Eph. 2:9

9 Not by works, so that no one can boast.

“Saved by grace, not by our works.” It is not that our salvation was not worked for. Someone worked for it! Salvation is not made possible without cost. Whoever made it possible paid a gargantuan price. Who so worked? The Trinity did. All were completely involved. God had to be willing to send his only Son, Jesus, to be mocked, rejected and finally killed by the people whom he created. Jesus, as we have noted again and again in this passage, paid the ultimate price, obedience unto death. And the Holy Spirit was no less involved than Father and Son. The Holy Spirit was in the entire transaction or one might call it a battle. So Father, Son and Holy Spirit were prepared to do what had to be done, to pay what cost that had to be paid, to make it possible for a human being to have full access to God through the Atoning work on the part of mankind. Praise God, the work is done!

I would like to think that after Jesus accomplished the Atoning work, he then entered into his Sabbath rest – the work being absolutely completed. It is, in a way, an impertinence to try to add my one cent to the million dollars, so to speak, that it cost God to purchase my redemption. I receive salvation as a free gift – then I pay - my entire life is a living sacrifice, daily cross-bearing, daily self-giving. As it cost God everything to save me, I am in debt to his grace so deeply that I pay gladly in order to walk in obedience with him.

So that no one can boast

When I see the word “work,” I think of doing a good deed, thereby earning some merit. But I am sure the meaning goes much deeper than that. It is first and foremost an attitude based on a false assumption, that is, that I had a part in making it possible. I did not. All I can do is receive it when offered. Anything that I can boast of is a “work.” Boast is letting it be known, to me or to anyone else, that I have done or thought something noteworthy that enabled me to be redeemed. All boasting of the sort has “I” as the center, not God.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Pride is a spiritual cancer, it eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense.”