for…

At one time you were like a dead person because of the things you did wrong and your offenses against God. You used to live like people of this world. You followed the rule of a destructive spiritual power. This is the spirit of disobedience to God’s will that is now at work in persons whose lives are characterized by disobedience. At one time you were like those persons. All of you used to do whatever felt good and whatever you thought you wanted so that you were children headed for punishment just like everyone else. However, God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong. He did this because of the great love that he has for us. You are saved by God’s grace! And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus. God did this to show future generations the greatness of his grace by the goodness that God has shown us in Christ Jesus. You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives. (Ephesians 2:1-10, CEB)

This passage has the wonderful passage that Martin Luther found and clung to, “You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of.”

You are saved by grace through faith, not by your own works, so no person can boast. That’s how I remember it. Lutherans all over the world can say this from memory because it is our verse. We are saved by God’s grace through Christ’s faithfulness and we can not earn it. And so we do nothing. We go to worship and sit on our bottoms and do nothing. Or nothing that seems to be a work, because works do not save us, grace does, so we do not need to do anything. But when we stop where the above does at verse 9, we miss the point. And that is verse 10.

Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

For these good things, God planned ahead of time, or how I remember it, “For the good works God planned for you to do ahead of time.”

We are saved by grace, through faith, not by our own works so we can not boast, FOR the good works God planned for us ahead of time.

We are saved to be God’s hands and feet and share God’s love.

FOR!