GOD’S WORD FOR JULY 22 ~ ~Ephesians 2:8-9 ~ ~ “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.”
John Piper:
God has pleasure in obedience because obedience he loves is obedience of faith.
There is so much misconception today that some people don’t understand how faith and obedience are necessarily connected as a root and branch. Therefore, you often find in many churches, the cultivation of the implicit two-stage Christianity; a faith stage, then (maybe) an obedience stage.
But this is not the way the Bible pictures the life of faith. The separation of faith and obedience, as though faith were necessary for salvation and obedience were optional, is a mistake owing to a misunderstanding of what faith really is.
True saving faith is not the kind of belief in the facts of the gospel that leaves the heart and life unchanged. That would mean that we are saved by faith in order to produce good behavior. THIS IS NOT TRUE.
The good news is that saving faith is by it’s nature a LIFE-CHANGING POWER.
Saving faith has an intrinsic power to produce spiritual fruit in our lives. As Paul says in Galatians 5:6, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.” Faith works through love. If it doesn’t it is dead and cannot save. As James 2:17 says, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” The good news is not that obedience is not crucial, but that faith is the only way to obey, and this obedience of faith is the only kind God approves (see Romans 1:5 and 14:23)
It is a great irony that people who cultivate a two-state Christianity do so in the name of grace, but in effect nullify grace. They say there is a faith stage necessary for getting to heaven, and then an obedience stage not necessary for getting to heaven.
This looks like grace because they say obedience is not mandatory. But in fact, the whole Christian life is gradually transformed into an experience of something other than a life lived by faith.
Having cut the root of faith away from obedience to make obedience optional and exalt grace, in effect they define the life of obedience as a life of works which we are to produce not by saving faith, but by our own effort. This effort to obey by our own effort, is obviously not an event of grace.
(What he is saying is simply what we’re told in many places of the New Testament writings. That we are incapable of earning our way to heaven by ourselves. It is purely God changing us, making us a new creation, namely, a person with a spirit that is again connected to God, like Adam and Eve before sin entered the scene. After that, God sees us through the sacrifice of Jesus, after taking the punishment for our sins. Obedience comes in, not to make that happen, but as a result of that happening. It’s all God, not us….like the verse of the day above says.
~Ephesians 2:8-9 ~ ~ “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.” )