Ephesians 2:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ephesians 2:9

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That means, not the works of the ceremonial law; they do not save. They are signs and symbols of what Christ would do when he came to carry out that ultimate sacrifice and suffer and die for our sins. But to keep the ceremonial of the Old Testament worship, of course, was not a means of salvation. It was a sermon, it was a lesson.Nor by obedience to the moral law. Nobody can keep the moral law. But can’t we do good works; can’t we do some good things? Don’t they save us? No, of course not, because the trouble is that we are spiritually dead and alienated from God, and we have an enormous debt of sin and that has to be atoned for. Even if we could live a perfect life, it would not atone for the past. But the reality is that we cannot live a perfect life, because we are sinful and fallen. We cannot meet the standards of God. We can just do some good things but they are so heavily outweighed, not only by the past debt, but by the present bad alongside any good we might do. Good works themselves are never wholly good. They may be saturated in pride. They may be done for our own benefit, and they are nothing like enough, and they are intertwined with so much sin. Salvation could never be by our works and by our performance, either before conversion or after conversion. Before conversion, we are lost and spiritually dead. We need our sins to be atoned for and only Christ can do that. And after conversion, any new life and any new character that we have is given to us by God. Strictly speaking, they are not our works, we are always dependent upon the work of Christ.‘Lest any man should boast’ – boast before God, boast to himself. How insulting to God for any of us to think that by our own works we can match his pure and holy standards. How foolish, how absurd!

Application

Is there anyone who thinks, ‘Well, surely it is possible for somebody to be good enough, or to live a good enough and noble enough life to please God’? No, it isn’t. Consider the wonderful holiness of God, and our corruption, selfishness, and sin! But here is some advice. If you really want to be saved by your own works, you had better start early. You have left it too late. You should have started in infancy, when you were tiny, as soon as understanding began to dawn, because if you leave it any later than that, you are too late, you have already committed sin, you are already on the road to sin. If you are 20, 25, you are much too late to start to be perfect, even if you could manage it. What are you going to do about the record of your sin? You can’t erase it; it will send you to hell, even if you could be perfect from now on. But you can’t be. If you think you can, well, you have certainly got the sin of pride, if nothing else. You can’t see yourself as God sees you and you are insulting him and bringing him down to your level.

No, you can’t please God. The Jews thought they could please God, the Jews of old, by ceremonial; adherence to ceremonial procedures, as though God is a lover of pantomime and as long as they got the worship ritual right, it wouldn’t matter about any of their other sins; that was great foolishness. There are people who think (if they are rich enough) that they can please God by philanthropy, endowing this and endowing that. We don’t get the impression that many rich people do that these days but there has been a time when people thought that by philanthropy they could please God but that doesn’t make up for all their sin. There have always been people who thought that God was like some of the examination authorities. He only wants 50% and as long as you have a reasonable score, you will make it to heaven. That won’t do either. The standard of God is perfection. He is holy and in his great kindness and love, he has sent a Saviour, who has suffered and died for sinners. What a state we can get into! I am not interested in heaven, unless I think I can go there by my own efforts. Yes, says God, but I have sent a Saviour to suffer and to die and we reject him and spurn him. What a calamity.

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Ephesians 2:9 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Ephesians 2:9