You Were Made for Ministry (Ephesians 2:1-10)

On the left hand, there will be the goats. Just as good works show the true faith of the sheep, the goats are known because of their lack of good works. They did not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, show hospitality to strangers, clothe the naked or visit the sick and imprisoned. Again, Jesus identifies with those people and says, "inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me" (Matt. 25:45, NKJV). Jesus was speaking about the response of the nations to the gospel and those who go out in His name to preach the gospel, but the story is also clear: true faith requires good works or else it is a goat that is good for nothing.

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Christians are to be good for something. "Blessed to be a blessing" is the way someone put it. And that is exactly what we will see as we continue in our study of Ephesians chapters 1 and 2. In Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul unfolds the glory of God in salvation—all of grace—that leads us, in verse 10, to His purpose for saving us: good works. Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian of yesteryear, said that this passage begins with "the spiritual state of the Ephesians before their conversion" and goes to the "change which God had wrought in them" and leads to "the design for which that change had been effected."¹ You see again, as Hodge saw it, that this passage is about answering, "What is the reason for it all?"

This passage is to show that you were made for Good Works, or as we might say: You were made for ministry.

There are three affirmations we must take from this portion of God's Holy Word. To begin with, we need to affirm something very important in this passage that will clear up a lot of misunderstanding in the body of Christ.

I. Good Works Require God's Grace (vv. 1-9)

I once heard of a man who said that, like Smith Barney, he got his religion the old fashioned way—he earned it!

Well, of course, nothing could be further from the gospel truth, especially pressed home by Paul in the second chapter of Ephesians. Looking at the entire section of verses 1-9, we see how we are saved by grace. By a free, sovereign act of a loving God, through the life and death of Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit drawing us to Christ and through an act of faith in Him, we are saved by being translated out of a spiritual death into new life; and all of that is by God's grace.

This is the passage that gripped my soul so many years ago. I am here today because of the power of this passage; and I do not doubt that, like me, some of you have grown up in the church, heard the Word for many years but have missed this central and essential truth of the gospel. In fact, this is the gospel. We are saved not by works but by grace. May God clear your mind of man-centered religion and infuse you, supernaturally, with the wisdom of God to believe in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life.