Stand Firm - The Gospel
- Paul Downie
- 2 days ago
- 20 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast. [10] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
In 1983, one single, smart-witted Russian man prevented a nuclear war that could have wiped out all of mankind.
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the duty officer at the command centre for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more.
But he didn’t believe it. He was sure it was a false alarm. He disobeyed his orders. He breached Soviet protocol. He did not tell his superiors that his nation was under attack.
Because it wasn’t.
That single piece of astonishing common sense saved the world from a nuclear war between the USSR and the United States that could have ended the world as we knew it.
There were many other such incidents, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, where twitchy trigger fingers could have sent the world into a tailspin from which it may not have recovered. But this one stands out because one single man realised that there had been an error.
If only people were as alert as Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov when it comes to the Gospel.
Because the world abounds with fakes and false alarms.
There is a clothing store in the UK that prides itself on making cheaper, more accessible versions of high fashion clothing and accessories. They make something that is not a fake, because it is sufficiently different to pass through copyright lawyers. But it is sufficiently similar that the wearer will feel like they are wearing a high fashion item.
Clever, eh?
But those who fake the Gospel have no such intentions.
They do it purely for profit: financial or otherwise.
And they fake it using one of two means, both of which are not at all new and have been around for millennia.
They either say that what we do doesn’t matter at all, or that it matters too much.
They say it doesn’t matter at all because God is love and full of grace and Jesus died for our sins, so we have a mandate to carry on our lives as if nothing changed.
Let me tell you, there is no font big enough to tell you how wrong that is.
These people twist the Gospel to make you believe that you can do whatever you like, live however you want, everything is okay, because in the end God will forgive you.
The Bible does not teach that.
At all.
But there are others who tell us that what we do matters too much. They pile extra conditions in the face of people who are desperate to be saved from their sin. They design dress codes and behaviour codes. They demand that we stop listening to certain music, that we perform certain rituals, that we look, talk and act just like them.
They are also very, very wrong.
So, what does the Bible really teach? What is the Gospel? How can we be saved?
This is a very important subject. It is absolutely not an idle theological debate. Our eternity rests on it.
There is nothing more important than that.
So, I am going to grant it the space and time it deserves. Over the next twenty-five posts (three months!) we will spend time in two books that teach what seem, on the surface, to be opposite extremes in this matter: Galatians and James.
However, they teach a completely unified message, and that message is that we are saved by God’s work, not our work, but are saved to work.
You might wonder why it is I didn’t just post that sentence on social media and leave out three months of study and meditation.
However, we need to know why this is the case, what it means and how it applies practically to our lives. To unpack that sentence in three months might seem like a long time, but believe me: some theologians could easily spend their whole lives trying to grapple with those highly meaningful words.
Since we are about to start on a meaningful study of two great pastoral letters, it seemed fitting to me to start this double series off in completely a different one.
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – another pastoral letter – contains a few short verses that encapsulate the entire message of the Gospel and apply it so succinctly that it would almost be wrong not to start there.
That’s why we are starting at Ephesians 2:8-10. My three points on this are very simple. They begin by looking at How we are saved.
How we are saved
Ephesians 2:8 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.
Every holidaymaker has an idea of their ideal holiday. Some prefer cruises. Others wild adventures on land. Some long for the educational experience of a city break. Others want to party. Some want to lie on the beach or next to a pool with a drink and a good book. Others want to explore other cultures and cuisines.
Just like holidays, every religion in the world has its idea of what paradise is. And every religion in the world tells us how they believe we will get there and who will be allowed in.
Out of all the religions in the world, Christianity stands utterly unique and alone in its fundamental belief that we cannot earn our way into salvation or obtain it by our own merits.
Paradise is always just out of sight; for some it’s not even a speck on the horizon.
But whoever we are, whatever we have done and whatever we think of ourselves, the end result is still the same:
We are not good enough to earn paradise and neither will we ever be.
That is the cold reality of Biblical teaching.
Paul stated that plainly in this letter:
Ephesians 2:1-3 NIV
[1] As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, [2] in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. [3] All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
In other words, without Jesus Christ we are utterly lost. Nothing we could ever do could ever be good enough to qualify us for heaven. We were doomed. Utterly doomed.
But Paul then explains what it is that saved us:
Ephesians 2:4-7 NIV
[4] But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, [5] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. [6] And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, [7] in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
The word for ‘grace’ in Greek means ‘undeserved favour’. It’s the word from which we derive the English word ‘charity’.
I have met people who have been in dire situations, where their income far from met their outgoings. They were poor in any definition of the word. But they could not admit it to themselves. They could not accept it. They pretended they were much better off than they actually were.
And the absolute last thing people like that would do is accept charity from someone else. Not ever. Even if it could help them recover. No way. It was beneath them.
Well, I have news for you.
We receive salvation from God in only one condition: that we admit that we are sinners in need of His grace – His charity – to be saved and that we simply cannot save ourselves.
Because that is what this verse means: we are saved by God’s undeserved favour that we could never earn.
And it is a gift. A free gift. A gift we could neither reciprocate nor afford.
That is the entire point of the Gospel.
That is the entire point of Christianity.
Romans 3:22-24 NIV
[22] This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
If the Gospel is not an insult to your sense of self-reliance, if it has not punctured your groundless pride and deflated your misplaced ego then I don’t think you have properly understood it at all.
We are saved through grace and grace alone – there is no other way.
And that grace is expressed through the brutal sacrifice in the cross of Jesus Christ, who had done no wrong, to pay the price for our sins, because we had done a lot of wrong.
Romans 5:15 NIV
[15] But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
As we will see later:
Galatians 2:21 NIV
[21] I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
Now there is the real kicker.
If we believe that we can add anything, anything at all, to our salvation by good works or by religious acts or anything like that, then it’s like staring into the blooded face of Jesus Christ as He died in incredible agony on cross, and telling Him as he breathed His last that somehow what He did was not enough.
Really.
Could you honestly do that?
But our salvation is not deserved. It is not earned. We cannot work our way into it.
We receive it by faith.
What does that mean?
Let me give you an example.
If you take the train from Edinburgh north to the Kingdom of Fife, you have to cross the Firth of Forth. The only way for trains to cross this waterway is an iron cantilever bridge, which took eight years to build and was completed in 1890. You are inside a heavy modern train. You are trusting yourself to engineering that is one hundred and thirty-five years old.
Could you do it?
Now, many people take it for granted. They ride those trains, sometimes without even looking out of their window as the train passes between South and North Queensferry. Such is their faith in the bridge that they don’t even notice it.
Their means of transport across that marvel of human engineering is a train, but that train ride would not be possible without faith: faith that the original engineers did a great job in building it and that our modern engineers do a great job in maintaining it.
Faith in God and what Jesus Christ achieved in His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave is like a bridge that brings us from death to life.
It is like staring into the bloodied face of Christ on the cross, seeing Him sigh His last breath with the words ‘It is finished’, and responding, ‘Yes, Lord, yes, it is.’
Our salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone.
That is how we are saved.
But we move on to this to fully take in something that should be painfully obvious: Who Saves Us.
Who Saves Us
Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast.
Now, this has been a matter of some debate for years. However, the Bible is spectacularly clear.
That does not stop controversy from arising. Because the Bible teaches us that Jesus saves us – and only Jesus:
Acts 4:12 NIV
[12] Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Within Biblical Christianity, there is zero room to debate on this.
Only Jesus saves.
The thrust of our verses in Ephesians, and the two books we are about to study is that We cannot save ourselves.
Nothing we could do could ever be enough.
Our best good deeds are not enough.
Our best religious acts are not enough.
Our best philanthropy or highest altruism or most sincere benevolence are not enough.
Our greatest achievements are not enough.
Only Jesus saves.
And there is a very good reason for that.
It’s contained in the last five words of this verse: ‘so that no-one can boast’.
What this means is we are saved by grace through faith so that no-one can claim the glory for having achieved it for themselves on their own. Salvation is not a race. We do not endure pain and suffering to cross the finish line and be saved.
That is not how it works.
If that was the case, then there was no need at all for Jesus to go to the cross, and the horrific sufferings he endured were for nothing.
No, salvation is God’s initiative, God’s plan, God’s action, God’s power, God’s glory.
It all belongs to Him.
And rightly so. Because He achieved what is impossible for us.
Mark 10:26-27 NIV
[26] The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?” [27] Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
If we even try to be saved through our good works or religion, or even try to add to our salvation through these things, we are trying to steal glory that belongs to God. And that will never do.
God will never yield His glory to another, because it is rightfully His (Isaiah 42:8, 48:11).
So salvation must be God’s work. It cannot be ours.
But neither can it be anyone else’s, as we saw earlier.
Could you honestly look into the bleeding face of Jesus Christ on the cross as He died in agony for you and say to Him, ‘Well, thank You very much for this, Jesus, but I’d rather meditate in the lotus position and try to reach a state of annihilation, or pray on a mat in the middle of a highway so I can be served wine by virgins, or row myself across the River Styx.’
Of course not! How could you?
When you see what Jesus Christ achieved for you on the cross, it stands to reason that He is the only way to salvation.
What other way could possible work?
But there is a third point to this – one that is often missed: that is What We Are Saved To Do.
What We Are Saved To Do
Ephesians 2:10 NIV
[10] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
We live in a technological age. We often see very gimmicky inventions come out that are very ingenious, but also very niche, and that cause us to ask the question, ‘Yes, but what does it actually do? What use is it?’
Mostly, these inventions then end up pretty much dominating our lives, whether we want it or not.
Christianity is a wonderful religion. It is a beautiful religion. It is the single greatest love story the world has ever known.
Yet there have always been questions about its practical uses.
The great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi once gave this rather searing quote: ‘I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.’
Ouch!
One leading ‘Christian’ politician in the States recently found herself on the end of a sharp criticism from, of all things, an AI social media bot. The bot highlighted what everyone else was seeing anyway: that she was professing traditional values and Biblical Christianity, but at the same time espousing groundless conspiracy theories and compassionless policies towards the poor and dispossessed.
Wow!
Let me tell you what I have observed through decades of Bible reading and study: Biblical Christianity is not a gimmicky invention – it should do something.
In fact, whether or not it actually does something in your life is a mark of whether or not you are a genuine believer:
Matthew 7:15-27 NIV
[15] “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. [16] By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? [17] Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. [18] A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. [19] Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. [20] Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. [21] “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [22] Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ [23] Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ [24] “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. [25] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. [26] But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. [27] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Three parables back to back that all tell us the same thing: it not enough simply to believe – there has to also be action.
James, as we will see later, also agrees:
James 2:26 NIV
[26] As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
In fact, the whole of the New Testament – from the Gospels – confirms the fact that Christians are supposed to be different. There should be an impact on the way we live and the things we do because we believe in Jesus Christ.
How can this be?
Let me take you back to that wonderful Forth Rail Bridge. Let’s say that you are standing in North Queensferry station with a ticket to Edinburgh. You know about the bridge. You know about its age. You have to decide whether to get on that train and ride it across the bridge.
Now, you could pace up and down that station platform extolling the brilliance of the bridge’s engineering and it’s beauty and it’s strength all you want. You could even put on a ScotRail uniform, pretend to work for the company and revel in telling anyone around you about the journey across the Firth of Forth.
But the evidence that you believe in that bridge would be to get on a train and ride it to South Queensferry. Nothing else will do.
It’s the same with Jesus. It doesn’t matter how much noise you make about loving Him and worshipping Him and believing in Him. All of that is irrelevant unless you obey Him; unless you put His teachings to the practical test by doing what He said.
Then you are truly a Christian.
If you have ever read what Jesus taught, you’ll know that’s not as easy as it sounds. Jesus’ teaching, like that of Jewish law, was basically an unpacking and application of the principle of loving God, our neighbours and ourselves.
But how Jesus applied it and where Jesus applied it are a severe challenge to any culture and way of life.
However, Ephesians 2:10, along with other verses Paul wrote, change the narrative entirely.
You see, Paul says three things about good works here that are quite startling.
Firstly, that we were designed for good works. We are God’s craftsmanship – an expression of His ability and His expertise. The Greek word used here is ‘poiema’, from where get the word ‘poem’.
Or, as David put it:
Psalms 139:13-14 NIV
[13] For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. [14] I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Do you understand what this means?
There are many who believe that the Christian standpoint on many moral issues, particularly those pertaining to sexuality and gender, are unnatural and force people to be someone they are not.
That is not true!
The Bible says that we were designed for good works, for the righteous living outlined in its pages. When we obey God, we are living the way we were designed to live. It is not at all self-abusive to turn our back on sin and live God’s way. It is not at all unnatural.
We are simply following the Maker’s instructions.
And He makes no mistakes.
We also see that we were made for good works. We were created in Jesus Christ to obey God, not to disobey. That is our purpose. That is our raison d’etre.
That is who we are.
If we step away from that and disobey, then we are forcing a square peg in a round hole – which is precisely why sin feels so wrong and out of place.
Because it is.
Thirdly, we see that good works were made for us.
Ephesians 2:10 NIV
[10] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
So God not only designed and built us to live as He intended, He also designed and built opportunities for us to do the very things for which we were designed and built.
What an extraordinary work of grace!
There are times when we feel made for something, but have no opportunity to do it. There are other times when we have the opportunity to do something, but it doesn’t feel like ‘us’.
Not with God. He designed us. He built us. Then He gave us the opportunity to be us and to do what we were designed and built for.
There is a fourth point, in the letter to the Philippians:
Philippians 2:12-13 NIV
[12] Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, [13] for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
We see that God helps us to do good works.
Isn’t that incredible?
He doesn’t do what Jesus accused the Pharisees and teachers of the law of doing in His day:
Matthew 23:1-4 NIV
[1] Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: [2] “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. [3] So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. [4] They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
Far from it! He designed us for it, built us for it, created opportunities for us to do it and helps us do to it.
This is why John could say:
1 John 5:3 NIV
[3] In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,
But what are those good deeds? What do they look like?
I’ll go back to verses I have often returned to this year:
Matthew 22:34-40 NIV
[34] Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. [35] One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: [36] “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” [37] Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ [38] This is the first and greatest commandment. [39] And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [40] All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Do you know what this means?
The books of prophecy and history in the Old Testament are examples of what happened when God’s people did not obey the law. The Wisdom literature contains astute applications of the law. The law itself is five books long.
But Jesus taught that it could be summed up in two commandments: love the Lord your God with everything you have and love your neighbour as yourself (implying that you must also love yourself).
The pastoral letters apply Jesus’ teaching. Revelation is what happens when we do or do not believe it and obey it. The Gospels show us what happened to Jesus because His teaching was not obeyed. They also contain the details of that teaching.
And how can it be summed up?
Love the Lord your God with everything you have and your neighbour as yourself.
That is the very essence of obedience. That is what it means. That is what it is.
And from that love, all other actions spring, all other righteous acts emerge.
John 14:21 NIV
[21] Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
John 14:23-24 NIV
[23] Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. [24] Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
1 John 2:3-6 NIV
[3] We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. [4] Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. [5] But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: [6] Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
So, you see, the Gospel is that we are not saved by our works, but by God’s work. That is absolutely true.
But we are also saved to work. And if we will not work, then that is a sign that we are not saved at all.
Conclusion
Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast. [10] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
The German painter Lothar Malskat was hired to restore frescoes in the medieval Marienkirche in Lübeck, Germany. The only problem was that when he began his work, he realised that the frescoes were too badly damaged to be repaired, and there were no photos in existence of what they originally looked like.
So Lothar decided he would make some of his own. He faked them.
The people of Lübeck were absolutely delighted to have their frescoes back.
However, after a while, Lothar decided to come clean and told the good people of Lübeck what he had done.
They didn’t believe him. They were so happy about the restored frescoes they could not entertain the idea that they were faked.
So, Lothar actually sued himself to prove that the ‘medieval frescoes’ were fake.
Still they didn’t believe him.
Lothar decided to show them incontrovertible proof. So he led them into the church and pointed out a few ‘less than medieval’ additions he had made to the frescoes: a turkey (turkeys did not exist in medieval Germany) and a portrait of the famous 20th century German singer and actress Marlene Dietrich.
That convinced them.
Nowadays it feels like we are swimming in a sea of fakes.
When I was growing up, the Barrowlands Market in Glasgow was where you would go to find cheap knock-offs of expensive fashion gear. Several police raids gradually killed that off. Before that happened, you knew that whatever you bought from there was fake.
Nowadays, with AI and ‘alternative facts’ and relativism, it’s very difficult to tell if what you are hearing is the truth. The gross polarisation and politicisation of the media has made it worse.
People are yearning for truth, for reality, for something they can build their lives upon.
But unfortunately even Christianity has been faked.
We have became a religious club that supports the restoration and maintenance of historical buildings and traditions; a middle class gathering with subtly religious overtones that meets for tea and cookies and golf.
We are no longer even a convincing fake of Christianity. We are instead like something produced by a caricaturist by a beach resort, our features all pulled out of proportion and exaggerated to humorous effect.
Only the joke has worn way too thin.
That is why people like Gandhi have a great appreciation for Jesus Christ, but none at all for his followers.
How can we sort this out? How can we turn it around?
There is only one way:
Return to the truths of the Gospel.
The basic fundamental truth is that we are saved by God’s work, not our work, but to work.
That is, we are saved once for all time by Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Nothing can be added to it. Nothing we could do could better it or even augment it.
There is no need. What Jesus did is more than enough.
But that does not give us a licence to live however we want.
Our faith must be reflected in how we live. If it is not, then our faith is dead and we are a fake.
This is not just idle theological or philosophical chatter. It has far reaching implications for every aspect of our lives: from our affections to our money, from our priorities to how we work, from our relationships with other people to our relationships with the authorities above us.
Everything has to change. Nothing can stay the same.
Not once we believe in Jesus Christ.
And over the next three months, we will explore in detail some of the implications of this life-changing truth.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I believe in all You have done for me. I don’t want to be a caricature Christian. I want to live for You and bring You glory. Help me to learn how. I will obey whatever You tell me to do. Amen.
Questions
1. How is the Gospel summed in one sentence in this meditation? What does that mean to you?
2. How are we saved? What is it that saves us?
3. What are we saved to do? Why is that important? Who does most of the work?
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