But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 4:17-24 NASB
So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
My thoughts -
We have two passages here. Both are from Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. I think together they give a pretty good picture of what salvation through grace looks like.
In the first passage Paul is saying that we are saved only by grace and not by works. There is nothing that we can or could ever do to earn salvation. It is a free gift from God through Christ. There is nothing to boast in about salvation. We didn't do it. There is nothing to be proud about in salvation. Salvation is not ours. It belongs to Christ alone. We didn't do it. We can't.
So if we can't earn salvation then salvation demands nothing from us, right? We didn't do it. We can't. We are powerless to save ourselves. We are incapable of earning salvation. It is a free gift. Free means we don't pay for it. We can't pay for it. We can't afford it. There's no way we can obtain salvation on our own. So we, having been given salvation freely, are under no obligation to salvation, right?
Paul addresses this in the second passage. This line of thinking betrays a misunderstanding of salvation. It shows no understanding at all of what it was to have been dead in sin and what it is to be alive in Christ.
To be saved is to be a new creation. Salvation is not just for after this life. To be saved is not to just be able to get out of the consequences of sin but to be saved from sin itself. When we are saved by grace through faith in Christ we are free to live as new creations in Christ. The old, sinful self is dead. The new creation, made alive in Christ, is here. We are free to live in God's will free both from the consequences of sin and from slavery to sin.
Just because we can not earn salvation does not require anything from us. If we were free to live in slavery to sin after we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ then what good would that salvation be? If we remained dead in our sin, still slaves to our selfish, sinful nature then how could that possibly be salvation? What would we have been saved from? What would we have been saved for?
But we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. We are saved from sin. Again, not from the consequences of sin, but from sin itself. We are saved from sin and death and into life in Christ. We are saved from sin and into righteousness. We are saved from sin and into holiness. We are saved from sin, living (or rather, dying) outside the presence and will of God and we are saved into life inside the presence and will of God.
While there is nothing we could ever do to earn salvation, salvation that does not save us from living and dying in sin is no salvation at all. Salvation that does not make us new creations casting off the old one, dead in sin, and bringing forth the new one, alive in Christ, is no salvation at all.
Salvation is not earned by us becoming new creations. Salvation is a gift that enables us to become new creations, no longer dead in sin but now alive in Christ.
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