Through Faith – Ephesians 2:8b
In Ephesians 2:8, Paul explains that salvation is not only by grace, but “through faith.” Grace is the basis of salvation, while faith is the instrument by which sinners receive Christ. Faith itself is not the Savior; faith receives the Savior. Saving faith includes knowledge of who Christ is and what He has done, agreement with God’s testimony concerning Him, and personal trust in Christ alone for salvation. It does not rest in sincerity, morality, church attendance, family background, baptism, theological knowledge, or good works. Saving faith rests entirely on the crucified and risen Christ. Faith is the open hand that receives what grace gives.
Paul then makes clear that even this faith is not something we can boast in: “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” The whole saving work—grace, faith, and salvation—is God’s gift. The sinner truly believes, comes to Christ, and rests in Him, but God is the One who opens the heart and brings sinners to faith through the preaching of the gospel. This truth guards us from both legalism and lawlessness. Works do not earn our acceptance with God, but true saving faith will never remain fruitless. The biblical order matters: grace gives, faith receives, and works follow. Therefore, sinners must stop looking to themselves and look to Christ alone, while Christians must never boast in their faith, but remember that even the empty hand receiving Christ is a gift of God’s grace.
FULL SERMON TRANSCRIPT:
Turn in your copy of God’s Word to the letter of Paul to the Ephesians.
Last week we looked at the first half of chapter 2, verse 8, and we looked at the importance of, “For by grace you have been saved.” Grace is the basis of salvation.
And now, where we pick up here, Paul continues the thought. In fact, last week when we finished the sermon, when we finished where we looked at last week, you probably were like, “Man, he didn’t even finish the whole sentence. There’s two more words there.”
Well, those two more words require an entire new sermon.
Paul continues his thought here: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God.”
We’re going to look at the second half of verse 8 this morning, and we need to ask and answer three questions.
First, what is faith?
Second, how does faith relate to salvation?
And where does faith come from?
Before we dig into the text, we need to say upfront real clearly that Paul here is speaking about saving faith. Faith unto justification, conversion, the faith by which a sinner receives Christ and is saved.
The Bible also speaks of faith continuing on throughout the Christian life. We walk by faith, we live by faith, we obey by faith. But we will say more about that kind of faith, obedient, sanctifying faith, when we come to verse 10 and then the second half of basically the whole epistle.
But here in verse 8, Paul is explaining how sinners are saved, how they are justified, how they are converted from lost to saved.
So that matters here.
We need to be clear about that here because the word faith is often used very carelessly, even among Christians.
Some people, when they talk about faith, they just mean some sort of vague optimism.
“I just have faith.”
And others treat faith as the one thing they contribute to make salvation work.
But Paul is more careful than that when he describes faith and what it does and what it’s for.
Salvation is by grace through faith and not from ourselves, but the gift of God.
So this truth this morning is faith alone.
If we’re talking about the solas, like we kind of talked about last week a little bit, sola gratia, salvation is by grace alone. But there is the sola fide. It is through faith alone.
You can’t remove faith from our understanding of salvation.
But we need to understand what faith means.
Faith alone does not mean faith itself is the Savior.
Faith alone means faith receives the Savior.
Faith rests upon the crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ.
If you will, stand with me this morning for the reading of God’s Word. We’re going to read the entire section, as we’ve been doing on our way through this particular passage, chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. I will read through verse 10.
Ephesians 2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Eph 2:1–10.
Father, this morning we come to this text humbly because the previous texts have put us in our place.
Lord, we stand here this morning by grace alone, because of what Christ has done for us alone, so that You would be glorified alone.
And so this morning, Father, as we look at faith and what it is and what it isn’t, help us to understand it in such a way that would glorify You.
Lord, teach us.
If there are any in this room who have not heard these things from Your Word, understood faith properly, teach.
Lord, Your Word is also meant for reproof and correction. So for those who have misunderstood, reprove us and then correct us. Give us the true definition, true understanding of faith.
And for those of us who understand faith, Lord, humble us by continuing to train us in righteousness.
Do this by Your Word, Your inspired, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient Word, so that we would be complete, equipped for every good work that You have for us.
Do this by Your Spirit alone because apart from Him, we cannot see or understand any of it.
And do this for the glory of Jesus Christ alone, in whose name we pray.
Amen.
You may be seated.
The main idea this morning is that faith is the God-appointed instrument by which sinners receive Christ, and this faith, along with the whole saving work, is the gift of God’s grace.
Faith is the instrument of salvation.
He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.”
Grace then is the basis, like we looked at last week. It is the fountainhead. It is where salvation comes from.
We receive salvation by God’s grace alone.
And then “through faith” means that faith then is the instrument.
It’s not the fountainhead. It’s not the basis for. It’s not the reason for. It’s the instrument.
Grace answers the question, why are sinners saved?
But faith answers how sinners receive the salvation that God gives us in Christ.
Christ ultimately is the ground.
He’s the foundation.
He’s the cornerstone.
He is the price of our redemption, as we sing.
He alone is the righteous requirement of the law for our salvation.
And faith, as the instrument, simply receives Him.
Thomas Watson, an old Puritan, in his book A Body of Divinity, said—I love this illustration—“The hand receiving gold enriches. So the hand of faith receiving Christ’s golden merits with salvation enriches us.”
Meaning that the hand did not create the gold.
It receives what it did not produce.
And so it is with faith.
Romans 3:28 says, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Romans 4:5 says, “And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Faith then is contrasted with works.
Faith only receives what grace gives.
We cannot turn our faith then into a work.
Faith is simply the open hand receiving the gold.
He says, “through faith.”
Faith receives and rests on Christ.
Saving faith, and that’s what we’re talking about. Again, it’s different than sanctifying faith, obedient faith, the faith that we exercise here and now as Christians.
Saving faith is more than just a feeling that you’ve been saved.
But it’s also more than just knowledge itself.
You see, the demons believe. Scripture tells us demons believe, and what do they do?
They tremble.
So biblical faith then includes knowledge, but also assent, and then trust.
You must know.
There are facts you must know.
You must know the Christ.
You must know Jesus Christ as He has been revealed in the gospel.
Meaning you must believe that Jesus, as He has been revealed in the Scriptures, died for your sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again from the dead for your justification according to the Scriptures.
You must believe that knowledge.
There is knowledge that must be believed.
But it’s more than just knowing those facts.
You must have that knowledge, but then you must believe God’s testimony concerning Him.
That is not just that He did that, but that it is real, that it actually happened, that it actually served to satisfy the wrath of God, that it truly did save.
It’s not just knowing the facts about it.
It’s believing what God’s testimony is about what happened.
But then it trusts, meaning it personally rests in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone for your salvation.
The 1689 Baptist Confession says, “The principal acts of saving faith have immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, and resting upon Him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of the covenant of grace.”
This is a good definition, a good, strong biblical definition.
Faith accepts Christ as He has been offered in the gospel.
It receives Him as Savior and Lord and then rests upon Him alone.
John 1:12, I’ve used this verse multiple times: “But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
And Acts 16:31 says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”
Have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
Faith leading to justification is faith in Christ alone.
The faith that justifies is not faith in Jesus Christ plus my good works.
It’s faith in Jesus Christ alone.
That’s another sola in the solas, solus Christus, goes together.
We cannot understand salvation by grace through faith if it’s not in Christ.
Our faith alone saves us not because we have faith, but because our faith receives Jesus Christ.
Faith in salvation is not faith.
Faith in Jesus saves.
I mean, Paul gives an example in Romans chapter 4 of Abraham, so might as well use the example that Paul used.
It says that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Meaning, he trusted in the promise of God.
He believed on God. He believed on His Word, and it was counted as righteousness.
Faith leading to justification.
So ask yourself this question.
What are you resting in?
Is it Jesus Christ?
Or is your salvation, is your rest, in trying to be as sincere as possible, trying to be as faithful as you can, being a good person?
Are you resting in the fact that you only missed two church services last year?
Ninety percent counts, right?
Are you resting in the fact that you’re part of a Christian family?
Are you resting in the fact that you walked down an aisle and got dunked in some water?
Are you resting in the fact that you can describe the ordo salutis, the order of salvation, and use all those big words?
You know me, I like big words.
Not saying don’t like big words.
What I’m saying is if you are resting in anything except Jesus Christ for your salvation, it is not a biblical faith.
Amen.
Saving faith rests.
It is done searching for something more.
It rests on Jesus Christ alone.
Jesus is the believer’s only Savior.
So he says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.”
And then he says, “And this is not your own doing.”
Meaning faith itself, if we just ended with “by grace through faith” and we misunderstood what faith is, we could say, “Okay, my faith brought about God’s grace.”
But the very next words out of Paul’s mouth, or out of Paul’s pen here, is, “And this is not your own doing.”
Wait, I thought I had faith and You saved me.
Faith and salvation are connected, but it wasn’t because you had faith that God showed you grace.
This is not your own doing.
Now listen to me.
This is where good Christian people, academic Christian, godly people disagree.
They disagree with that word “this.”
They will say this means grace is not your own doing.
I mean, I guess you could read it that way, but you would have to make yourself read it that way.
If you’re just reading through the passage, and we’ve done it now, what, nine times, when you got to that point, you went, “Okay, well, grace was everything, and then I stepped in.”
How do you read this passage and go straight there?
You have to read into it to get to read that verse that way.
The best reading, as I understand it, as should be, I think, clear as we read through it just contextually, but I’ve been argued with in Ephesians class in seminary, is that the word “this” refers to the whole saving process.
Salvation by grace through faith is not from ourselves.
Paul is not saying that one large part comes from God and then one small part comes from man.
The whole saving work cannot arise out of ourselves.
Again, how can you read even just the first three verses of this chapter and think, “Well, I brought something to the table here”?
It’s not that we’re not included in it.
We have to personally have faith. That’s part of it.
But that faith that we have been given is a gift.
We’ll get to that in a minute.
“This is not your own doing.”
It’s not just grace.
It’s faith.
Faith is our act.
The sinner truly believes.
We truly come to Christ.
We truly receive Him as Savior and Lord, and we truly rest upon Him.
But He’s the One that produces that saving faith.
Saving faith can’t be produced in an unregenerate, dead-in-sins heart.
Amen.
We’ve already established that.
John 6—here we go. Let’s just lay some of these out here for you.
John 6:44 says, “No one can come to Me except the Father who sent Me draws him.”
A few verses down, in verse 65 of that same chapter, says no one can come to Him unless it is granted to him by the Father.
Philippians 1:29: “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him but suffer for His sake.”
Your believing has been granted to you.
The 1689 Confession says, “The grace of faith whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word.”
Listen, this salvation by grace through faith is brought about in our reality, in our individual lives, through the ministry of the Word.
It’s not just some, “Ooh, there’s faith all of a sudden.”
God has not only determined the end, meaning determined to save some, He has also determined the means by which He saves.
He has both predetermined the salvation of His elect by grace for His glory, and He has ordained that they would be brought to faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel.
Both.
He means to save, and He will save all on His own by His grace.
But He’s also determined how that would be applied to the individual.
You must believe.
He gives you the faith to believe.
And He does so as the gospel is preached and He opens your eyes.
He regenerates you.
You understand, and you exercise the faith that He has gifted you in the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work.
So God electing, as we talked about in chapter 1, and God saving those, God showing His grace to those who He shows grace to, does not make our preaching then unnecessary.
It gives preaching, our proclamation of the gospel, meaning hopeful.
When we proclaim the gospel then, it’s not, “Oh God, I really hope that somebody believes it.”
When we preach the gospel, we know that we are proclaiming the one thing God uses to save people.
So you have every hope in the world.
You have every hope in His Word.
Every hope in God that when you proclaim God’s Word, when you proclaim His gospel to people, some will be saved.
You have no such hope apart from His grace.
If He didn’t mean to save anybody, what are we doing?
If we’re still here, there’s something to be preached.
There are people still to be saved.
Otherwise, it would be over.
We would be done.
Romans chapter 10 asks that question: “How are they to believe in Him of whom they never heard?”
Then down in verse 17, he gives us the answer: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 1:21, Paul says, “It pleased God through the folly,” or the foolishness, “of what we preach to save those who believe.”
Well, it’s foolishness what we preach.
Stop believing in yourself.
Put your faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.
What?
That’s not what I’ve been told all my life.
It’s trust in yourself.
Believe in yourself.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
If you believe it, you can achieve it.
And all the other nonsense.
The folly of what we preach is you cannot do one thing.
He has done it.
Believe it.
That’s foolishness to the world.
And He uses that to save people.
So let no man separate what God has joined together.
God ordains the salvation, the Savior, and the faith and the gospel message through which sinners are called to believe.
They go together.
Listen to another example in Scripture.
Lydia in Acts chapter 16.
You remember this. This is a beautiful example of this idea.
Paul preached. He proclaimed the gospel. He called people to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And then Luke says, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.”
The Lord opened her heart.
How?
Through the preaching of His Word.
You want to see people saved in your life?
You want to see your family and friends and coworkers and neighbors saved?
Preach the gospel to them.
Proclaim His Word to them.
It is the Word that God uses to open their hearts, to open their eyes, to understand and to believe and to rest on Jesus.
Faith is, again, the channel.
It is the instrument.
It is not the fountainhead that God uses to save people.
Faith is that conduit through which salvation is received.
But again, grace is the fountain from which faith flows.
He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.”
Just in case you misunderstood.
And if that didn’t tell you what you needed to hear, he goes on and says, “It’s the gift of God.”
It’s not of you.
It is the gift of God.
The source of salvation, the source of grace and faith, is not man.
The source is God.
It’s the same thing here.
“It is the gift of God.”
What is the “it”?
Well, it’s the “this.”
What’s the “this”?
It’s the grace and the faith.
It’s all of it.
It’s all a gift of God.
All of it.
Christ, His gospel, election, predestination, regeneration, all the things that God has done for the one who will believe, and the faith to believe it.
All of it is a gift of God.
Paul says that the whole saving reality is God’s gift.
Salvation is not God doing most of the work and then man supplying that last piece.
God doesn’t fill out 999 pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle and then we put in that last piece and it all turned out in our favor, and we’re saved now.
We finished God’s salvation for Him.
Well done, everybody.
No.
How ridiculous.
No one is saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ.
But listen, the faith that saves does not earn salvation.
It receives what God has already given.
Remember, you have been saved by grace.
You have been saved through faith.
You’re receiving what God has already done.
Romans 6:23 says, “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
2 Corinthians 3:5 says, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.”
Listen, this destroys us.
This humbles us.
This takes away pride and arrogance.
If salvation is a gift of God, then you can’t look down on your fellow Christian sinner as though you worked harder for it than he did.
“Wow, that person just barely scraped by. They got saved, but I earned my way in.”
You did nothing to earn your salvation.
It is a gift.
So it destroys our pride, but it also brings comfort to us.
Your salvation does not rest on the strength of your will or the perfection of your feelings or the steadfastness of your performance.
It rests on God’s free gift in Christ.
So we need to guard this doctrine.
Just like we talked about last week, guarding grace alone, the doctrine of salvation by grace.
We also need to guard justification by faith.
We have to guard this doctrine.
The doctrine of faith alone has to be handled correctly, carefully, or we end up drifting towards one of two unbiblical extremes.
First of all, we can either drift into legalism, saying that our works are the ground of acceptance with God and that my faith is a work that makes me acceptable to God.
That’s a bad place to be.
That’s an unbiblical extreme.
But the other extreme is complete lawlessness.
We claim to have faith, but we make peace with sin.
Paul doesn’t allow us to do either one of these things.
Verse 8 tells us that salvation is by grace through faith.
Then we’re not there yet, but verse 9 says it’s not of our works.
Then verse 10 says we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.
We’ll talk about those next couple weeks, but we need to make this point now that order matters.
Grace gives.
Faith receives.
And then works follow.
If you mix up that order, you no longer have saving faith.
Faith alone justifies.
But as we will see, the faith that justifies is never alone.
The thief on the cross explains this clearly to us.
He didn’t have time to get a lifetime of works built up to offer to Jesus.
He wasn’t baptized.
He definitely wasn’t a member of a church.
He simply looked to Christ and said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
And Jesus said, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”
You see, even in those final moments on the cross there, this thief, his faith bore fruit.
He feared God.
Another account of that same moment, we hear more of what the thief said.
You hear in what he said, he’s confessed his own sin and guilt.
“We deserve to be on here,” he says.
“But this man didn’t do anything.”
He acknowledged Christ’s innocence, and then he appealed to Christ’s kingdom.
“Lord Jesus, remember me.”
So faith alone doesn’t mean we just have empty faith in something.
It means Christ alone is received by faith alone apart from works as the ground for our acceptance with God.
It is faith alone in Christ alone.
So Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 teaches us that salvation is by grace through faith, and it is not our own doing.
It is a gift.
All a gift.
Faith is the instrument whereby sinners receive Christ.
It is exercised by the sinner, but it is given by God.
Faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies will never be alone.
We’ll look at those in the next couple verses.
And God has ordained both the ends and the means of our salvation.
He has saved His people, saved His elect, by grace for His glory.
And He brings sinners to faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel.
That’s His means of salvation.
So we must come to Christ by faith.
If you have not come to Christ, you must come to Him by faith alone.
Receive, rest, and trust in Him.
Don’t boast in your faith, Christian, as though you contributed to salvation in some way.
Remember, faith is the empty hand and Christ is the gold.
Church, we have to guard this doctrine.
History has already shown us what happens when faith alone is buried and forgotten.
But Scripture shows what happens when faith alone is preached.
Sinners stop looking to themselves, and they look to Christ for salvation.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.”
Amen.