I started thinking about life through a chocolate and
vanilla lens. It’s a perfect, pure foundation - one that all great flavors are
created from. I see God’s pure doctrine like that chocolate and vanilla ice
cream. So many times I can get excited about all the good works I can add to
Jesus dying for my sins and think somehow I’m earning favor by doing them. A little cherry flavoring would go great with
the vanilla. To the chocolate, how about we add some Oreo cookie crumbles. Then
I might have a craving for chocolate syrup, my kids might want caramel or
strawberry, ooh no - chocolate mint, the list goes on and on! Pretty soon we’ve
deviated so far away from the source – chocolate or vanilla – we don’t know
which one we started with. We can so easily slip into doing this to the pure
and simple Gospel – that Christ died according to the scriptures, was buried,
and was raised and appeared to his disciples and 500 others before He was taken
to Heaven and seated at the right hand of God. This happened for me and you.
Period! No extra flavoring.
Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For it is by Grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For
we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.”
This is one of my favorite, foundational verses and
I want to break this verse down – almost like parsing, but more fun! I promise
we won’t diagram or label anything! And at the end, it will not be grammatically
correct, but I hope it will give you a new light to a sometimes “well known”
verse.
Let’s define a few words first. I heard a wise man define Grace this way: God’s un-ending favor for our un-ending need. If we apply that to
our verse above we get: It is by God’s
unending favor for my unending need…
Next word, Saved.
What does that mean? Literally rescued as
though we were falling into the flames of death. Lets plug that in. It is by God’s un-ending favor for our
un-ending need that we have been rescued from death. (side note here – do you notice
the word favor looks/sounds a lot like the word flavor?! Going with the theme of chocolate and vanilla, the verse
could go like this: It is by God’s unending flavor for our un-ending flavor
needs that we have been rescued from death. I love that!)
“Through faith.” What is faith? Heb 11:1 Defines faith as "being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see." In this since, we are certain of our secure salvation, even though we don't see it. So let’s plug that in. It is by God’s un-ending favor for our un-ending need that we have been
rescued from death, through being sure of what we hope for (eternal life) and certain of what
we do not see.
“It is the gift of God…so no one can boast” What is a gift and what is boasting? This will be the last part. We all know what a gift is.
It’s something given to you rather
than earning the money to buy it yourself.
I have no gift to offer my Father, except what He has already given to me. If I
could offer Him something, it would be of my own making – by works, and then I
could boast (brag!) to my friend about what a great Christian I am because I
did _____! Christ came to remove the boasting.
So, applying all that we’ve re-worded one last time would go
something like this:
It is by God’s
un-ending favor (flavor) for our un-ending (flavor) need(s) that we have been
rescued from death, through being sure of what we hope for and certain for what
we do not see, which is not from anything I can do well or earn, but accepting
God’s gift and relinquishing my right to lord it over people.
Maybe Chocolate and Vanilla flavors aren’t so bland after
all! We’ll talk next time about Ephesians 2:10 and what flavoring we can add,
now that we have a solid foundation of chocolate and vanilla.
Putting it In Our Own Words,
~Julie
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