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2 kingdom, direct access to His wisdom. Today we're going to talk about yet another benefit—becoming God's handiwork. Tami Weissert: That takes us to a very powerful and important set of verses, Ephesians 2:8-10. Let's find out what it means to be God's own handcrafted work. Woodrow Kroll: We are looking today at three of the most important verses in the Bible, certainly in the Book of Ephesians, definitely in the second chapter of Ephesians. You know two of them—Ephesians 2:8-9. You have heard me say again and again on this program that you should never quote Ephesians 2:8-9 without verse 10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." I don't know if you noticed it or not, but in those three tiny, little verses there are some real power words. There are some really gigantic words in those verses. For example, "For by grace you have been saved." The word "grace" is the Greek word charis. It simply means a merciful kindness that you and I do not deserve. When God gives us His salvation, it is the kind of grace that you and I don't deserve. We don't deserve His salvation. We sinned against God. We deserve the punishment that sin brings, but it's the grace of God that brings to us His merciful kindness— kindness that you don't deserve, Friend, and kindness that I don't deserve. There are so many of our wonderful hymns that sing about God's grace. Julia Johnston's hymn is one of my favorites: Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt, Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured, There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. Grace, grace, God's grace, Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin. The very first power word in this passage is the word "grace." When you come to God in salvation, when you trust Jesus Christ as Savior, the reason 2
3 you can do so is because of God's amazing grace. It's His merciful kindness to you, kindness that you do not deserve. The second power word is also in that verse. "For by grace you have been saved through faith." The word "faith" is the Greek word pistis. Faith means a conviction of a truth, a belief in something or someone—you trust someone. Here it's saying that we are saved through faith. It is God's grace that brings salvation to us, but it is faith that allows that salvation to become real in our lives. We know that God's grace is His gift to us, but what about the faith that we need to believe? Is it also God's gift? When it says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." What does "gift" refer back to? "That not of yourselves." What is "that" referring to? What is the antecedent, the word to which the pronoun "that" refers? There's quite a controversy in the Christian world today about what "that" means. Greek scholar A. T. Robertson, commenting in his Word Pictures in the New Testament, said, "'Grace' is God's part; 'faith' is ours." Then he adds that since in the original language of Scripture (the Greek manuscripts from which our Bible was translated) the demonstrative pronoun "that" (or maybe "this" in your translation, it's the same word actually) not of yourselves in verse 8 is neuter in gender and does not correspond with the gender of word "faith," which is feminine, it does not refer to faith but to the act of being saved by grace, conditioned on faith on our part. In other words, what he is saying is this: The grace is God's gift to us; faith is our contribution to God's gift. Although A. T. Robertson is a wonderful Greek scholar and I often find myself agreeing with him, I have to disagree at this point. I think that interpretation is wrong. Let me tell you why. In the context, Paul places tremendous emphasis on the fact that from start to finish we owe our salvation to God and to Him alone. It would be very strange, wouldn't it, for Paul to say grace is God's part; faith is our part? That doesn't appear anywhere else in any of the Pauline letters. But salvation being totally from God appears everywhere. So when it says, "For 3
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Page 5 and 6: 5 The next verse goes on to say tha
Page 7 and 8: 7 brings them to salvation. This is
Page 9: 9 Tami Weissert: So that we're clea

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