man saves himself, God saves man with a little bit of man's help, or God saves by himself.
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Which of these three is true? In all of scripture there are many passages that answer this question, but one of the most beloved passages is contained in Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
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In this letter, Paul addresses some wonderful theology and describes how this theology is to be lived out by believers.
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In chapter 1, Paul addresses the roles of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in salvation.
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In chapter 2, Paul addresses the transformation of the individual from an unbeliever to a believer.
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Chapter 3 addresses Jews and Gentiles being saved into one body in the ministry of Paul to the body of Christ.
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Chapter 4 addresses spiritual gifts, their purpose, and the transition of the believer's actions from a pattern of sin to a pattern of righteousness.
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Chapter 5 addresses avoiding false teachers as well as relationships in the family.
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Chapter 6 addresses the believer's personal righteousness and resisting the attempts of the evil one to trip us up.
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As Paul concludes chapter 1 in his discussion of all the roles of all three members of the Godhead in salvation, he makes the following statements regarding the authority of Jesus Christ, his Son.
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In verse 20 of chapter 1, Paul writes that God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand.
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In verse 21, Paul writes that God seated Christ above all rule and authority and dominion.
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In verse 22, we read that Paul, according to Paul, that God has placed everything in subjection to Christ that is under his feet.
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And also in verse 22, we read that God gave him as head of the church.
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Even though Paul moves from discussing the roles of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in salvation to the transformation of the sinner in chapter 2, he still continues the theme of the authority of Christ.
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Notice the following statements from chapter 2.
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In verse 5, we read that God made us alive together with Christ.
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In verse 6, we read that God raised us up and set us in the heavenly places with Christ.
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In verse 10, we read that we are God's workmanship.
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In verse 13, we read that Gentiles have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
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And in verse 14, we read that God has made the Jewish and Gentile believers into one body in Christ.
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It is clear that Paul is establishing the argument that God has given Jesus Christ authority over all that exists, including our salvation.
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Within this context of the discussion of Jesus' authority, we find the verses that we will turn to this morning to answer the question about who saves men.
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So if you have your Bibles and you are in Ephesians chapter 2, I'm not sure what your custom is, but I would ask that you please stand with me as we read.
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We're going to read the first 10 verses, even though we're going to focus on verses 8 through 10.
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The Apostle Paul writes in verse 1, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
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Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
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But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and 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 in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, thank you for the opportunity to gather in this place with fellow believers and to open your word and to study and learn from it.
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We thank you for the opportunity to sing and to give and to pray and to have fellowship one with another.
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We pray that our time this morning in the word would be fruitful.
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And father, I pray that you would help me to speak only truth as I am a fallible man and I pray that you would keep me from error and I pray that your people this morning would hear only truth and that they would disregard any error they hear.
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Words in the name of Christ we pray.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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According to verses 1 through 3, here in Ephesians 2, man as an unbeliever is dead in his trespasses and sins, meaning he cannot change his own state.
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I don't want there to be any mystery about the Greek word dead.
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It means dead.
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I spent a year working for a local funeral home before I started teaching and I can assure you I did not at any time see a dead man get up out of a casket.
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A dead man cannot change his status.
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And so here within the spiritual context, Paul is describing a man who walks in trespasses and sins.
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He is under the prince of the power of the air that is the devil.
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He walks according to the lust of his mind and his flesh, meaning he thinks a higher of himself than he ought to think and he lives walking in sin rather than according to the standards God has set in place.
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Unbelievers are by nature children of wrath.
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This means that unbelievers, those who do not believe that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for their sins at the cross, are objects of God's wrath and will spend eternity paying restitution for their sins.
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In the first three verses of chapter 2, we learn that man cannot save himself because he is dead to God and therefore unable to make himself blameless before God.
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So we see from these three verses that the first of our three options, that man saves himself, is false and therefore not the answer to our question, who saves men? Then we come to verse 4, which begins, but God.
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In scripture, are there any other words as important as these? When understood in their context, these two words are powerful, comforting, and descriptive.
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They are powerful because they denote the strength of God to change the nature of man.
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They are comforting because they give hope to man who otherwise would have no hope of salvation.
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They are descriptive because they contrast God with man.
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But God, this phrase is the antithesis of every point Paul makes in the first three verses of chapter 2.
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See, go back and look with me.
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Verse 1, man is dead in his trespasses and sins, but God, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, but God, according to the prince of the power of the air, but God, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, but God, among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, but God, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, but God, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest, but God.
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What a contrast.
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In verses 4 through 7, we read that God has provided a savior and that savior is Jesus Christ.
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Since man cannot save himself, he must have a savior to deliver him from his nature and the penalty of his sin.
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While we were dead in sins, God provided such a savior, Jesus Christ, and made us alive together with Christ.
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Remember, verse 1 says that we were dead and now verse 5 says God has made us alive in Christ.
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Notice the text does not say that God had any help from us.
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God made us alive in Christ.
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Therefore, we see that man and God do not work together to make us blameless before him.
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So we see that the second possible answer to our question, that man and God work together to deliver us from the penalty of our transgressions, is false.
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God provided a savior for us because he is rich in kindness and he is going to spend eternity showing us how great his kindness is.
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His kindness is so great that it surpasses the guilt of our sin.
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God has a great love for his people, so much so that he has not only saved us, but he has also seated us in the heavenly places with Christ.
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This is a location of honor.
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If we are his children, then we are no longer counted as children of wrath, but children of the king.
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In verses 1 through 7 of chapter 2, we see that God is so powerful that he can change man's nature.
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God can save people.
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He, therefore, is able through his spirit to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
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This morning, we are going to examine a very important truth in scripture, God saves.
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This is the third option to our question, and so you have the answer now, but we need to see from the scripture that this is indeed the answer.
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The truth that God saves cannot be overemphasized.
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This truth is the logical conclusion of verses 1 through 7 of Ephesians 2.
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If man cannot save himself, and Jesus Christ is our savior who was sent by God, then God saves.
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It is an obvious conclusion.
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It is a simple conclusion.
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It is a comforting conclusion to those who are believers in Christ's work on the cross in their behalf.
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God saves, but let's see this conclusion definitively proclaimed in the scripture.
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Paul begins verse 8 with the word for.
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Thus, this verse is related to the verses above.
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Recall Paul ended chapter 1 discussing the power of God and began chapter 2 discussing our sinful nature and our ability to change our nature.
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Man, therefore, cannot save himself.
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However, God is able to change our nature.
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Paul states in verse 5 that God made us alive together with Christ.
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Paul is contrasting being made alive in Christ with being dead in our trespasses and sins.
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So we need to understand that since we were dead in our trespasses and sins and God is the one who made us alive with Christ, then God saves us.
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We cannot and do not save ourselves.
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Since we cannot save ourselves, Paul concludes, for by grace you have been saved.
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Grace means for no reason.
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There is no reason within us why God should save us.
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We are not good enough men and women, dads and moms, sons and daughters, employers or employees, neighbors or citizens.
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Our sinful nature has permeated every aspect of our lives, meaning there is no aspect of our lives that we can hold up as evidence to God of our righteousness.
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Our finite works cannot be counted righteous for an infinitely holy God.
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Therefore, salvation must be by grace.
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For there is no reason that we can use to claim we have earned it.
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Elsewhere, the scripture affirms the grace of God toward his people.
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There are many passages here, only two.
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Psalm 84, 11 says, For the Lord God is a sun and shield.
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The Lord gives grace and glory.
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No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
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Proverbs 3, 34, Though he scoffs at the scoffers, yet he gives grace to the afflicted.
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God gives grace.
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He gives favor to those who do not deserve it.
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Scripture is full of examples of people being objects of God's grace whose conduct was sinful at times.
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People such as Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Peter and Paul had sinned, and yet God bestowed grace upon them.
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God showed them favor for no reason other than he wanted to show them favor.
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Just as these men were objects of God's grace, so are all who believe that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for their sins at the cross.
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This brings us to the next phrase which opens up the meaning of this passage even more.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith.
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Paul ultimately is talking about salvation.
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He is talking about the power to save.
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Salvation refers to men being removed from being under the penalty of sin.
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The saints of God have been delivered from the guilt and shame of their sin.
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Paul here is telling us how this is done.
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Remember his discussion of God's power at the end of chapter 1, and remember that he is now contrasting the powerlessness of people to save themselves with the power of God to save people.
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People are dead in their trespasses and sins, yet God can make them alive in Christ.
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People walk according to the course of this world, yet God can cause them to sit in heavenly places in Christ.
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Unbelievers walk according to the prince of the air, yet believers have been made alive in Christ.
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Here is Paul's point with the contrast between God and man.
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God saves.
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God delivers believers from the penalty they have earned because of their sin.
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God delivers us by his grace based upon the merit earned by Christ.
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He was completely blameless.
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As an aside, we do not have time to fully examine the merit of Christ.
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However, we need to understand the Bible affirms that from his conception, through the virgin birth, and until his death upon the cross, Jesus was fully and completely without blame before the law.
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He was sinless.
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He was and is righteous before God.
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The righteousness that he earned is applied to those who believe in his work.
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This is the great doctrine of justification by faith.
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Spend a lifetime studying it and still be amazed at it every time you look at it.
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Because salvation is by grace, it is not given to believers because of our work.
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If salvation were given to us based upon works, then salvation would not be by grace.
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What is amazing about salvation and what is so difficult for people to understand is that we cannot save ourselves.
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We cannot change our nature and therefore we cannot fully atone for our sins.
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If salvation is going to occur at all, it must be because God saves.
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But if salvation is by grace, then how do we know that we're saved? What is the evidence of our salvation? How do we know that God has made us objects of his grace? See, the work of Christ was some 2,000 years ago.
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How do we know that his death on the cross has any meaning for us? If salvation is not from something within us, what is the evidence of our salvation? The next phrase, through faith, here in our text is crucial because it answers this very question.
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If salvation is by grace and not by our works, then how do we know that we are saved? Paul writes here that we know by faith.
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Consider the following verses.
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Romans chapter 4 and verse 16 says, For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
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Romans chapter 5 verses 1 and 2.
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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and we exalt in hope of the glory of God.
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First Timothy chapter 1 and verse 14 tells us, And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.
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Faith and grace go together.
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Grace is God bestowing favor on us for no reason within us.
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Faith is believing that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins at the cross.
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However, faith is not our work.
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Yes, faith in Christ is something the believer has, but faith in Christ is not something that the believer comes to on his own.
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We know this because of the next phrase in Paul's statement, And that not of yourselves.
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He writes, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
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Faith is the means by which we know that we are saved, and that is not of ourselves.
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He then concludes the statement by saying, It is the gift of God.
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Jesus declared the same truth in John 6, 29.
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This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.
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Our belief, our faith is from God.
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What does it refer to in this verse? Remember back to grammar school? Learning about pronouns and antecedents? It matters.
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It helps us understand scripture.
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Does it refer to faith or does it refer to grace? Likely, I think it refers to the entire thought.
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The salvation by grace and the faith are both from God.
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He bestows the grace and he enables us to have faith.
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Paul here writes, It is the gift of God.
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Let's talk about this word gift for a moment.
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One dictionary defines the word gift to mean something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned.
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If salvation is a gift, then that means that we do nothing to earn salvation.
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No mental works, no spiritual works, no physical works.
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I want to pause here for a moment because I think that we do our children a disservice as we move toward Christmas time and this use of the word gift.
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I realize we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving yet, but I can't help but notice there are Christmas decorations already up in many stores.
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But it's this word gift that I want to kind of key in on.
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How many times have you heard a parent tell a child, or maybe you as the child heard this, or maybe you as the parent have said it, that if you are good, then you will get more presents or you will get more gifts.
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It's not a correct use of the word.
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As soon as you have made an if-then statement, you've turned it into a contract.
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You've in essence told your child, if you will do these things, then I as your parent will pay you and you can fill in the blank.
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Now I'm sure when you collect your paycheck from your employer, you would not tolerate your employer coming to you and saying, here is my gift.
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You've earned it.
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A gift is something we give for no reason whatsoever other than we want to.
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We don't give our gifts to children because they've been good or they've been bad.
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We give our children gifts because we love them.
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They've not earned them.
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I think that's how God sees us.
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He gives us gifts because he wants to, not because we've earned it.
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So if you're talking to your children this Christmas season about gifts, use it to communicate truth to them.
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Don't leave them with any false impression about what a gift is because the gifts that we give our children are supposed to be a picture of Christ.
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The gift that God gave us.
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Here in our text, Paul says in verse 8, that not of yourselves.
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He emphasizes this truth in verse 8 that salvation is not our work.
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He says that salvation is by grace.
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It is not of yourselves and it is the gift of God.
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Paul uses three different phrases in the same verse to make the same point.
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God saves.
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As we move to verse 9, note that Paul continues this thought.
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He writes, not as a result of works so that no one may boast.
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Verse 8 has already emphasized this point and yet Paul does not think he has said enough about it.
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He just said that salvation is by grace.
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It is not of yourselves and it is the gift of God.
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Then he writes that salvation is not a result of works.
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What he means is that salvation is not a result of the works of men.
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We know this because he writes that no one should boast.
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If salvation were according to our works, then we would have something to boast about.
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Something to be proud of.
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Yet Paul is clear here that salvation is not a result of our works.
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We have no basis upon which to boast.
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Consider Paul's words in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 14.
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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.
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In 2 Corinthians, Paul boasts about his weaknesses.
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In chapter 11 and verse 30, he writes, If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness.
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In chapter 12 and verse 5, he says, But on my own behalf, I will not boast except in regard to my weaknesses.
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And in chapter 12 and verse 9, he writes, Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
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You see, if he boasts about how weak he is, he's really boasting about how powerful God must be to save him.
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He was dead in his trespasses and sin, completely unable to save himself, and God made him alive in Christ.
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Again, the point is God saves.
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Moving to verse 10, we get to Paul's point about salvation by grace.
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He writes, For we are his workmanship.
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He continues to press the matter of God's power.
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We are his workmanship.
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We were dead in our trespasses and sins, and we walked according to the course of the world.
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Our efforts took us away from God and away from Christ.
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He had to bring us back.
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He made us alive in Christ.
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We, therefore, are his workmanship.
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He has crafted us.
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He has molded us.
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And he transformed us into what we could not make ourselves, believers in Christ, people who desire to obey God.
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Some of you may enjoy working with wood or working with cloth to sew.
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Maybe you have some other craft that you enjoy.
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And there is a pride that comes from taking something that looks rugged and useless and turning it into something that's beautiful and useful.
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You see your craftsmanship.
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You see your workmanship.
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And there's a pride in it.
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I wonder how God feels as he sees us being molded and transformed into the image of his son.
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Recall in chapter 2, verse 5, in our text, Paul writes, God made us alive together with Christ.
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Here in verse 10, he writes, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.
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We need to understand this.
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Jesus Christ is the focus of our faith.
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Said another way, he is the object of our faith.
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He is the means through which our salvation was accomplished.
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He lived a sinless life and therefore earned his righteousness.
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He went to the cross and paid a debt he did not owe.
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He arose from the dead to prove his victory over sin.
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He has ascended to the right hand of the father, demonstrating he has all authority.
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When the Holy Spirit enables us to believe in Christ, then we know that God has declared us to be justified.
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We know that we are justified because our faith is his work, as Jesus said in John 6, 29.
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If our faith is God's work, then his work cannot be undone.
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If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the one who paid the penalty for our sins at the cross, then our faith is the evidence that God has declared us to be righteous.
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And it is by his grace that he has given us faith.
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In chapter 1 of this great letter, Paul tells us that the father purposed salvation, the son accomplished salvation, and the spirit applies the work of Christ to the heart of those who come to faith in Christ.
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Salvation is his work, we are his workmanship, God saves.
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So here we have the definitive answer from the Bible to our question, God saves.
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But why did he save us? For what reason has God saved us? Most often when we consider this question, we think of eternal life, we think that he has saved us so that we would have eternal life with him rather than spending eternity in hell as objects of his wrath.
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Now these statements are true.
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We will spend eternity in heaven as objects of his grace, and we will not spend eternity in hell as objects of his wrath.
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However, there is more to the story.
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Look at our text here in verse 10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.
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Contrast this with the opening verses of chapter 2 where Paul writes that we were dead in trespasses and sins.
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Now in verse 10, he says that we have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
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Prior to salvation, we walked in sin.
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After salvation, we are able because of him to do good works.
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He has made us able to do works that we could not do before salvation.
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He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves so that we can do for him what we could not do before he saved us.
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God saves.
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The next phrase is even more amazing because Paul says that these good works were prepared beforehand by God for us.
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This is especially difficult to wrap our minds around.
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In chapter 1 and verse 4 of Ephesians, Paul writes that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
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In verse 5, Paul writes that God predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.
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God purposed to save his people before the foundation of the world.
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He purposed that this salvation would take place through the work of his son.
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Truly, this declares the power of God, that he can change the nature of men whereby they are able to do the good works that God prepared before the foundation of the world for them to do.
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How do we comprehend this? How are we to understand that God is so powerful that he can change our nature? How are we to understand that God is so powerful that he can purpose something before the foundation of the world and it come to pass? Yet, this is the teaching of Scripture.
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As much as men try to deny the power of God, the Scriptures continue to declare this great truth that God is indeed powerful and more powerful than men.
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This is why Paul would boast in his weakness.
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For in so doing, he was boasting in Christ.
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By boasting in how weak he was, he was declaring how great and powerful God must be.
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He, therefore, was boasting in the work of God through Christ.
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Remember chapter 2, verse 1, we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
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So if we are going to boast about our works, then we are going to boast about our sins.
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If we are boasting about how our works save us, then we are boasting about our sins being counted righteous before God.
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How absurd, how ridiculous, that we would somehow consider sin to be righteousness.
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The believer realizes the reality of his actions and asks, why would we boast in our trespasses and sins? God made us alive together in Christ.
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He accomplished our salvation.
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Therefore, we should boast in Christ.
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God saves.
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Consider the following about sinful, unregenerate men.
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Not only do sinners boast about sin, believing the sins to be righteous acts, but many know that their actions are sinful and yet boast about how sinful they are.
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Have you ever heard someone boast about how drunk they were? Have you ever heard someone boast about how mean they were to someone else? Have you ever heard someone boast about getting away with unlawful behavior? This is truly walking in trespasses and sins, to know that you are sinning and yet take pleasure in the degree of sin you commit.
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For sinners such as this, only God can save them.
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Now look at the last phrase of chapter 2 and verse 10.
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The text says, so that we should walk in them.
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The word walk is important to Paul in this letter.
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In addition to chapter 2 and verse 2, where Paul talks about our former walk in sin, he uses the word walk in five other places in this letter.
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Here in our text, in chapter 2 and verse 10, when he says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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Chapter 4 and verse 1, Paul says, therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.
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In chapter 4 and verse 17, he says, so this I say and affirm, together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind.
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Chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.
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Walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice as a fragrant aroma.
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Chapter 5 and verse 8, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the world.
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Walk as children of light.
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Walking denotes the habit of our lives.
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It denotes how we live.
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It denotes our patterns.
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In verses 1 through 3 of chapter 2, we read that our former pattern was to walk in sin.
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Now, according to verse 10, we are walking in good works that God prepared beforehand for us.
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The unregenerate man walks in sin and does not desire to leave his sinful life.
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The regenerated man, the man made alive in Christ, walks in good works because God has delivered him from his sinful nature.
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God saves.
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What a change the believer experiences.
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We were children of wrath, even as the rest.
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We were sons of disobedience.
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We walked in trespasses and sins, just like the unbelievers, but God made us alive in Christ.
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Therefore, it is by grace that we have been saved through faith and that not of ourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
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For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared beforehand so that we could walk in them.
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God did for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
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God saves.
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We are declared righteous through faith in the work of Jesus Christ, and God is glorified in it.
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May we always proclaim and believe and hold to this great truth.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, we thank you for your Son.
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We thank you for the work that He has done upon the cross on our behalf.
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We thank you that you have called us out of the world and that you have drawn us unto yourself through your Holy Spirit.
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Father, we thank you for the word that you have left us, your Scripture.
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We thank you that we can open it and we can study it and we can be instructed and learn from it.
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And Father, I pray for each of us who are here that you, Lord God, would use our time this morning to render us both more faithful and more fruitful.
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And Father, I pray for those who are here that have not yet been converted.
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I pray, Lord God, that your Spirit would not let them rest, but that you would work upon their heart and through the preaching of the gospel, you would transform them and cause them to repent of their sins and believe upon your Son.
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Thank you that you love us.
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Thank you that you care for us.
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Thank you that you have bestowed your grace upon us.
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Thank you that you will spend eternity showing us how kind you are.
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For this, in the blessed name of the Lord Jesus Christ, let me pray.
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Amen.