The Golden Thread of Grace by Charles Spurgeon
Ephesians Chapter 2 Verse 8

By grace are you saved. Besides His grace, God manifests His other divine attributes in the salvation of every sinner. The wisdom of God devised the plan of salvation. The power of God executes in us the work of salvation. The immutability of God preserves and carries on salvation. In fact, all the attributes of God are magnified in the salvation of a sinner.

But at the same time, the text is most accurate, since grace is the fountainhead of salvation and is most conspicuous throughout every aspect of it. Grace is to be seen in our election, for there is a remnant according to the election of grace, and if by grace, then it is no more of works. Grace is manifestly revealed in our redemption. It is utterly inconceivable that any soul could have deserved to be redeemed with the precious sin-atoning blood of Christ. The mere thought is abhorrent to every holy mind.

Our effectual calling is also of grace, for He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began. By grace also we are justified. Over and over again, the apostle insists upon this grand and fundamental truth. We are not justified before God by our works, in any measure, but by faith alone.

We see the golden thread of grace running through the whole of the Christian's history, from his election before all worlds to his admission into heaven's glory. There is no point in the history of a saved soul upon which you can put your finger and say. In this instance, he is saved by his own deservings. Every single blessing which we receive from God comes to us by the channel of free grace alone. Boasting is excluded because deservings are excluded. Merit is an unknown word in the Christian vocabulary.

By grace are you saved. This clear and unqualified statement sweeps away all supposition of any deserving on our part or any thought of our meriting salvation. We stand before God as condemned criminals when we come to him for mercy. We are already lost, already condemned, and our only course is to cast ourselves upon the sovereign mercy of God.

By grace are you saved. This is true of every saint on earth and every saint in heaven. It is altogether true and without a single exception. No man is saved except as the result of the free grace and unbought mercy of God. We are entirely and altogether saved because the Lord will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and he wills to bestow his favor on unworthy men.

Though I am as repulsive as the devil with sin, and as vile as the devil with innate depravity, yet if the Lord looked upon me in mercy, He would forgive my every sin, and change my nature, and make me as bright a seraph as Gabriel before His throne. He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. Titus chapter 3, verse 5.

By the grace of God, I am what I am.