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. Ephesians 2:8
Let’s talk about faith. We will land on this subject of faith for a week or two and explore the aspects of it. I’ve always liked this verse and as I studied it I found even more reasons to like it. First of all, we can’t even think about our salvation without realizing that it is only given to us by the grace of God. There is nothing that we do to earn it, there is nothing that we do to deserve it. It comes to us as a gift of God through our faith.
The author of the commentary I read explained that we are not even saved by our faith but through our faith. Now I pondered that for a few minutes on what that could even mean. And what I think is this, if we were saved BY our faith then it would just happen. All we would have to do is to know all about Jesus in our head, to know scripture and to be able to quote it. But THROUGH faith is a heart work. It means that we not only know about Him in our head, but we also know about Him in our hearts. You see even the demons know about Jesus and they know scripture. But when we take those scriptures and God’s word and we work it out in our hearts to put our trust and faith in the person of Jesus Christ that is when we truly have received our salvation and we can know the gift.
Now don’t get me wrong here, the working out I am talking here is strictly heart works. Not the work we will end up doing for Him, the putting our feet to our prayers and being the hands and feet of Jesus. I am talking about putting your faith to work in your prayer closet or your prayer chair, whichever you may have. It’s taking His word and looking at it and deciphering it, and believing on it. That is what will build your faith, the faith that sustains us, the faith in the person and the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the gift of God, the grace of God that we receive. And it is what leads us to our salvation. It’s His gift! The work is actually done by Jesus in our hearts, we don’t get to boast about it, except to boast in Christ alone!
Restore 