Ephesians 2:8
For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God;
For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Paul is going to great lengths to ensure there is no confusion about where salvation comes from.
Such a distinction is very important for creating a distance between the true God and other religions of the world, while communicating the permanence and historical nature of our salvation, grounded in a God who reached out to save us by His grace.
We can go on and on about how what Paul is sharing is different from anything and everything this earth has seen or will see.
But because we have all been soaked in the consciousness of humans measuring themselves against themselves and deriving their value from that, it becomes counterintuitive that we have a God before whom no one can qualify, but who qualifies you, who gives you redemption because of love.
It is also counterintuitive that, for the great deal that salvation is, there is nowhere in the loop where we contribute anything, and God will tell us why in the next verse.
He said it is so that no one can boast. And to answer those who say, "Does that now mean we are supposed to just continue to sin since we cannot gain salvation with works?" Paul said, "The works come after." The work is an outflow of redemption, according to verse 10. So that even at that, all glory is still to God, and no one can boast.
People do not understand how important it is that no one boasts before God. When you boast, that means there is some glory to you.
But all the glory must be to God. All the accolades. All the praise. (Revelation 4:11)
When you boast, it means we need to praise you. But all the praise must be to God. He is the reason we can reason.
Paul described himself as an example of this. He said it pleased God, who set him apart from his mother’s womb and called him by His grace, to reveal His Son in him so that he might preach the gospel among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15–16). So all praise to God.
How did Paul contribute to his own salvation? What did he do to be saved? He actually did things to not be saved.
Cornelius, we were told, was prayerful and devoted, and Peter thought surely that was what qualified him to be saved (Acts 10).
But in the trance he saw before going to his house, a voice told him, “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean” (Acts 10:15). Applied to Cornelius and his household, this means they were unclean, but by an act of divine grace God was going to make them clean and save them. We can conclude that Peter’s understanding of salvation had not yet matured, and that, as with many others, he may still have been thinking that Israel – and maybe a few others who try really, really hard – would be saved. He tried to peer into God’s reason for choosing Cornelius, but really, there is no reason we can see. We do not hear about Cornelius and his household again, but we continue to hear about Paul, the clearly undeserving one, whom God chose and whose influence is still felt today.
What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! For he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then, it does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God, who shows mercy. (Romans 9:14-16)
The question on people's minds is, what does it depend on? Does it depend on my being a good person for God to save me? The answer, of course, is no.
Salvation, as stated plainly in the focus verse, is defined as something that happens by grace through faith. So if you say, "Where, then, do I get the faith?" The answer is, it is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Somehow, we may find it difficult to think of God as the one who gives gifts. We may imagine Him as aloof. But He gives gifts, and basically, you need to know that He gives the gift of faith, and whoever He decides to give that gift to is His prerogative; that is why He is God. The faith is not from yourself.
So how do I know I am saved? The answer that Paul gave is as mysterious as the giving of the gift of faith by God.
The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children. (Romans 8:16)
Grace: God's free action of love
Faith: Our heart action of belief
The question is, what does "this," in the focus verse mean? It cannot be grace since how can there be a question about the originator of that grace, since it is God that saves?
Therefore, "this" is the faith that we exercise to be saved.
Faith is what is commonly associated with man. God does not need faith. If you wrote a novel, you don't need faith to know that the main character is going to survive, because you wrote it. Other characters in the novel can experience angst, but not the writer. So God does not need faith.
It is wrong to associate faith with God. The Bible did not say “have the faith of God”; it says “have faith in God” (Mark 11:22).
God did not create the world by faith. It is we who understand by faith (since we were not there) that “the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible” (Hebrews 11:3).
How can someone who knows “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) need faith? How can someone who operates beyond time need faith? How can someone without any limitations need faith? Faith, therefore, is the purview of man and not God.
God cannot have faith and does not have faith. Faith has to do with limited knowledge. God does not need to trust Himself. Jesus did not exercise faith. It is humans who need faith.
So it is wrong to say God has faith.
Again, what is the “this” referring to in the focus verse? Of course, it is the faith that we need to be saved.
Paul is saying it is not generated from you, so we do not confuse where all the glory belongs.
If someone says, "this" means "this" salvation is not from yourself.
That is a stretch in my opinion. Paul had repeatedly mentioned faith/belief (1:13, 15, 19) as something associated with man, so it makes sense that he wants to remove that leg for anyone who wants to boast to stand on. So that no one would ever write a book titled "How to get faith for salvation."
It's like saying to enter the theatre to watch a movie, you need a ticket. And your dad gave you the ticket you presented at the door. The Grace is that there is a theatre to go to and a movie to see in the first place. The Grace is the creation of the whole platform, even the ticketing platform.
You are the one who presented the admission ticket. It bears your name, but it is a gift from your father. And the grace is from the Father. The faith-gift is an aspect of the comprehensive (Paul called it the riches of His [Ephesians 1:7]) grace, in my opinion.
"This," referring to the faith of salvation, is one of the good gifts He gives, just as James writes: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…” (James 1:17).
By grace and through faith
By grace is the whole spectrum of divine actions leading to our salvation, as laid out by Paul already.
Faith is about the moment in time when that was delivered into us, becoming our reality.
