Pastor Eduardo Alves was leading Lord's Super service in Ministerios Adoracion
Saved by grace
For by grace you have been saved
through faith; And this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; Not by works,
lest any man should boast. Ephesians 2: 8-9
These verses
clarify the work of salvation: Everything is by God, not ours. We are saved by
the grace of God through faith. Everything is a gift from God. We are not
saved by our good works, so we have no reason to boast, as if being a Christian
was a feat. The only way to be saved is by grace, which is the
undeserved favor of God. If we deserve it, it would not be grace. We are not
saved because we have been good, because we have done good things, or we have
gained salvation in some other way.
The Bible is
clear in saying that we can not earn salvation. Paul wrote in Romans
3:20: "By the deeds of the law no human being shall be justified before
him." He wrote in Galatians 3:10 that those who depend on good
works to be saved are under curse and none of us can keep that law. We
are all rightly condemned to eternal and humiliating punishment that God
intervene by grace. That is precisely what God has done.
God brings salvation by grace and our response is faith. But even our
faith does not come from ourselves. "It is not of you" refers not
only to grace but also to faith. We have to believe to be saved but as we are
dead in sin we can not believe. So that was our condition before we were saved; In
the darkness, dead in our sins, blind to the truth, without hope and without
God (Ephesians 2:12). We are helpless, incapable of generating faith
from our dry heart.
God has to give: life to our dry heart. God has to
give sight to our blind eyes. God has to give understanding to our
darkened minds. Therefore, the whole work of salvation is a miracle of God.
We believe the gospel and receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith but it is God
who gives us the desire, the ability and the understanding to do that. None of
us can boast about our faith or our salvation, for it is all because of the
grace of God from beginning to end.
