Another curriculum highlight.
My job was to teach a lesson on salvation by grace, using Ephesians 2, for a discipleship course at a Baptist megachurch. Having been part of a team that preached through Ephesians earlier this year, and having questions about grace, works, individualism, and Christian anxiety, this commission was a nice opportunity to put some of these ideas into a straight line.
Maybe I’m a Baptist after all.
1. Saved by God’s works, not ours
Read: Ephesians 2:8–22
Q: Paul says that “we are his workmanship.” Based on this passage, what would you say is the work that God is doing?
Q: What does it mean to be “brought near,” according to Paul?
Explain the text — In Ephesians 2:8–9, Paul offers a simple summary of the doctrine of salvation: It is given by grace and received through faith. But his clarification, that it is “not a result of works,” is not often fully appreciated. It’s the next verse, verse 10, that completes the comparison between God’s works and ours, our part in salvation and God’s part in salvation. Salvation is not our workmanship; our salvation is that we are God’s workmanship. Paul says that, for this reason, “no one may boast” (v. 9). By contrast, earlier in the letter, Paul had insisted three times that our salvation is to the praise of God’s glory rather than ours (1:6, 12, 14). We are saved simply by allowing ourselves to be God’s works, and by praising Him instead of praising ourselves. What is the work of God that we are praising Him for? Paul will unpack that in the rest of the chapter.
In vv. 11–13, God’s work is to bring new believers near. In this passage, Paul is focused on God’s salvation of Gentiles—that is, all of us who aren’t physical descendants of Abraham. We used to be “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” which means that we had not inherited the laws, customs, stories, and wisdom of God’s chosen people. We used to be “strangers to the covenants of promise,” which means that the great promises God had made to Abraham, Moses, and David didn’t apply to us. We used to “have no hope,” meaning that the promises of the Messiah, the return from exile, and the creation of a new heavens and new earth, were not something we could count on being for us. Finally, we used to be “without God in the world.” This is what it means to have been “far off.” But now, in Christ, the customs, the promises, the hope, and the presence of God are ours. Salvation isn’t just about God changing our destiny; it’s about God changing our heritage. All of God’s words and works before Christ, recorded in the Old Testament, are now ours.
In vv. 14–18, God’s work is to make two different bodies of believers into one new body. God took an old community of faith, Israel, and a brand new community of faith that had never known God, and he merged them into one new faithful body. He took away the cultural barriers that made Israel different—the circumcision, the dietary laws, the customs—and made it possible for new believers of different nations to belong to the same body (v. 15). Jewish Christians at the time thought that these things were reasons for boasting, just like the Gentile Christians thought they had their own customs and morals to boast in. But Christ “preached peace” to both groups and gave them both direct access to the Father by the same Holy Spirit of adoption (vv. 17–18). Salvation isn’t just God about saving individual people; it’s God’s grace “killing the hostility” in order to make a new community of humility and love (v. 16).
In vv. 19–22, God’s work is to build us into a new temple. No matter what kinds of buildings we build for our own glory, God saves us by incorporating us into a new and everlasting temple that is to the praise of His glory (v. 21). In this way, God’s new temple is a reversal of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). This temple is a temple that enthrones Jesus as both king and high priest. This temple is a temple that is an appropriate home for the Holy Spirit, whom we already know to be a Spirit of adoption, belonging, conviction, unity, and peace (v. 22). Christians often point out that individual believers are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that it matters how we treat our bodies. But the point that Paul is making here is that the body of Christ, all together, is a single, large temple for the Holy Spirit, and that it matters how we treat the other members of His body.
Q: What practical steps can we take to keep God’s works in view? How does our Church’s worship help us to do this?
Q: What is the bigger picture of salvation by grace that Paul has in view in this passage?
Application point — Christians can take a couple of application points away from this passage. For one, we need to learn to pay more attention to God’s works than we do to our own works. Our works, remember, can’t save us, and they don’t give us anything to brag about. What matters most in the world is the one work that God is doing—to make us alive, to raise us and seat us with Christ, to bring outsiders in, and to form all of us together into a dwelling place for His Holy Spirit. If we keep God’s work in view, we won’t be anxiously fixated on our own works, or on the works of other people. And we’ll be able to identify the good works that God has prepared for us to walk in (v. 10).
For another, we need to recognize our believing brothers and sisters as fellow members of the temple that God is building. Another way of thinking about what Paul is saying in these verses is that God is looking for people that He can build into a home for His Holy Spirit. People who will praise Him instead of boasting about their own works and ways. People who won’t overly fault-find and overly praise. People who join Jesus in preaching peace, and who want to make themselves into a home for the Holy Spirit.
Q: How does knowing what work God is doing help us to identify the “good works” that God has prepared for us to walk in?
Q: What would it look like to treat fellow members of the Church as “fellow citizens of the household of God”? How does that make a better home for the Holy Spirit?