Salvation: Walking in Good Works by Grace Through Faith

I ask you to open your Bibles to Ephesians 2, please. So Ephesians chapter 2, we'll be settling in verses 8 through 10, but let us begin back for context in verse 1 of the second chapter of Ephesians. This is the word of the Lord. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. And you were following the course of this world. you were following the prince of the power of the air who is the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.

We were carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and therefore were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he has made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And he's raised us up with Jesus and seated us with Jesus in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship we were created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them let us pray Oh God in heaven, as always, as your word is opened up before us, I am in desperate need by your spirit to proclaim your word truthfully.

Lord, help me to have no greater desire than to be clear with your word. Father, help me not to have a desire to pander to sinners or to make it sugar-coated, to make it more acceptable to people. Lord, help me to just want to make it clear. I pray, God, that you would use me as a tool, Lord, to make it clear, to help the saints to hear it and to be encouraged on to further growth after Jesus, to look to him, and to even encourage those who have never come to Jesus to repent of their sins for the first time ever and believe truthfully upon Jesus.

Oh, Lord in heaven, in order to be used at all in this way, I'm in need of your help. And so I ask for your help now. I pray, God, that the hearers here, those who are listening, that you would be a help to them as well. It is so easy to let so many things get in the way in our minds and in our hearts. So I pray that we would all be relying upon Jesus, Lord, in this moment for the forgiveness of sins and to clear our hearts and minds so that we would hear your word and respond by your power.

Thank you for this power in the gospel by your grace through faith. And I pray, Lord, that we would worship you in light of it into eternity. In Jesus' name, amen. So we've come now really to a focal point here in Ephesians. Really, it's a culmination of all of what Paul has said in chapter 1 into 2. And it is really the heartbeat, the very center of the gospel.

And one we hear often, especially as Protestants, especially as Baptists, this sentence that we hear often, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Almost everyone in this room, if not everyone in this room, have heard that. And especially as Protestants, we are very used to using that as a fundamental passage in response to anyone who would try to add a work to salvation, whether it be Catholicism or anything else, anyone else, we are used to quickly going to this text to support this truth that we are saved, a centerpiece of the gospel, by grace through faith and not a work that we can do.

We are very quick to point to this beautiful doctrine now, as we should be quick to do so. And as we look at it today, I want to look at that doctrine and celebrate it. But I also want to look at the other side of how Satan can use a zealousness within us, a desire within us to highlight this point that we are not saved by any kind of work that we can do.

And for doctrinally weak Protestants, it can actually be abused to a bad degree. And I mention this probably more often than I should, but I come from it and I can't help it. but I come from an experience in Protestant Christianity that abused this doctrine to a very bad degree. And what I mean is that I come from an independent, fundamentalist, Baptist background.

And they oftentimes, I think on a whole, they highlight the fact that we are saved by grace through faith alone, and then they would say that any kind of work at all associated with salvation is thrown out the door because then you're adding works to salvation. And so simply just believing upon Jesus at one time saying a prayer and then you are for sure saved and then you live the rest of your life not relying upon a work and you will certainly be brought into heaven And I remember thinking that salvation was simply and only not going to hell when you died So I can rest assured I said a prayer, God has to save me, and there's no work I can do to add or take away from this to where God has to accept me after my death. And so salvation becomes not well defined, not understood properly, to where you say it's not a work to be done and actually no works are associated with salvation at all.

And so what ended up happening as I got more and more tempted with sin through middle school into high school, what I would tell myself is at first I would be resolute. I'm not going to do that sin. I remember the first thing, major one, was swearing. I'm not going to swear like the rest of the kids in late elementary school into middle school. And I think that lasted until about middle school.

And I remember thinking, well, I'll start swearing. But good thing I don't have to worry about going to hell because it's not a work that I have to do. So I can swear and I'm fine, right? But then, of course, that's child's play to the stuff I got into in high school, right? And I remember it was a walk of, well, good thing I'm not saved by my work. So therefore, if I do this, I'm still going to be all right.

When I die, I'll still be accepted into heaven because I said a prayer when I was whatever years old, seven years old, asking God to save me. And he for sure saved me not by a work that I do. And so with an not complete view of salvation, where works is sucked out completely, that was going to send me to hell if it wasn't for the grace, true grace, of my Savior.

And so this is such a pervasive theology that I'm sure there's people before me that's in this state right now. Not to scare, ooh, look around, or anything like that, But it was such, especially in Baptist circles, it was such, and it still is, such a widespread theological error that I'm sure if not there's people before me that's stuck in this sort of error, you know people who are. And even if that's not the case for you as you're considering why does this sermon matter to me then, is that how do you understand works in light of salvation?

If you had to explain that to yourself, how do works work into salvation? What does it look like? And if you can't explain that well, then you're going to have an incomplete experience of salvation. So this is a very important subject. Because certainly we highlight grace in salvation. But notice, as Paul is doing that, he's also talking about walking in good works. so we must understand that just as important as it is to understand how good works does not operate in salvation let me say that again because even i got distracted there just as important as it was to to not um just as important as it is to understand how good works does not um work oh this is like the point where i didn't write notes on i'm like i i think i got it and then and then anything can throw me off.

Just as important as it is to know how good works does not have anything to do with your salvation, in what ways it doesn't have anything to do with your salvation, it is just as important to understand in what ways it is associated with your salvation. And I hope that's kind of like, okay, we'll see where we're going with that. And I think we'll see it clear here in Scripture that we need to settle our hearts on.

And so starting off in verse 8, Paul starts off by saying, For by grace you have been saved. So salvation, right? For by grace you have been saved. And in no way do we want to diminish grace here. Even though I think a lot of times we can take it for granted, and sometimes we can hardly explain what it means because we take it so much for granted. In no way do we want to undermine the fact that Paul declares that by grace you have been saved.

Grace, as we talked about last week, is unmerited favor. You did not merit the favor that God gives you. And in fact, you can go beyond that. with not just simply unmerited favor, you could say that it is favored despite your eternal demerits. You get what I'm saying there? It's not like it's a neutral thing to where I didn't earn anything. In fact, you earned the opposite.

You are demerited. You deserve the complete opposite, but yet God displays his love for you despite it. So we cannot escape this foundational principle of how salvation works, is that you are saved by grace. The start of your salvation was you walking in your trespasses and sins and liking it. That was the start of your salvation, meaning God looked at you in that state and he decided, I am going to give this man or woman favor.

And that favor is not money, wealth, blah, blah, blah. It is I am going to love him and he's going to experience my love for him. This is a favor we are talking about. This is a grace that we are talking about. And there is no greater reality in your life that you would receive the good favor, the good love, the gracious love of your creator. That is the greatest existence you can experience in this life is that you would receive the love of your maker.

And this is what grace is referring to. Is that you did not deserve it. You were demerited involving with it. but yet God looked at you and said, and I'm going to overwhelm you with my love. Now moving forward, as we're looking at that, it's not a work that you've done because that's the whole nature of grace. It's not your work. Looking forward, the object of God's love is always the subject of change The object of God love grace favor is always the subject of change He brings you to a state of salvation.

And this is what he goes on to say, by grace you have been saved. Now again, we hear it all the time, but what does saved mean? What does it mean to be saved. What is salvation? And again, going back to my anecdote, in my understanding of what salvation was, it was simply not going to hell when I died. So salvation was not something that was happening now as it was something that I will receive in eternity when after I die, God will say, by my grace, not by your work, you get to go to heaven.

That was what I understood salvation to be. that's not wrong but that's not complete that's not the full picture or understanding of what salvation is you know what that's it's like saying it's like saying that marriage is simply only the wedding day and night that's all marriage is oh yeah that is marriage but marriage is the whole thing it's it's the whole experience it's not just one day but it's a whole experience and so it's like saying that like salvation is just one thing one event that happens in the future but there's nothing that's going on now well that's not the full picture of salvation salvation is going if you remember last week we talked about how adam and we and adam once walked with god in the garden right and we experienced him his love his his the relationship um his presence right we at one time we're walking with God in Adam, we're walking with God in the garden. But then we saw in Ephesians 2 how in our sin, we then, you remember in verse 2, or verse 1 and 2, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. So what we need to be saved from is the state in which we once walked with God in the garden, now we're walking our trespasses and sins away from God, away from his presence.

We are walking away from God, away from his presence in our trespasses. In fact, this is our desire. This is to do so. This is what we need to be saved from. It's our walk with him in the garden to walking in our trespasses now. Which is why we are heading towards, if you look at verse 10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should what?

Walk in them. And so this understanding of salvation is that we go from walking in our trespasses and sins, saved from that state, to walking in good works. We ought to understand that salvation, although it is not driven, the engine that drives it is not our good works. That is the realm of salvation, that we would go from walking as zombies in deadness with dead people, following a Satan, we would then walk in righteousness following a Savior, following Jesus.

This is what it means to be saved, is walking no longer as a dead man or woman with dead people, following a Satan, but rather we would walk in obedience following our Savior. And I think if you're not careful, it can kind of spook you a little bit. But if you look at when Jesus talks about the judgment and when that happens, he talks a lot about people and they'll go to hell because of what?

Their wickedness. Or people are going to go to heaven. They're going to go to heaven. Why? Because of their walking righteously. So works matter in that realm.

Now be careful. Keep that with everything I'm saying. Don't just take that one sentence and run with it. But works matter in your salvation. Look at John, for instance. Look at John 5.

Look at John 5. Either the heat is on or I'm getting too worked up. One or the two. John 5, 28. Look what our Lord says. He says, do not marvel at this.

For an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out and those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. So we see that. And this isn't the only time that Jesus talks about this, in which he highlights those who are going to receive condemnation are those who walked wickedly and those who are going to receive rewards are those who walked righteously and so we can see that our works matter in the totality of salvation and it's driven the engine of it is grace but nevertheless it produces walking of obedience we see that grace the love of god the the subject of the love of god the object oh my goodness i'm saying it wrong i go back to my notes the object of his love always is a subject of change they walk in newness of life so again that's not to say that salvation is doing enough good works to enter into heaven right so then i i got to do enough good works in order to for me to then be all right with god that's not the way it works we are justified by faith alone in jesus by grace alone we're going to get to by grace alone uh working through faith and it's that basis that we are saved but we got to understand that it produces that walking and newness of life that then we receive in full in heaven.

So that's why the thief on the cross, when he believed upon Jesus, Jesus didn't say, well, you didn't have enough time to do good works, so you're still going to heaven or hell. No, he says, today you will be with me in paradise. But I guarantee you, if that thief would have gotten off the cross alive, he would have lived a life of obedience to Jesus, because this is what grace produces in the believer Now we can stop here We can stop in Ephesians 2 with you are saved by grace because if all we have is you are saved by grace then we have a grace of God that doesn't have a face to it.

If all we understand is that God, he gives, right? Even though we don't deserve, he gives, right? And he brings us into a state of salvation in which we walk obediently to him. all we kind of have there is empty moralism. All we kind of have there is, you know, God is a gracious God, and I'm just going to try to walk obediently and see what happens, right?

And that's detestable to God. Why? Because God has provided a face to grace. And that face he's provided is faith. So to say that again, we see that faith is the face of grace. Faith reveals and materializes grace, which is why Paul says, by grace you have been saved, and it's through faith.

So in other words, grace is not aimless. It's not random in that way. It's not like it's just like, well, some people will receive it and others. It always looks like something particular. When God decides to give someone grace, it looks like their faith being exhibited in Jesus, being pointed to Jesus. It always looks that way.

God never just randomly just says, I'm going to give favor to these guys, and that's just the way it's going to be and it's just kind of random. But it always is seen. It always materializes. It's always located. It's always shown in faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is the vehicle.

It's the means to get to receive grace and receive that reward. And so we've got to ask, what is faith? What does faith mean? I like how the Baptist Catechism defines it. the baptist catechism says faith in jesus christ is a saving grace it's a unmerited favor by god it's a saving grace it's it's something that god gives you as a gift as we are getting to in ephesians 2 whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel.

So we see that faith is a receiving and resting in Jesus. Now receiving, if I can go back to my anecdote, I was taught that simply in order to be saved, you need to have your faith in Jesus. And what that means is you just, you see mentally that you're a sinner and you need Jesus. So you say, God, please forgive me for that. And that's all it is, right?

And God has to save you. And there's a part where that's true. That's receiving the gospel, receiving the good news that Jesus has came and died for sinners and receiving it is believing it and saying I believe that I believe that I'm a sinner I believe that Jesus has came and has done the work I believe that he's done the work to to vanquish sinners or sins not sinners but sin to vanquish that death I believe he's done that and so I'm receiving that as truth and I'm mentally assenting to that I believe that so acknowledging and confessing that Jesus is the only means God has offered for salvation by his work, a perfect life, a perfect death, and a perfect resurrection.

You must receive that. But it doesn't stop there. Faith does not stop there. But there's more of full-bodied understanding of what faith is, and that is to rest as well in Jesus. Now, what does it mean to rest in Jesus? Well, it means to rest from your sin.

It means to cease from your sin. It means to stop sinning. It means that true faith in Jesus always results in I believe in him, and now I'm going to walk after him. I'm going to go towards him. I'm going to rest from my sin, and I'm going to grab hold of righteousness that's found in Jesus. So again, it is not a proper understanding of salvation.

When he brings you into that realm of walking obediently, it's always through faith or looking to Jesus Christ. This is why we never grow tired of talking about Christ. This is why anytime you hear people grow tired of it and it's not the centerpiece of the preaching of the word, then go somewhere else. Because we need Jesus. Grace looks like Jesus. It looks like going to Jesus always in every single area of your life and wanting to be like him.

Wanting to mimic him. because it's by his power that we're able to. And so we receive Jesus and we also rest in Jesus, which changes our life. We walk in good works. We enjoy the fruits of righteousness through him, both in our standing in him and our practice after him. And I think Paul, he explains it this way perfectly. I got to say that because he wrote much of the scripture. in Galatians 2.

In Galatians 2. Look at Galatians 2. This faith we have in Christ, it affects our standing as righteous before a holy God. But it also practices our resting in Jesus away from our sin and our practice before a holy God. And this is what he goes on to say in Galatians 2. Look at verse 15.

This is our practice. We ourselves are Jews by birth, but not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified or declared righteous by a holy God by works of the law. We can't be declared righteous by works of the law. We are sinners. That's what we like to do.

That was our passion. But rather through what? Through faith in Christ Jesus. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Because by works of the law, no one will be justified. So there's our standing, right?

Our faith in Jesus, we stand as righteous before a holy God because of the work that Jesus Christ has done, right? It's his work that we say I believe in, that it applies to me. That's our standing. But then we see our practice changes too in our faith in Jesus, in which we see that going forward. Look at verse 17. What if...

In our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners. Is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. For in other words, he says, in our justification of being our faith in Jesus, we aren't found to be sinners. We don't practice sin in that. We don't use that as an excuse.

We don't practice sin. He says, for if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. So we see that our life now, as our faith is in Jesus, is found in the resurrection of Jesus. And the fact that Jesus died and rose again. And so now that's our life. And so faith in Jesus, it is not just a standing of righteousness that we appreciate, but it's also a practice of righteousness that my life is now found in him.

So whether I breathe, if I eat, if I drink, whatever I do, it will be to the glory of his great name for his great work of salvation. So salvation is being good before God, walking in good works. And this is not, he says in verse 8, your own doing. He says in Ephesians 2 verse 8, it is the gift of God that is by grace through faith. This is the realm of salvation that God, if you are a believer in Jesus today, has called you to.

He has called you to a realm of walking obediently to him. And that is done by the work of Jesus, of his perfect righteousness, his perfect sacrificial death, and his perfect resurrection is now yours. If you believe upon Jesus, if your faith is found in Jesus, that means you have the power to walk obediently to Jesus. So salvation, again, is walking in good works, and that is only by a gift from him.

It's by grace through faith. And then finishing up with these last two verses in this section here, verse 9 and 10, we see where the power comes from. If faith is the face of grace, verses 9 and 10 we see the power behind faith in which he says in verse 9 he starts with a negative then he goes to a positive he says and it's not a result of works so that no one may boast so it's the power behind faith is not our works that's what he's saying it's not like again if we just work a certain way we can then receive that faith oh man i skipped something now it's at that point to where it's like do i go back or is that gonna be too confusing now i'm going back and forth in my head i want you to notice how in verse 8 he says and this is not your own doing it is a gift of god and when he says this and this is not your own doing so again in verse 8 for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of god the word this what is that referring to what was referring to the whole thing this is salvation this is grace this is faith the whole thing right being saved by grace through faith this is the work of god is not your own doing so your ability to put your faith and trust in jesus and live for him now is a gift from god it's not a work that you do and so he says in verse 9 this is not a result of works this is not the engine that drives faith and grace it's not because you have works that can drive that No it is not a work that you do because then you would be able to boast But instead in verse 10 he says where the power does come from For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So we see that it's not a work of ours. Any work that we do, we see it's because we are now a workmanship in Christ. What is a workmanship? A workmanship is anything that's made and the person who's made that item, it is his workmanship. So if you have a nice chair, the person who made that chair, it's the workmanship of that maker, right? And so we see that here, the power of believing upon Jesus, living for him, it is not a power that comes from us and the good works that follow.

It is rather a result of a workmanship that God is doing in us or in you. The good works that you do that come flow forth from your faith in Jesus is because he is creating a workmanship in you so that he can say, this is what I have done in this person. He was once dead in his sin. She was once dead in her sin, lived for her sin, desired her sin, but now she or he is living righteously before me by faith in my son jesus christ and then then in that setting you become a workmanship of god to do the craziest 180 ever to be going the direction of sin and living in sin to also to walk obediently to the lord he marks it as his workmanship not your work that you have done that made it possible but his work in you you see he says created in christ jesus for good works and So we see that we are created in Christ Jesus.

Jesus has, this new creation is after the image of Jesus. We're created in him. And the imagery here is that as Jesus had created all things at the beginning, that was his powerful work to create all things. So his next powerful work was to create you anew in him. Just as powerful as you look at the sun and the moon and the stars, as you look at everything about you that's from the powerful hand of Jesus's creation that we see in Colossians he's the one who's made it so it is that same powerful work that he's recreated you after his image it is the same powerful work powerful work in one that is in the other so we see that our our salvation although it is brought to be in the realm of good works that work that enables that is by the powerful hand of Jesus Christ to recreate you after his image.

We are his workmanship. Workmanship, it takes time, right? It looks beautiful, but you know that the more beautiful it looks, the more beautiful the process was to make it look like that. And that's exactly what's going on in our life in salvation, is that you started by a gift of faith that God has given you to look upon Jesus in your sin. And now he's doing a work of good works in you in that realm of salvation because you are now his workmanship it is his work in you to make you look more holy after jesus and that process of deadness to sin to alive and righteousness and that whole process as dirty as it can look as much work as it needs to be done in order for that process to happen that whole process is a beautiful workmanship that god is doing in you this is the heartbeat of salvation.

In fact, so much so that it says that God prepared this work beforehand, these good works that we should walk in them This is the heartbeat of salvation This is what it means to be saved Is that although we were once dead in sin by faith in Jesus Christ we can receive the free unmerited favor of God It because Jesus has done the work where we could not, where we were sinners and we loved it. He was perfectly righteous. Where we deserve death, he received that death on himself, so that those who believe upon him receive the grace of God.

Faith is a face of grace. And the power behind that faith is being a new creation after Jesus through our faith in him. This is the heartbeat of the gospel. And so whenever we look at salvation, right, we look at the whole thing and we just simply say it's all of grace through faith and not a work to be done. Amen. Amen.

But we need to have a full body picture of saying that God is bringing us in a realm of good works by the work of Jesus so that we would be his workmanship glorifying him in our bodies today. So if you are someone who has said, I've said a prayer, I know that salvation is not a work of mine, and you live like the devil for the rest of your life afterwards, you need to kind of think about what salvation actually means. Salvation is not simply just saying a prayer and forgetting it and just knowing I'm going to get into heaven when I die.

But salvation is walking obediently after Jesus in this life that you have as you receive the culminated thing in eternity. One good way to look at the afterlife, one good way to look at the afterlife, one good way to look at eternal, whether it's life or death, is it's simply a culmination of how you lived on earth. You get what I mean. If you claim Christ, right, and you're going to walk after Christ because that's his power at work in you, and you're receiving reward, your eternal life, it's just going to be a culmination of that life and salvation that you had on earth.

But if you walk the path of unrighteousness, of not following the Lord, not being his disciple, of living in sin, you will receive the culmination of that wrath in eternity. And so the answer is to look upon Jesus. The answer is that if all the power is found and God's grace is found in faith in Jesus, I'm going to look to Jesus. I'm going to believe upon him.

I'm going to follow him. I'm going to obey him. And where I'm finding it, which is always a struggle, I'm going to say, God, this is the work that you're doing. Objectively, this is what you said you're doing. Oh, God, help me in my pursuit of Jesus here. And I think this is how I want to conclude this sermon, is that there are those who are unbelievers, right, and they don't see the full-bodied experience of salvation, but there are those of you who are believers, and there are those of you who perhaps are struggling with sin right now, you're struggling with certain particular sin in your life right now, and you're like, this sounds really good on paper, that I'm created new in Christ, and I walk righteously because of Christ, right?

But I'm going to be honest with you, I don't always walk righteously in Christ. I don't always do it. In fact, sometimes I'm walking in sin. And so what does that mean about my salvation then? Well, I would tell you that Paul right here, in this particular point, is dealing with the principle, the, oh, what's the word for it? The, oh, Plato was all about the, oh, I don't know why I got Plato on my mind right now.

The, not the abstract, here it is. Ilcom. What's that? No one's got it. You're all like, I don't know. Paul is talking about the principle Should have wrote it down I going to wait just a few more seconds for it to be really awkward Then I just going to move on Oh man, I don't have it.

So Paul is talking about the standard, the principle at play right there. Is that when we are saved, that is what's going to happen. But he's going to soon then get into the particulars. okay, what happens when the struggle is real? And what needs to ground you when you're struggling, when you're struggling with sin, is this is the objective reality. This is what God has done for me as a Christian.

He has brought me out of death into life by my faith in Jesus. He has said that if I put my eyes upon Jesus and follow him, he will end sin in me. And so that needs to be the baseline of your attack against sin, is that fundamentally this is what he has done in me through my faith in Jesus. This is what he's promised to do. And then you go to battle going off of that premise, whatever that particular battle is, whether it's sexual immorality or fighting with your wife or whatever, this is what you do.

This is what you establish yourself on is this is the objective standard, the objective reality that God has done in Jesus in me. I have the power to overcome sin because of this salvific reality of faith in Jesus. I can overcome the sin because of that. so may this be how you battle your sin if you're trying to battle your sin in any other way it is sinking sand it needs to be because salvation is a walking in obedience to jesus by his work and this is how grace is given to you through him may the central truth of the gospel enrich you so that you live obediently to the lord because this is your life of walking in life no longer in death of sin.

This is what he has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ. So let us praise him together. Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus. Lord, we all, Lord, were once dead in our sin. What a reality, Lord, that you didn't keep us there, but your grace reached out for us. Lord, there's no reason for it, for we were not lovable.

But because you are a God who's rich in mercy and overflowing in grace. You in kindness, not because of a work of ours, but the work of Jesus. You have brought us into faith in Jesus. And by this faith, we walk obediently to the Lord. No longer walking in our sins, but rather walking in the good works that you have prepared beforehand. Thank you, God, for this great mercy.

Lord in heaven, for those who don't believe upon Jesus, they don't live for him, they don't follow him. I pray that they would turn away from their sin now. They would see that that sin is only leading to death. The sins that they hold on to so dearly is actually just a lie. But life is found in faith in Jesus instead. And I pray, Lord, that as we battle our sin, because we know that we are to walk in righteousness, that this is the full body picture of salvation, we would battle it not by our own strength, but by the strength that Jesus has provided in the gospel. to not only receive Jesus, but also to rest in Jesus, to rest from our labors of sin and find the life and the joy that's found in resting in our labors of righteousness that Jesus has provided.

So let that be what we do now. Let us be even encouraged even more to do this. And I pray that we grab hold of the means of grace that you've given us so that we would continue forth walking obediently after the image of Jesus, relying upon his great work to do so. Thank you for being so good to us. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.