“Created in Christ Jesus unto Good Works”

Ephesians 2:10

Several years ago, after preaching a message on salvation by grace, a man came up to me and said, “If what you are saying is true, then if a person believes on Jesus, it’s okay for him to go out and sin all he wants to.” Needless to say, my blood began to boil. Yet, this is the response I always get from both Arminians and Calvinistic legalists to the message of God’s free-grace in Christ. When men cannot answer our doctrine and refuse to bow to the truth of God, they always attempt to cast upon it the hideous, slanderous charge of licentiousness and antinomianism, thereby “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

They know full well that their accusations are false; but they persist in their ungodly slander. As it was in Paul’s day, so it is in ours. Judaizers always seek to undermine the gospel of the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. Ishmael, the child of bondage, always envies and therefore hates Isaac, the free-born son. I cannot stop the mouths of gainsayers; but I do want all men and women to know these three things.

1.    Salvation is by grace alone.

God’s grace in Christ is free, sovereign, unconditional, eternal, and unchangeable. Grace planned our salvation, provided us with a Redeemer, purchased our pardon with his blood, produced life in us by his Spirit, preserves us in life and faith, and shall present us faultless before the presence of God’s glory in eternity. “By grace ye are saved!” Grace cannot be resisted and cannot be frustrated. It is always effectual. And God’s grace is not in any way determined by or dependent upon the will, works, and worth of the sinner. Grace is free!

2.    Good works have nothing whatsoever to do with the accomplishment, preservation, or consummation of our salvation in Christ.

Neither our election, nor redemption, nor calling, neither sanctification, nor preservation, nor glorification are determined by our works. The moment you make room for works, you push grace out. If you attempt to win, improve, or maintain God’s favor by your works, you “are fallen from grace,” you have departed from the gospel of the grace of God, and “Christ shall profit you nothing.” Any mixture of works with grace is not salvation, but damnation.

3.    All who are saved by grace walk in good works.

Though we are sinners still, though sin is mixed with and mars everything we think and do, so that our best works of righteousness are filthy rags, God’s people, sinners saved by God’s free grace in Christ Jesus walk in good works, carefully striving to maintain those works on earth that glorify God our Savior. They are motivated by gratitude and love to do so, because we are “saved by grace.”

Don Fortner

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