Sola Gratia Sola Fide

Well, if you have your Bible, I hope you do, turn to Ephesians chapter 2, which is
where we're going to be. And as we start, I presume most of you know who this man
is when you see his picture. Everybody know who that is? That is Martin Luther.
Martin Luther, who I don't know if you know his story, but after years of study,
theological study and being a part of a monastic order, Martin Luther had a gospel
epiphany that was transformed
with death was a warning from God that he better get his life right.
So he went off and joined a monastery. His dad was not happy that he was changing
his vocational direction. And Luther himself was somewhat neurotically obsessed with
the reality of his own sin. He was very aware of his sin and his guilt.
And when I say neurotically obsessed with it, It was a weight on him. It was a
burden on him that he could find no peace for. He knew that in spite of his best
efforts, his continued prayers, his works of penance, there was no relief for this
burden of sin that he carried. He did everything the church told him to do to try
to deal with it. He would spend hours praying and fasting, and nothing seemed to
work. Luther said, I saw Christ as a terrifying judge who had the sword of judgment
above my head and I had no peace. When he performed his first mass,
he got up on the stage and he froze on the platform. And he later wrote that in
that moment, he saw himself and thought, what am I doing here? He said, who am I
that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hand to the divine majesty. The angels
surround him, at his nod, the earth trembles, and shall I a miserable little pigmy
say, I want this, I ask for that? I'm dust and ashes and full of sin,
and I'm speaking to the eternal God, the living and true God. Well,
after years of being plagued by this burden of sin in his life, Luther was
preparing a series of lectures on the book of Romans, and he was meditating on
chapter one of Romans, and when he came to verse 17, a light went on. Verse 17
says, for it is in the righteousness of God, for it is the righteousness of God is
revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith,
or the righteous shall live by faith. And Luther said, when I read those words,
suddenly had dawned on me that the righteousness of God, of which Paul was speaking,
was not the righteousness by which God himself is righteous, that righteousness that
makes God so excellent and virtuous in his transcendent holiness that makes me
terrified of him. He said, but rather Paul is expounding another theme, not only the
righteousness of God by which God himself is righteous, but the righteousness that
God makes available to us, who are not righteous, that righteousness of God that is
granted to us as a gift in faith, the righteousness that is given to us through
the righteousness of Christ, an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness, that is
granted for our own possession. He said, when I understood that, and when the
concept of justification by faith alone burst through into my mind, suddenly it was
like the doors of paradise swung open and I walked through.
loving, gospel preaching monk who began to see problems in the church that he was a
part of, which was the Roman Catholic Church. And that led Luther to say, we've got
to fix the problems in the church so that other people understand and believe the
gospel. He wanted other people to be free from the burden of sin just as he was,
helped them see that the gospel is good news that the one who was perfectly
righteous, Jesus, paid the debt we owe and gives us new life by giving us a gift
we don't deserve.
Paul had had his own gospel epiphany. Paul, who had grown up studying the law,
believing that righteousness comes by keeping the law, had his own gospel epiphany
when he met Jesus and realized, you can't keep the law well enough to be made
right with God. And so he began to see that salvation is by grace through faith.
And the two verses we're going to look at this morning from the book of Ephesians
are two verses that summarize what Luther and what the Apostle Paul embraced that
led to this gospel epiphany. It's the idea that God's salvation comes to us by
grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. In fact, these are two verses that
I know some of you have by heart, you know these by heart. If you haven't
memorized Ephesians 2 ,8 and 9, these are verses that you ought to have tucked away
in your heart. These are core verses from scripture. And what Luther came to believe
about this passage and about the gospel has been summed up in church history in
five statements that became the slogans of the Reformation, the five solas.
Maybe you've heard this, or maybe you've walked back in the education hallway, and
you've seen we've got these hanging up on the wall back there. So The five solas
are, these are Latin words. The first one is sologratia. That means grace alone.
Salvation comes to us as a gift from God by grace alone. Sola Fide, which means it
comes through faith alone. That's the means by which God's grace is accessed.
It is Solis Christus, which means in Christ alone. Our faith is in him alone and
in nothing and no one else.
faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in the scriptures alone, for the glory of
God alone. That's what these statements all mean. And in this letter to the
Ephesians, Paul drives this point home, as we're going to see this morning. We're
going to go ahead and read verses 1 through 10 in chapter 2. Our focus will be on
verses 8 and 9. But before we read these verses again, let me pray for us.
Father, we come acknowledging we need illumination from you.
Ephesians 2 beginning at verse 1, this is the Word of God for the people of God.
The Bible says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once
walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all
once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and
the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God,
being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when
we were dead in our trespasses, 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 coming ages he might show the immeasurable
riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have
been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should
walk in them. Amen. May God bless this reading of His word. The grass withers and
the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. Now to really understand
these verses, verses 8 and 9, the verses that will occupy our attention this
morning, there are five ideas that we need to focus on. We need to understand
salvation. What does the Bible mean when it talks about salvation? We need to
understand grace. What does that word mean? We need to understand faith.
And then we need to understand that we must exclude works or merit and that we
must exclude boasting. That's what these verses are telling us. And again, let me
set a context for this. Back in chapter one, Paul begins by talking about how God
has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And then he says,
and I want the eyes of your heart to be opened. I want you to understand what God
has done. First of all, I want you to understand the power of God on display and
the resurrection of Christ. And then when he gets to chapter two, he says, I want
you to understand the radical reality of your own depravity, your sin and what it's
done to you, that you are dead, that you are enslaved, and that you are condemned.
And then I want you to understand that God has intervened on your behalf in Christ.
But God who is rich in mercy took you who were spiritually dead and made you
spiritually alive. He took you who were spiritually enslaved, and he brought spiritual
liberation with a new identity. He took you who were spiritually guilty and facing
eternal death, and he has seated you at the right hand of God. He's lifted you up
with Him. God has saved you by His grace. In fact, in Chapter 1,
he says, I want you to see the immeasurable power of God. In Chapter 2, he says,
I want you to see the immeasurable grace of God. God has saved you by his grace,
and that's the context in which we get to the verses we're going to be looking at
this morning, that all we have, all the benefits that we have in Christ are
benefits that we access by grace alone through faith alone.
And those benefits all fit under this general heading of salvation. So I'm going to
talk about what that word salvation means to start off with. Get a better
understanding that. When we hear the word salvation, we tend to think of being saved
from the wrath which is to come, saved from eternal judgment. And that's a big part
of what that word means. But the word doesn't just talk about what we are saved
from. Salvation talks about what we are saved to. We are saved from wrath,
but we are saved to something. The word in the New Testament, the Greek word for
salvation, is a word that means not only to rescue, but it also means to heal.
Both of these ideas are encompassed in what Paul is talking about when he talks
about salvation. Follow the flow of what he's been saying. Again, back in verse 3,
chapter 1 says you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. That's part of what
you're saved to. Then in chapter two, he says, you were dead in your trespasses and
sins and you were facing the wrath of God. That's what you're saved from. But as
we saw last week, God has made us spiritually alive in Christ and lifted us up
into His presence and seated us with Him to rule and reign. Again, that's what
we're saved too. So the point here is when you get to verse 8, and he says, God
has saved you. It is both what you're saved from and what you're saved to.
Salvation is bigger than just being rescued from wrath. Salvation is being brought
into the blessings and the abundant life that you were created for in the first
place. When I think about the word salvation, three big ideas come to mind for me.
Those three big ideas are forgiveness,
transformation, and hope. Salvation brings us all three of those things.
Forgiveness, transformation and hope, and salvation accomplishes and accompanies what
God has done for us in the past, what he's doing for us in the present, and what
is there for us in the future. Salvation is a broad term for that. God doesn't
just for
and we are united with Christ. Our sins are forgiven. It says they are separated as
far as the east is from the west. How far is that? It's an immeasurable distance.
If you travel east infinitely and west infinitely, you're infinitely separated. Your
sins are infinitely separated from you. The Bible says that God has put our sins
behind his back. Now, things that are behind my back,
not only can I not see them, but I can't
dark and it's hidden, and anything that goes to the bottom of the sea is never
recovered. And finally, it says that the omniscient, all -knowing God has chosen to
remember our sins no more.
Now, he's omniscient. So are you saying, am I saying that God doesn't know that you
sinned yesterday? No, he knows it, but he chooses not to remember it. He does not
keep it in his memory. He puts it away. He's done with it. Think about that.
I mean, just meditate on that. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my
sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. God
has blotted it out and put it away from you. And not only is your sin removed,
but because your sin is removed, shame is gone.
Condemnation is gone. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ. Salvation.
family. That's what salvation accompanies. Charles Wesley said it this way.
No condemnation. Now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine.
Alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine. Bold, I approach
the eternal throne and claim the crown of Christ my own. Amazing love.
How can it be? That's what it means to be forgiven, to be justified.
with present tense implications. God has forgiven all the sins you have committed,
are committing, and will commit. That's how glorious that is. And here's what I'm
wondering. Have you experienced the relief that comes with that knowledge?
Knowing that your sins are forgiven, have you experienced the relief of having the
burden of your sin removed from your shoulders. Some of you have read Pilgrim's
Progress, the great book by John Bunyan that depicts our sin as this heavy burden
that we carry, a big sack, a backpack that you carry that just weighs you down and
exhausts you. Well, when the main character in that book named Christian arrives at
the cross on his journey to the celestial city and seize the cross, the strings
that are attached to that backpack begin to fall away. In fact, here's how one
artist depicts that scene of Christian coming to the cross, and it's like all of
the cords that were holding that burden on his back are snapped away. The backpack
then tumbles down the hill and goes into a tomb where it's never seen again.
What a great picture of what it is to have the burden of your sin removed from
you. Have you experienced the relief that comes from that? If you have not
experienced that relief, it's for one of two reasons. Either it's because your sins
have not been forgiven because you're not in Christ, so the weight of the burden of
sin is still with you because you're still apart from Christ, or you've surrendered
your life to Jesus, but somehow Satan keeps reminding you of your sin, and you keep
feeling the weight of the burden even though it's not there. I've talked to people
who have experienced an amputation, and they have what's called a phantom pain, so
their arm that's no longer there still hurts. Well, for some of us who are
Christians, we have the burden of sin removed, but we still feel offended.
despair and tells me of the guilt within, reminds me of the burden that I used to
carry, upward I look and see him there who made an end to all my sin. Because the
sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied
to look on him and pardon me.
Salvation means your sins are forgiven. That's the first word that comes to mind
when I think about it. Second word is transformation. Salvation means that God is
going to do a remodeling work in the life of everyone he saves. This is a present
tense word. This is what he is currently doing in all of our lives. He is
continuing every day to make each of us who are in Christ more and more into the
image of his son. He's reshaping, remodeling your heart and your life.
He's begun the good work in you. He will be faithful to complete it. There is no
such thing as a salvation that does not include a transformation.
Another word for transformation is sanctification, and whom he justifies for giving
their sins, he will sanctify, transforming them into the likeness of Christ.
so we are
So hope is a present tense word with future implications.
We have a hope today because we are looking forward to the promises God has made
for the future. Most of you probably know Jeremiah 29 -11, the verse that talks
about, I know the plans I have for you, the plans to prosper you and not to harm
you, the plans to give you a hope and a future. Salvation means that the future
that we deserve is not the future we will receive and the future we will receive
is not the future we deserve. In fact, I remember hearing someone years ago say
this, I've never forgotten it. They said, if you are a Christian, this life that
you're living right now is as bad as things will ever be for you. If you're not
Christian, this life that you're living now is as good as things will ever be for
you. We have a hope that the afflictions we're dealing with are light and momentary
afflictions that are producing an eternal weight of glory. We have a hope that we
will spend eternity with Christ. In fact, Paul's going to talk more about this hope
just a few verses later in Ephesians. In verse 12, he says, Remember, you used to
be separated from Christ. You were alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel. You
were strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God.
But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ. Salvation means you go from having no hope to having a hope. You
will spend eternity with Jesus. Forgiveness, transformation, and hope.
Three words that, and that's not a complete understanding, but those are three key
elements of what it means to be saved. The Bible makes it clear you're not just
saved from the wrath to come. You are saved to a present and future glory that is
what you've been saved to. And here in Asians too, Paul makes it clear that you
are both saved from and saved to. You're saved from wrath, but you're saved to
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So that's the first big idea in
these verses we're looking at. In Christ, we have been saved. The second big idea
is that we have been saved by grace. By grace you have been saved.
and I would add that it's by grace alone. Last week I referenced how J .I.
Packer defines the word grace, the unmerited favor of God. That's kind of the simple
definition, the unmerited favor of God. Packer says, God's grace is his love
demonstrated toward those who deserve the opposite.
Grace, he says, is favor bestowed when wrath is owed.
He said it is love freely shown toward guilty sinners contrary to their merit and
indeed in defiance of their demerit. That's what grace is. It's God giving you
blessing you don't deserve. He's giving you the opposite of what you deserve.
Salvation is a gift from God, it is a work of grace, and Paul is passionate about
the fact that it is by grace alone. And he's passionate for a couple of reasons.
First of all, he's passionate about this because for years before he met Jesus on
the road to Damascus, Paul pursued salvation by merit.
He was a legalist among legalists. He was pursuing the opposite of grace.
He was convinced that his effort to lead a life pleasing to God would ultimately
obligate God to give him salvation. In fact, he talks about this in Philippians
chapter 3, where he reviews his own resume of his self -righteousness. He says,
if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. You think
you've been keeping the law? I'm better than you, he says. I was circumcised on the
eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
As to the law, I was a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to
righteousness under the law, blameless. That's my resume of self -righteousness, he
says. I thought this would obligate God to show favor to me and to save me.
Then he says, but whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus, my Lord. I put my resume against the grace of God, and my resume goes
completely away. It's nothing. I put it completely away because the grace of God is
everything. He says elsewhere that his self -righteousness is filthy rags.
It's rubbish. It's worth nothing to God. His zealous idea about grace comes because
he knows that law -keeping and self -righteousness will earn you nothing with God.
He is zealous about grace because he knows there is something in our human nature
that desperately wants to justify us before God. We are all desperate to get glory
for ourselves. Now, that doesn't mean that you want to be in the spotlight or on
parade, but you want to be recognized and acknowledged for the good stuff you've
done.
mean by that? She said, well, if I'm saved by my good works, then there's a limit
to what God can ask of me. She said, I'm like a taxpayer with rights. I paid my
dues. I get my reward. She said, but if it's really true that I'm a sinner saved
by grace alone at God's infinite cost, then there's nothing he can't ask of me.
Paul wants each of us to be constantly on guard against the inner Pharisee.
If grace is not alone, it's not grace. In fact, here's how the formula looks.
Grace, plus anything you put in added to it, is not grace.
As soon as you add something to grace, grace is gone.
Paul spells it out for the Galatians. He says, if righteousness comes by keeping the
law, then Christ died for no purpose. You can't leaven grace with a little self
-righteousness.
That may sound odd to you, but I spent about 20 minutes this week in a phone
conversation with a best -selling author. Some of you may know the name Lee Strobel.
He wrote the book, The Case for Christ. He was an atheist. He worked for the
Chicago Tribune as an investigative reporter. And he set out to explore,
to use his own, when his wife became a Christian, he set out to explore the
resurrection and say, I'm going to.
and what brings, what we have absolute certainty of. And that gap is where faith
comes in. We operate every day in that gap between absolute certainty and faith.
So, for example, I've got here a cup of water. Okay. It looks like a good,
clean, clear cup of water, right? And as far as I know, I poured it out of a jug
back here. We had a water jug. As far as I know, there is no poison in this
water. Nobody has planted any poison. It's pure. I don't think any, I don't know
that anybody's done anything to contaminate this. I believe it's pure. Now, if I
want absolute certainty, I'm going to have to stop and take this water to the lab.
I'm going to have them test it and verify for me that it's absolutely certain. Even
then, I'm going to have to make sure that their certification process is working
right, and they're not deceiving me, and that their machines are well calibrated. So
if I want absolute certainty that this water is pure, I'm going to have to go to
extra measures. But you know what? I'm about to take a drink of this glass of
water, because I believe it's pure. I believe I have enough evidence to support the
idea that this is pure water. If it's not, if there's poison in here, we'll all
see the answer here. So let's...
And that's, but there's still some faith involved, right?
In the same way, and I understand there's a difference between believing that the
water is pure and believing that a man died and got up from the grave and walked
out three days later. That takes a different level of faith. But we still have
faith based on evidence, not faith that goes against the evidence. And what Paul is
saying here is that in order for us to experience God's salvation, which comes by
grace, we must step out in faith. We must look at the evidence and then we must
believe the evidence. We must choose to believe what the evidence points to. We are
sinners in need of a Savior. Our condition is dire. Jesus died,
was buried, rose again, seated with the Father in heaven. He is coming again, and
by being in him, we can have new life, new identity, new future, new hope. But you
have to believe that in order to be saved. And let me explain the kind of belief
he's talking about here. There are three elements that are necessary for saving
faith. For you to have faith that saves you, three things have to be true.
First of all, you have to have knowledge of what's being claimed. So you can't
believe in something you've not been told. You have to have to have the information.
That's the first part of saving faith. I've heard the claim. The second part of
saving faith is you have to agree with it or affirm it. You hear the claim and
you say, I believe that's true. And the third part is critical. You have to
demonstrate the validity of your belief with a commitment,
with action. You have to trust in what you're saying you believe is true. Back to
my glass of water. I have knowledge of where this water came from, and I could
say, I believe that this is pure water. But there's a difference between saying, I
believe this is pure water, and taking a drink.
A lot of people have the kind of faith where they say, I believe it's pure, but
I'm not drinking. That's not saving faith.
a way that demonstrates that what you say you believe is what you really believe.
Now, two more things quickly about this kind of saving faith that we're talking
about, and these are both in the text we're looking at this morning. First of all,
we'll get to that. First of all, saving faith requires that you continue to exercise
it every day. Saving faith is not something you exercise once and then it's done
forever. It has a beginning point, and you are saved at that beginning point, but
you continue to demonstrate the reality of your faith by exercising that faith every
day. You take a first sip, and then you continue to drink every day. You keep re
-believing the gospel every day over and over again. As Steve Perry would say,
don't stop believing. Hold on to that feeling, right? Second, you understand that
it's not having faith that saves you. It's the person in whom you have faith that
is saving you. Jesus saves you, not your faith. Faith is how you,
it's the vehicle through which you are saved, but it's not what saves you. You are
saved by grace through faith. If I ask you, How did you come to church this
morning? Most of you would say, I came by car. I got my car is what brought me
here. Now, for you to get here by car, you had to get into the car. You had to
start the car. You had to turn it on.
But it was the car that brought you here, but you had to get into the car in
order to get here. You got here through car,
but by the car, but you came through, I got lost in my example here. But you see
the difference. You're not saved by your faith. You're saved by Jesus. The car
brought you here, but you had to get into it. Jesus saves you, but you have to be
in him in order to be saved. You're saved as a result of what he has done,
and as a result of God by his grace extending the benefits of what Jesus has done
and then applying those benefits to you. But you have to step into it. You have to
say, I'm going to believe, really believe, the kind of belief that brings about a
change in my behavior and in my life, I'm going to believe that Jesus says who he
is, that he really did die and that he rose again. Have you believed that way?
Or has your belief stopped short of taking a sip and getting in the car? Has your
belief been less than saving faith? I know a lot of people who will affirm, yes,
I believe Jesus died and rose again. But they're not getting in the car every day.
They're not taking a sip every day. They're going on with their life like that
doesn't matter for anything. That's not saving faith. Saving faith involves believing
every day and living like that belief is true, stepping into it. And it begins with
the first step, but if you've never taken that first step, you can do it now,
today, this morning. And you may need to do that. Or you may need to re -believe
and reorient your life around the good news that Christ died in your place and rose
for salvation.
Two more points as we wrap up this morning. First of all, salvation, all of it, by
grace through faith, is a gift from God. It does not involve works or merit on
your part. We need to understand there's no merit involved. You add nothing to the
finished work of Christ in order for you to be saved. Here's how Paul says it in
the passage we looked at. it is not of your own doing. It's the gift of God, not
a result of works. When he says, this is not of your own doing,
the this he's talking about there is the whole package of salvation. You are saved
by grace through faith. All of that is not of your own doing. The saving, the
grace, the faith, none of that is your own doing. Now, some people will say when
they hear this, but wait, I had to get in the car. I had to believe. I had to
take the sip. I exercised faith. What about that? Doesn't that count for something?
Well, the Bible says that even the faith you chose to exercise came to you as a
gift from God. The faith wasn't something you had in you that you conjured up and
activated. The faith was a gift that came from God that you believed in.
In fact, I'll show you two verses that point this out. Philippians 1, the Apostle
Paul says, it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ,
you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. Here's what God
granted to you. For the sake of Christ, you can believe in it. That was granted to
you. That's a gift to you. And in Acts 18, the Apostle Paul, when he arrived in
Achaea, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed.
and we have to put that desire to death over and over again. No merit allowed in
your salvation. Anything you're trying to hang on to his merit? You have to counsel
your own soul. No.
And no boasting allowed either. That's the last point Paul makes in this verse.
Salvation is a gift of God, and as a result, no one can boast. No one can say,
look at me, look what I did. Look at how special I am. It's a kid's book came
out a number of years ago called You Are Special. And I understand what the author
was trying to say. He was trying to say that all of us are created in the image
of God, and there's a specialness to that. You have worth value and dignity because
God created you in his image. You are special as a result of that. But you're not
special in a way that other people aren't special. All human beings are created in
the image of God and have worth value and dignity. So you're not special above
other people. You can't say, I'm better than you. And by the way, this is what
many of your non -Christian friends think you believe. Many of your non -Christian
friends think that when you say I'm a Christian, what they hear you saying is, I'm
better and more moral than you are. And we have to understand that that's how
they're thinking, and we have to understand, we have to make sure that we're not
believing that ourselves.
Do you think that because you're a Christian, you are intrinsically morally superior
to your neighbors? You may make superior moral decisions because Christ has changed
you, and you now are living for him, But that doesn't mean that you are an
intrinsically more moral person than your friends are. You're making those moral
decisions because God, by His grace, is changing your heart and your life. We have
to make sure we don't think that we're somehow more special than others, and then
we have to do our best to communicate to others that we don't think that.
We believe God has given us a gift, and we believe God gives that gift to anyone
who will ask of it. All of us are going to be opening gifts.
We are chosen in Christ. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even
things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being
might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus,
who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so
that as it is written, let the one who boasts in the Lord. and because of him,
you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us the wisdom from God, righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, so that it is written, let no one who boasts in the
Lord. Now, I'm guessing that all of us here are civilized enough that we don't go
around boasting. I mean, you know it's not polite to brag, so you don't go walking
around every day saying, look at how special I am, I'm better than other people.
But you have to guard your heart against that little voice in your head that says,
you know, you really are better than other people.
Or at least I have to guard my heart against that.
I'll sum it up with this story that really sums up these verses for me. Back in
December of 1662, there was a Scottish minister named David Dixon,
and he was 80 years old and he was dying and a friend who had been a close
friend of his for more than 50 years came to visit him as he was dying. He wanted
to see how his friend was and the 80 year old pastor said this to his friends.
He said, I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad deeds and I have cast
them together in a heap before the Lord and I have fled from both to Christ Jesus
Father, thank you for the truth of this passage, for how rich it is.
And I pray that all of us have a deeper, richer understanding of what our salvation
is, that we better understand your grace, that we better understand what it means to
walk by faith, to exercise faith. I pray that you would remove from us the desire
to add merit of our own,
remove from us any desire to boast,
and that we would find our hope solely in you, and that we would rejoice not only
that we've been saved from wrath, but that we have been saved to you and life with
you and all of the blessings that are included in that. And I pray this morning
for any who are here who have never taken that step,
that they would find their hope in you today. I pray it in your name.
Amen.