male announcer: In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “Grace Alone.” Dr. Charles Stanley: One of the primary reasons that many people struggle all of their Christian life and just wonder what in the world is going on and why they don’t have any real peace and joy and, really, success is because they don’t really understand how they became a Christian.
And if somebody were to ask you, “How did you become a Christian to begin with?” I wonder what you would tell them. Our text, in this message, is one of the most crucial texts in all the Bible. It’s familiar to a lot of people, but it is one of the most crucial because our whole understanding of our Christian experience and how we became a child of God is found in this particular passage.
Now, this is the second in our series entitled, concerning the grace of God: “Grace: God’s Second Chance.” That is, God, in His goodness and love and mercy toward us, gives us not only a second chance but many chances. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Ephesians chapter 2. And I want us to read these first ten verses because herein Paul settles once and for all a very vital issue that, in spite of how many times many Christians have heard it, somehow it’s very difficult for them to accept the fact that
salvation is by grace and grace alone. And that’s the title of this message: “Grace Alone.” And Paul is writing this to persuade those Ephesians to whom he is writing this that it is not by works but only by grace. Listen to what he says, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 2. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” So, you see, Paul includes himself there. Then he says in verse 4: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might
show” forth or, “show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of–not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
