Welcome to the Reign of Grace
radio broadcast. My name is Bill Parker. I'm the
pastor of the 13th Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky.
This program is sponsored by the members of Eager Avenue Grace
Church in Albany, Georgia, located at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany,
Georgia. I'll be bringing you a gospel
message of the sovereign grace and glory of God in the Lord
Jesus Christ from God's Holy Word. And now, the message. Now the day I'm going to be preaching
from the book of Ephesians, chapter 2, the title of the message is
God's Free Gift. God's Free Gift. And, of course,
we're talking about God's free gift of salvation. Now, the verses
that I'm going to deal with begin at verse 8 of Ephesians chapter
2. Probably most of you are familiar
with these verses, but let's read three verses here. It says,
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast,
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which God hath before ordained, or foreordained, or prepared,
that we should walk in them." Now those verses obviously speak
of the free gift of salvation. Verse 8 speaks of the source
of salvation. Verse 9 speaks of the need of
salvation. And verse 10 speaks of the result
of salvation. And yet it shows us that all
salvation is a free gift from God. Now let me introduce this
message by going back in other scriptures and showing you some
things to remind you of how this concept, this truth of free grace
is taught all the way through the scriptures. We could even
go back into the Old Testament but for our message today I want
to just go back to John Chapter 4 where the Lord Jesus Christ
confronted a Samaritan woman at a well and he asked her to
draw him some water and she was amazed that a Jew would ask a
Samaritan for water because there was so much hatred and prejudice
and animosity between the Jews and the Gentile Samaritans. The Jews hated the Gentiles but
especially the Samaritans because they considered them to be turncoats
and rebels. And so the Lord confronted this
woman. This was one whom he set his
sights upon, his love upon. to save, and he begins teaching
her the lessons of salvation. And she asked him, she said,
how is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me which am a
woman of Samaria, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans?
And this is an amazing thing, you see, this is out of the ordinary,
that a Jew would ask a Samaritan for a drink of water. Well, Jesus
answered, this is John 4 and verse 10, Jesus answered and
said unto her, and listen to the words that he says, If thou
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would
have given thee living water. Now what he does is he takes
the physical water of the well, And he uses it as a symbol or
a metaphor to teach a spiritual lesson, a gospel lesson. And
he shows her that living water, that is spiritual water, living
water that will never go dry, living water that quenches the
spiritual thirst forever and ever and ever, is a gift of God
from Christ who is the fountain of living water. And he said
to her, if you knew the gift of God, now this is the problem
with religion today. Especially much of the religion
that comes in the name of Christianity, that comes in the name of Christ.
They speak of salvation by grace. They speak of the free gift.
But they really don't understand, people really do not understand
what the free gift actually is and how free it is. You know,
grace is a beautiful, wonderful truth. and it's revealed by God
in His Word. It's what salvation is and it's
through the Lord Jesus Christ. To most people, grace is God
helping people to help themselves. To some people, it's God giving
them the tools that they need if they would make a decision.
To others, it is God just giving them just a boost. But you see,
that's not what grace is in the Scripture at all. Grace is not
God enabling you to save yourself. Grace is not even God coming
99% of the way and you doing your 1%. Grace is salvation by
God in Christ 100%. And I want to show you this,
and that's what he's talking to this Samaritan woman about.
If you knew the gift of God, and if you knew who it was that
was speaking to you, the Messiah, who is the gift of God. Over
in the book of Romans, it speaks of the redemptive work of the
Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 3, where he talks about that
salvation cannot come by the works of men. And he says, verse
23 of Romans chapter 3, for all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God. And then he speaks of justification,
being justified. What is it to be justified before
God? It means to be righteous before
God. It means to be not guilty. It
means to have a right standing before a holy God. It means to
be accepted. And he says being justified freely. That word freely means unconditionally. It means without a cause. In
other words, there is absolutely nothing in the object of salvation. that deserves or has earned salvation
but is justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that is in Christ. Grace is God's salvation freely
provided in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in the book
of Romans chapter 8, he mentions this again when he speaks of
Christ himself and he says this in verse 32 of Romans 8, he says,
He that spared not his own son but delivered him up for us all
How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Freely give. That's what grace
is all about. It's the free gift of God. Now over here in Ephesians chapter
2, this truth is brought out in a wonderful and a very, very
brief way. But these verses, there's just
three verses here in this section, but they're so full of truth
and so full of the glory of God. Listen to what he says again.
Now here's number one, here's the cause of salvation. He says, for by grace are you
saved. That is, literally, for by grace
you have been saved. And he says it's through faith,
that is, by means of faith, and that not of yourselves. It is
the gift of God. Everything that salvation involves
is a gift of God, a free, unearned, undeserved gift. When we speak
of salvation, and we look at it in the scripture, salvation
is a big term. And what I mean by that is it
involves a whole lot of truth. For example, when we speak of
salvation, we could speak of before the foundation of the
world in the eternal mind and purpose of God. The book of 2
Timothy chapter 1 mentions that salvation that was given to God's
people in Christ before the world began. The Bible says in Ephesians
chapter 1 that God's people are blessed in verse 3, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed
us with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ according
as he hath chosen us in him. You see, salvation is God's choice,
not man's, and he says before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Before
the foundation of the world. When we speak of salvation, we
can speak of the work of Christ on the cross. That's the ground
of salvation. What God purposed before time
had to have its fulfillment in time. The Bible teaches that
God, out of free, sovereign mercy and grace, chose a people and
gave them to His Son. And His Son assumed all the responsibility,
all the requirements, agreed to meet all the conditions of
their salvation. Now what were those conditions?
Well, they're sinners. The ones whom God chose are sinners.
And the soul that sinneth must surely die. If there's going
to be salvation, which includes the forgiveness of sins, the
Bible says without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness
of sins. The wages of sin is death. So
justice has to be satisfied. Christ agreed in the covenant
of grace, the covenant of redemption, the covenant of salvation before
the world ever began, to meet that condition, to fulfill that
requirement, to die in the place of his people, his church, his
sheep. He told his disciples that. He
said, I laid down my life for the sheep. The Good Shepherd
gives his life for the sheep. He must because justice has to
be satisfied. Sins have to be paid for. Now
Christ was set up from everlasting as the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. The very first revelation of
Christ in the book of Genesis after the fall was as the seed
of woman whom Satan would bruise his heel and God illustrated
the necessity of the blood of Christ being shed, the death
of the substitute, to satisfy justice when he slew an animal
and made coats of skin for Adam and Eve. Taking off their fig
leaf aprons there that represents works religion. And so blood
has to be shed. God's law must be satisfied by
death. And so either the sinner must
die eternally or he must have a substitute who is appointed
of God, one who is willing to die, and one who is able to put
away their sin. And the only one who meets those
three requirements is the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting,
eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He's the
only one whom the Father appointed. He's the only one who is willing
to die in the place of his people. And he's the only one who is
able to put away their sins by the sacrifice of himself. Secondly,
righteousness must be established. The precept of the law, the requirement
of the law is that we must be righteous and holy in the sight
of God. And we cannot be made so by our
works and our efforts. Therefore Christ agreed to establish
righteousness for his people. That's why he's called the Lord
our righteousness. That's why he was made sin. Christ
who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. For he is our righteousness. Now that's why God sent his son. He did not spare his own son.
And in not sparing his own son, his obedience unto death, he
freely gives his people all things. by grace. In other words, there's
not one aspect of salvation that we earn, and listen to me, there's
not one aspect of salvation we deserve. Christ earned it all
for his people. He's the substitute. He's the
surety. When we speak of salvation, we
could also speak of the new birth. Now by nature, we're born into
this world spiritually dead. We spoke of that back in Ephesians
chapter 2 beginning at verse 1, and you hath he quickened
who were dead in trespasses and sins. Man by nature is a rebel
and a failure. You remember that if you heard
those messages. And the only way that he can be made anything
else, that he can be made a servant of God and a success in salvation,
is not by his own works, not by his own decision. but by the
awesome, omnipotent, sovereign power of the Holy Spirit to give
him spiritual life. We're born spiritually dead.
It is God who gives spiritual life. And that spiritual life
is known by its evidences. And the evidences is this, that
sinner who's been made spiritually alive comes to see himself in
the light of God's holiness. And what does he find? Well,
I'm a sinner. I'm like Isaiah of old, that
when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and God's train filling
the temple, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, he came to
this conclusion about himself, I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm
undone, I'm cut off, and I dwell in the midst of a people. of
unclean lips. I'm a sinner. I cannot save myself. I do not deserve to be saved.
If God gave me what I deserved, it would be eternal damnation.
I do not deserve it, you see, and I cannot earn it. If God
saves me, if God gives me life by His Spirit, it's got to be
a matter of a totally free gift of grace. And that's what he
says here in verse 8, for by grace have you been saved through
faith. Faith, he says, and that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God. Even the faith by which we believe
and reach out and lay hold of Christ is not of ourselves. It is of God. It is a free gift
of God's grace. It's part of that salvation,
which is the gift of God's grace. Also, when we speak of salvation,
we would speak of persevering or continuing in the faith. Well,
my friend, that just as much is a free gift of God's grace.
Listen, our glory in heaven is not conditioned upon our persevering. If we're saved by the grace of
God, we shall persevere. The Bible teaches that. So even
our continuing, our being kept, is a gift of God's grace. And
then ultimately in salvation, our final glory is a gift of
God's grace. Our inheritance in heaven. You
know, I hear these preachers talking about earned rewards
in heaven. And the Bible knows no such thing
as such doctrine. It's not that God saves us by
grace and then we earn what we work for in heaven. No, sir.
The glory of heaven, the blessings of heaven, to be with Christ
and to be made like him, And to be there where righteousness
dwells is not something we earn. It's a free gift of God's grace. For by grace are you saved. Through
faith. That not of yourself. It's the
gift of God. The total free gift of God. Now how does that gift come to
us? It comes through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. who is
the awesome gift of God, the ultimate gift of God. Do you
remember we read it in Romans chapter 8? He that spared not
his own son, how shall he not with Him freely give us all things? The Bible says, For in Christ
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are
complete in Him. In Christ we have the completeness
of grace, the completeness of the free gift, and therefore
the only source and cause of salvation is God's grace in Christ. Christ fulfilled the conditions
and the requirements. Now here's the second thing.
In verse 9, he gives us the need of salvation. Why do we need
salvation by grace? Why can we not earn some of it
at least? Well, he says in verse 9, it's
not of works lest any man should boast. Now let me tell you something,
it is man's nature, and this is fallen human nature, it is
man's nature to lift himself up in pride, to boast of himself,
to boast of his heritage, his pedigree, to boast of his works. When Adam and Eve fell, The first
thing they did, realizing their nakedness and being ashamed,
is they sewed fig leaf aprons together to cover their nakedness. And that is a good picture of
man's attempts to save himself or to hide himself or shield
himself from the wrath of God by his own efforts. And that
is sinful because it denies the glory of God. It lifts up the
sinner and gives him room to boast. The next thing we see
is Cain and Abel. Now God had laid down in his
word the way of salvation through the death of a suitable substitute,
a sacrifice, blood and righteousness through God's appointed substitute.
Abel, when he came to worship God, he came to the altar bringing
the blood of a lamb, which typified and foreshadowed the blood of
the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. When Abel did that, he
was confessing before God that he himself was an undeserving
sinner. He himself deserved nothing but
wrath based on his best efforts. And he was confessing that the
only way that God could save him and still be just to do so
was through the blood of the Messiah. That's what Abel was
testifying of when he brought the blood of the Lamb. Abel wasn't
looking for salvation in the blood of an animal. He was bringing
that because that was God's prescribed way of worship pointing forward
to Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Now, when Cain came to worship God, he didn't bring blood. He didn't come God's way. He
decided he had a better way. And it was the way of the works
of his hands. Cain was a teller of the ground.
That is, he was a farmer. He probably had a good harvest
that year and he worked hard. And so he brought the best that
he had, that he labored for, to God to find acceptance, to
find salvation. And God rejected it. Because
it's not of works, lest any man should boast. God will never
save any sinner based upon that sinner's best efforts to serve
Him. It's not of words. Now the book
of Romans teaches that in chapter 3. Right before he spoke of that
free justification that is in the redemption of Christ, he
made this statement as he brought in God the Holy Spirit by the
Apostle Paul as he was bringing in all men and women by nature
guilty before God. He says in verse 10, as it is
written, there is none righteous, no, not one, no exceptions. There is no person born of Adam
who is by nature or by their best works righteous before God. Now, there are all kinds of different
people. There are all kinds of different races, nationalities,
all kinds of differences. There are those who are religious,
zealous, who are moral by man's standard. There are those who
are the dregs of society. But among all of them, there's
one thing in which we all have in common by nature, that is
as we're born into this world, and by practice, that is based
upon our best efforts, we cannot make ourselves righteous before
God. Because God's standard of righteousness
is perfection. That's why he sent his son into
the world to establish righteousness. And he goes on, he says, there's
none that understand it. There's none that seeketh after
God, that is the true God. You see, Cain, somebody might
say, well, Cain was seeking God when he brought the works of
his hands, not the true God. He was seeking a God. He was
seeking a God of his imagination. He was seeking a God like himself. The God will only be sought through
his son. The true and living God will
only be sought from the heart by his grace in Christ. And then
he goes on, he says in verse 12, they are all gone out of
the way, that is the way of grace. And he says, they are all together
become unprofitable, there's none that doeth good, no not
one. You see that, that's why we need
grace. You see, we don't deserve salvation, we cannot earn salvation,
it's not of works lest any man should boast. Salvation by grace
gives all the glory to God in Christ. Salvation by works, salvation
by free will gives man room to boast. That's why salvation is
not of works, lest any man should boast. Now that's the need of
grace. Verse 10 shows us the results
of grace. Now listen to this. Somebody
says, well, where do our works come into the picture then? Well,
he says in verse 10, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works," now notice it says, unto good works, that's
the result, not the cause, not the ground, and he says, "...which
God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." That's
the result. Now, who's he talking about?
He says, for we, that's sinners saved by grace. That's those
who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Those who have
been justified before God based on the righteousness of Christ
charged to their account. He's speaking to those who have
been born again by the Holy Spirit in whom the Spirit dwells and
in whom the Word of God is implanted in their heart. That's the we
for we. Now that's a sinner saved by
grace. A sinner saved by grace is the workmanship of God. He's not a self-made person.
Now, we speak of self-made millionaires because they didn't inherit their
money, they worked for it. Well, my friend, if you have
salvation, it's by grace, it's a free gift, and it's an inheritance. There are no self-made men in
the kingdom of God. We are His workmanship. God made
me to differ. God saved me by his grace. Salvation
is of the Lord from its beginning to its final glory. I cannot
boast in any of it. I cannot attribute any of it
to myself. I'm the workmanship of God. And
then he says, created in Christ Jesus. The new creation, which
is the kingdom of God and the church, the people of God who
populate the kingdom, who are born again, who come to faith
in Christ, they were created by the Lord Jesus Christ when
he put away their sins on the cross and established righteousness
by which God could justify them. Christ did the work. Christ met
the conditions. Christ is the gift of God. He fulfilled all the stipulations,
all the requirements, all the conditions. He did it. He did
it all. He's my all in all. And so the
new creation is created not by us, but by Christ. And then he
says, unto good works. What comes forth from that? Well, you see, this is the thing
about good works. Good works are the work of God
in a sinner. It's not the sinner's work for
God. We're not fruit producers, we who are saved by grace, we're
fruit bearers. We bear fruit. Christ is the
vine, we're the branches. Christ is the source, he's the
life, we're the result. We're like a tree planted by
the waters and cannot be moved, who brings forth his leaf in
her season. Christ is the power, not us. And then he says, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them. A sinner saved
by grace is the product of the foreordaining purpose of God. He purposed it before time began. He chose his people, gave them
to Christ. He sent Christ into the world
to become incarnate. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us, and he fulfilled all righteousness on our behalf.
That's the free gift of God, and I hope that that brings you
to an understanding of the Gospel. If you'd like to get a copy of
this message, Listen to the announcer as he gives you the details.
The title of this message is God's Free Gift. And I hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word. We're glad you could join us
for today's message. If you would like to receive
a copy of this message, or if you would like more information
about Eager Avenue Grace Church, remember we are located at 1102
Eager Drive in Albany, Georgia. You can call us at 229-422-4222.
432-6969, or visit our Reign of Grace website
at www.rofgrace.com. Thank you, and may the Lord be
with you.