Not of Works – Ephesians 2:9
In Ephesians 2:9, Paul makes clear that salvation is “not a result of works.” After telling us that we are saved by grace through faith and that salvation is God’s gift, Paul now tells us what salvation is not. It does not come through human effort, morality, religious activity, obedience, baptism, church attendance, or anything else we might offer as the basis of our acceptance with God. Before Christ, we were dead in trespasses and sins and unable to please God. Even our best deeds could not justify us. God does not save sinners because they have made themselves worthy; He justifies the ungodly through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We come to Christ empty-handed, depending entirely on His mercy and His finished work.
Paul then explains why salvation excludes works: “so that no one may boast.” God has designed salvation in such a way that no sinner can take credit for being saved. God chose, called, made alive, gave faith, united us to Christ, justified us, keeps us, and will glorify us. Therefore, all glory belongs to Him. The gospel does not merely silence boasting; it redirects it. Christians do not boast in themselves, but in the Lord, in His grace, in His mercy, in the cross, and in the risen Christ. Our testimonies should make clear who saved us: God had mercy, Christ saved, the Spirit opened our hearts, and grace brought us to faith. Salvation is not of works. There is no room for human boasting. All glory belongs to God alone.
FULL SERMON TRANSCRIPT:
Go ahead and turn in your copy of God’s Word to the letter of Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 2.
And as is our practice, we will pick up where we left off last week.
We finished verse 8, chapter 2, and this morning we’re going to look at verse 9.
Paul has just said, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.”
And once again, like I did the previous week, I cut a sentence in half.
Because, as you see in verse 9, that is the rest of the sentence that began in verse 8 at “and.”
Verse 9 says, “Not a result of works, so that no one may boast,” to continue and finish his thought there in that sentence.
The human heart wants credit.
We don’t mind being helped, but we don’t naturally like being told that we contributed nothing, especially in regard to our salvation, something that is so important, something that is so critical for our life.
Our human heart wants to boast.
But remember, Paul has already told us that we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
Before we were redeemed, before we were born again, before we were saved, justified, we were dead in trespasses and sins.
We were not swimmers struggling to stay afloat, waiting for a lifeline to be thrown.
We were dead at the bottom of the sea.
And we needed God to make us alive.
We’ve already heard that. We already know that from the context.
So why does Paul say that salvation here in verse 9 is not a result of works?
Because if works contribute to the ground of salvation, then man will find room to boast.
But God has designed salvation so that every boast in man is silenced and all glory belongs to Him.
Amen.
So, if you will, stand with me for the reading of God’s Word. I’ll read verses 1 through 10 as we’ve been doing through this passage, and potentially one or two more times depending on how this next week goes of preparation.
Father, this morning, as we continue through this passage of Scripture, continue to show us your great salvation.
Show us again what you have done, and show us why you’ve done it.
Lord, you didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to give us any of this. You didn’t have to tell us what or why, but you did.
And so we know that it is for our good and ultimately for your glory.
So this morning, use your inspired, inerrant, sufficient, authoritative Word to teach us, reprove us, correct us, to train us in righteousness so that we may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Do this by your Spirit at work within us as He illuminates our eyes, our minds to understand these things, and do it all for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray.
Amen.
You may be seated.
The main idea of the sermon this morning is that God saves apart from works so that no sinner may boast in himself and that all glory belongs to God alone.
Notice the first phrase.
He says, “Not a result of works.”
Works are excluded.
Your salvation, Paul says, is not a result of works.
Now, he has already told us what salvation is in the previous sentence, in the previous verses.
He said it is by grace through faith, not of our own doing, the gift of God.
He’s already told us what salvation is, and now he tells us what it is not.
It is not from works.
The word “works” here refers to what you would think works refers to.
It refers to human effort, to obedience, to religious activity, moral achievement, to seeking out for God, or anything that man would offer as the basis of their acceptance with God.
Paul is not saying here that good works are bad.
That doesn’t even make sense.
Good works as bad.
Verse 10 will say that believers are created in Christ Jesus for good works.
We’ll get there. We’ll deal with that then.
Good works do belong in the life of a believer.
But in our unredeemed state, remember we’re talking about how God saved us from lost to unredeemed to justified, saved, born again.
In our unredeemed state, before God saved us, our good, or maybe use another word, biblical word, righteous deeds, our righteous works, as Scripture says, our best deeds were as filthy rags to God.
We didn’t have any good works to offer.
Scripture tells us that anything not done in faith is sin.
Which means in our unredeemed, lost state, what does that include?
Everything we do, if it’s not in faith, it’s sin.
If we are lost, if we are dead in our trespasses and sins, then everything is not done in faith, which tells us, which the Bible explains to us in Romans chapter 3, where it says no one does good, not even one.
In our unredeemed state, in our lost state, in our dead-in-trespasses state, we could not please God.
In our world today, I think sometimes even Christians obviously mistakenly think, “Well, look at all the good those people are doing over there.”
Well, hold on.
Are they doing it for the glory of God?
“Well, no, but it’s good.”
No, it’s not.
It doesn’t earn them one bit of favor with God.
We can talk about common grace and how common good can happen in our lives.
But what I’m saying is none of that good earns them one level towards godliness.
That doesn’t earn them one bit of salvation from God.
And that includes everybody, from the worst of the worst to the best of the best.
From our perspective, all were dead in sin.
No one could please God.
Nobody did any good works.
No lost person does good works for salvation.
Not one.
Works cannot be the ground for salvation.
Romans 3:20 says, “By works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight.”
Romans 3:28 says, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.”
Even the so-called Christian groups that think that they can somehow earn their way to God by working out the law, obeying the law, to be baptized, obeying the Ten Commandments, obeying these things, and that will make you acceptable to God.
Don’t read Romans.
Apparently, they just skip over Romans 3.
Let’s not talk about that because he very clearly makes it plain.
Works cannot save.
The 1689 Confession puts it like this:
“Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies. Not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous. Not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone. Not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, though He does give that, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law and passive obedience in His death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves. It is the gift of God.”
Meaning even the righteousness you have when you are saved is not something you did.
It is not something you add, even as a saved person.
You were only righteous, made righteous before God, because of Jesus Christ’s righteousness in your place, imputed to you, given to you, placed on you at that new birth when He saved you.
Works cannot be the ground of salvation.
This is made very clear.
God does not justify sinners because their works have made them worthy.
God does not look at any of the so-called good works that you did apart from Him in your unredeemed state and go, “You know what? They worked really hard. They’re worthy of saving.”
Romans 4:4–5 says that the wages are owed to the one who works, but God justifies the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly.
God justifies the ungodly.
We’ve made that statement already in previous sermons, but it bears repeating.
God doesn’t justify the godly because those don’t exist.
There aren’t any.
You’re not godly before salvation.
God justifies the ungodly.
I’ve used this illustration before in Luke chapter 18, but we were reading this in our Track 4, and it’s fresh on the mind again.
One of my favorite illustrations is the picture of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
The Pharisee is standing over there praying, right?
He’s listing off all his good deeds.
He’s listing off his record of all the good things that he has done as a follower of God.
He points at his fasting and his tithing and all those kinds of things.
He stood there praising himself, even saying, “Thank God that I’m not like that guy over there.”
But the tax collector couldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven.
And all he could say is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
He recognized he was the ungodly and that God shows mercy to the ungodly.
That passage says that Jesus says that the tax collector went to his house justified.
Why?
Because mercy saves where works cannot.
You bring nothing.
You bring absolutely nothing as payment for your salvation.
Your list of good deeds, your doing all the right things, your baptism, going to church, you tithe faithfully.
All these can be good.
I mean, that list of things is not that it’s wrong to do those things.
But remember last week, if you put them out of order, you think works are going to earn you salvation.
You’re terribly wrong.
They have a proper place in the Christian life.
But they cannot justify you.
You and I came to Jesus empty-handed.
So he says, “Not a result of works.”
And then Paul tells us why those works are excluded at all.
He says, “So that no one may boast.”
Paul gives the purpose.
Why did God make sure that salvation would not, could not, will not, may not be a result of works?
Why?
So that no one may boast.
Listen, this is one of the clearest ways that Christianity differs from every other religion.
This shows us the difference between man-made religion and God’s true religion.
Every other religion is about earning your standing before the so-called god or gods that you believe in, trying to attain some higher life, reaching for nirvana, some higher inner sense of peace, or trying to be good enough to outweigh the bad, and so on and so forth.
This is what separates Christianity from all other religions.
That God, the one true God, saves in such a way that no human being can take any credit.
Romans 3:27 asks, “Then what becomes of our boasting?”
And Paul says, “It’s excluded.”
You don’t get any.
You get nothing.
Remember Willy Wonka at the end?
“You get nothing.”
Sorry.
That’s how I hear it.
Paul’s like, “It’s excluded.”
Charles Spurgeon— all right, let’s get all back in here. Let’s bring it back in.
Charles Spurgeon says this:
“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 favor revealed to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Boasting is excluded because deservings are excluded.”
1 Corinthians 1:29 says that God saves so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And then he adds, “Because of Him you are in Christ Jesus.”
Did you catch that?
If you are in Christ, it’s because of God.
God chose you.
God called you.
God made you alive.
God gifted you faith.
God united you to Jesus Christ.
God justified you.
God keeps you.
And God will glorify you.
So who gets the glory?
God.
That’s right.
Judges chapter 7 is another biblical example of this idea.
Gideon, he had too many men to go out into battle with.
That seems weird, doesn’t it?
Like, no, you need more men to go into battle with, not to God.
God said that the people with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over Me, saying, “My own hand has saved me.”
So God, we won’t go through the whole story, reduced the size of Gideon’s army all the way down to, what do you remember the number?
Three hundred people.
He brought it down all the way to 300.
Why?
So that Israel, so that His people, so that they could not explain the victory that was about to take place by themselves.
So that they would not think that they deserve the glory for what’s about to happen.
By the way, what did happen?
They won.
Why?
Because God gave them victory.
So they would boast in Him.
You see there?
Here is the danger of boasting.
The human heart wants to turn what is God’s work into our accomplishments.
I mean, that’s the worst form of plagiarism.
“Well, God did— I mean, look at what I did.”
Hold on, buddy.
God saved you.
You’re trying to take credit for what God did.
Dangerous.
That’s what the human heart wants to do.
That’s what we desire to do.
That’s why all those other human religions exist, because we’re looking for a way to justify ourselves.
And unfortunately, this kind of boasting can still happen even among people who hold good, sound doctrine.
As I’ve mentioned before, you can believe that salvation is by grace through faith.
You can understand the elements of it, and then you can still be proud and think that, man, I’m so smart that I understand grace.
God saved me because of that.
Listen, if your doctrine makes you arrogant, then you may have understood the words, but you missed the point.
Ephesians chapter 2:9 should humble us.
If you are in Christ, believer, you are not the hero of your story.
He is.
Have you ever heard—well, not have you ever heard. I know you’ve heard—but have you ever paid attention to the words of the chorus, “Victory in Jesus”?
I know we like to sing it because it’s a little bouncy.
Gets us moving, right?
You ever heard the words, paid attention?
What does it say?
“Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever.”
Okay. Woo. We’re good there.
Like, I think everybody grasps that first line, and then I think we just kind of roll through the rest of them and not realize what’s going on.
“He sought me and He bought me with His redeeming blood.”
Amen.
Here’s the line I don’t think anybody understands. We just—
“I knew Him.”
“He loved me ere I knew Him.”
Do you know what that means?
He loved me before I ever loved Him.
He loved me when I didn’t love Him.
“And all my love is due Him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.”
He made it happen.
Our victory is in Jesus because Jesus is the Victor over our souls.
But now listen, even with these two phrases in mind, let me also bring out this fact.
The gospel doesn’t just merely silence the wrong kind of boasting that we’re talking about here.
It also gives us the right kind of boasting.
He does say, “so that no one may boast.”
But when Paul says that no one may boast, he’s not leaving the Christian with nothing to say.
He’s not just shutting our mouths and saying, “Stop boasting in yourselves.”
He is.
But listen, he doesn’t just tell us what we cannot do, what we should put off.
What we also know from Scripture is when we put off something that’s sinful, we’ve got to put on something else in its place, do we not?
He tells us what we must do.
Scripture then points our boasting in the right direction.
It’s not that we stop boasting altogether.
It’s we stop boasting in ourselves and replace that with something else.
1 Corinthians 1:31 says, “Let the one who boasts,” because we are supposed to boast, “boast in the Lord.”
Galatians 6:14 says something similar: “Far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Listen, this is soli Deo gloria.
This is salvation to the glory of God alone.
All credit, all honor, all praise, all glory for our salvation belongs to God alone.
Ephesians chapter 1 prepared us for this.
Remember, he says God chose us in Christ.
Why?
To the praise of His glorious grace.
He predestined us for adoption.
Why?
To the praise of His glorious grace.
He sealed us with the Spirit to the praise of His glory.
And then here in Ephesians chapter 2, God makes the dead person alive.
He raises us with Christ.
He seats us with Christ and promises to display the immeasurable riches of His grace in the ages to come.
And so then verse 9 fits all of this perfectly.
Salvation is not of works so that man cannot boast and so that God receives the glory.
You’re going to glory in salvation.
You’re going to boast in salvation.
But your boasting better be in God and not in yourself.
Revelation 5 is a wonderful picture of what’s to come.
It shows us where all of this salvation ultimately ends, when all the multitude of the redeemed gather around the throne and worship the Lamb who was slain.
Listen, heaven is not going to be filled with people congratulating themselves for making the right choice.
It’s going to be filled with worship.
“Worthy is the Lamb.”
“Glory to His name.”
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
“How great is our God.”
That’s where the doctrine of salvation ultimately leads to.
It’s not even about us.
It’s about Him.
He receives the glory.
So listen to me, Christian.
This should shape the way that you share your story.
Yes, tell people how you heard the gospel.
Tell them that you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tell them how the Lord has changed you.
But tell the story in such a way that it makes it very clear who saved you.
God had mercy.
Christ saved.
The Spirit opened your heart.
Grace brought you to faith.
That is the right kind of boasting.
Listen to me, church.
Boast.
Amen.
But boast in the Lord.
Boast in His grace.
Boast in His mercy.
Boast in the cross.
Boast in the risen Christ.
Let God alone receive the glory for saving sinners who could never save themselves.
Let God alone receive the glory for saving a wretch like you and me.
All glory to God alone.
Ephesians 2:9 says, “Not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Our works are excluded as the ground of salvation, and human boasting in our salvation is destroyed.
All glory belongs to God.
So here’s the invitation to you.
If you’re sitting in this room and you’ve never trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in your morality, if you’re trusting in your good works, if you’re trusting in your going to church or your baptism or your family or that you grew up in the church or any of those things, stop trusting in them.
They can’t save you.
God’s not going to save you because you tried hard.
That’s the whole point of this verse.
They cannot save you.
You need Christ.
Jesus Christ lived the righteous life that you have not lived.
Your good deeds are worthless.
He died in the place of sinners.
He bore the judgment that your sin deserves on the cross.
And yet He rose from the dead to prove that His sacrifice was accepted.
And He saves anyone who comes to Him in faith.
So come to Christ empty-handed.
Don’t wait until you think you’re good enough.
You’re never going to be.
Don’t try to clean yourself up first and then come.
Come as a sinner in need of mercy.
That’s who He saves.
Believe the gospel and rest in Christ.
If you come to Him, you will not be able to say, “I saved myself.”
You will say, “Christ saved me.”
And that’s the point.
It’s not of works.
No boasting.
All glory to God.
Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.
Amen.