What is the real mean­ing of Eph­esians 2:8–9? Is it the way of sal­va­tion for all, or some­thing else? Let us con­sider it within context.

How often we quoted or were quoted the famous pas­sage of Ephesians?

Eph. 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God– 9 not because of works, lest any man should boast. 10 For we are his work­man­ship, cre­ated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God pre­pared before­hand, that we should walk in them.”

And how often was v.10 dropped, mak­ing the very pur­pose of sav­ing not that impor­tant? Yes, we love this pas­sage along with the other in Romans (“The just shall live by faith”), and we build our the­o­log­i­cal cas­tle around them, but do they stand up for scrutiny? What if when these verses are read out of con­text, we are in dan­ger of mis­in­ter­pret­ing them? What if the mean­ing of cer­tain terms is not the same across the NT, and it depends not only on the writer, but on the con­text also?

A short quote from Gala­tians as well as the usage of the per­sonal pro­nouns shed light to the pas­sage in ques­tion. There Paul con­fronts Peter who with­droaws to eat with the Jew­ish believ­ers, and among oth­ers says this:

Gal. 2:15 “We our­selves, who are Jews by birth and not Gen­tile sin­ners…”

You see, it is not Paul’s idea that Jews who had the law were sin­ners by nature. Gen­tiles did not have the law, thus, they did not have the light of God, there­fore they lived in dark­ness. Being a sin­ner means one’s life is char­ac­terised by sin. The rob­ber robs, the thief steals, the adul­terer com­mits adul­tery, the liar con­tin­ues to lie. These are not one off actions, but a pat­tern of life. There­fore, we need to be care­ful whom we referred to as a sin­ner. Jews who observed the law were not sin­ners by any stan­dard, thought they might have sinned occas­sion­ally. The char­ac­ter­is­tic of the right­eous is not that he never fails, but that when he does, he repents and restores his right­eous walk.

Proverbs 24:16 “for a right­eous man falls seven times, and rises again; but the wicked are over­thrown by calamity”.

There­fore, it is not the right­eous, but the lost that needs sav­ing, as Jesus him­self also said.

The term “saved” car­ries var­i­ous mean­ings depend­ing on the con­text one must always con­sider. Let us take a look at the Eph­esians pas­sage, and let me high­light a few things:

Eph 1:11 “In him, accord­ing to the pur­pose of him who accom­plishes all things accord­ing to the coun­sel of his will, 12 we [i.e. Jews] who first hoped [or fore­hoped] in Christ have been des­tined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you [i.e. Gen­tiles] also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your sal­va­tion, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 which is the guar­an­tee of our inher­i­tance until we acquire pos­ses­sion of it, to the praise of his glory.”

So Paul has Jew­ish and Gen­tile believ­ers in mind.

Now let us skip ahead:

Eph. 2:1 “And you [i.e. Gen­tiles] he made alive, when you [i.e. Gen­tiles] were dead through the tres­passes and sins 2 in which you [i.e. Gen­tiles] once walked, fol­low­ing the course of this world, fol­low­ing the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

In the next verse we see some­thing interesting:

Eph. 2:3 “Among these [i.e. sin­ful, uncon­verted Gen­tiles] we all [an exag­ger­a­tion often used in the Scrip­tures, cer­tainly not true of the right­eous Jews and Gen­tiles who obeyed God before com­ing into the covenant] once lived in the pas­sions of our flesh, fol­low­ing the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature chil­dren of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Paul here refers to sin­ners in gen­eral who turned and con­verted. He calls him­self the chief of sin­ners because he acted against God by per­se­cut­ing the “Way”. What Paul means is that before con­ver­sion some Jew­ish con­verts lived as sin­fully as Gentiles.

If we take that “we” means every sin­gle Jew­ish and Gen­tile con­verts, we have a prob­lem, for it could not be said of Jews in gen­eral that they “lived in the pas­sions of their flesh, fol­low­ing the desires of body and mind and were by nature chil­dren of wrath”. The Jew­ish peo­ple were called by God “my son“and “my ser­vant” in the Tanakh, not the chil­dren of wrath — a term used by Jews to refer to Gen­tiles. Even if God chas­tened them for their sins, he never for­got his covenant with them.

Eph. 2:4 “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our tres­passes, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heav­enly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the com­ing ages he might show the immea­sur­able riches of his grace in kind­ness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Now notice the sud­den change from “us” to “you”. The idea Paul presents here is that Gen­tiles lived in dark­ness. They deserved wrath, not deliv­er­ance, just think about Jonah’s anger over Niniveh escap­ing God’s judg­ment. Indeed, it was con­sid­ered among the Greeks that no love was greater than sex with a young boy. Sol­diers had kids car­ry­ing their weapons whom they also used to sat­is­fied their sex­ual desires. Pros­ti­tu­tion was ripe. It was a reli­gious duty, an act of wor­ship to have sex with tem­ple pros­ti­tutes (who were called vir­gins), who at nights often came down to the city from the tem­ple to offer their ser­vices to the gen­eral pub­lic. Their reli­gions were full of idol­a­try and blas­phemy. We need to keep this in mind to under­stand what Paul is say­ing here.

Now we come to the key verse:

Eph. 2:8 “For by grace you [i.e. Gen­tiles] have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God– 9 not because of works, lest any man should boast.”

Notice the change to “you” again, refer­ring to Gen­tile con­verts. Because of the hor­ri­bly unclean life they lived Gen­tiles didn’t deserve the call­ing of God into the new covenant. There was noth­ing that they did by which they would have deserved it. They only deserved God’s judg­ment. It was purely by his grace that God called them into the covenant.

Eph. 2:10 For we are his work­man­ship, cre­ated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God pre­pared before­hand, that we should walk in them.

Notice the change back to “we”, both Jew­ish and Gen­tile con­verts. Here we have the pur­pose of his call­ing. Good deeds. What are they? Where are they defined? In the law of God. Good deeds, right­eous deeds are obe­di­ence — lov­ing God and lov­ing one’s fel­low beings; doing char­ity to oth­ers. Right­eous deeds are a must, not an option for believers.

1John 2:3 “And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his [i.e. God’s] com­mand­ments. 4 He who says “I know him” but dis­obeys his com­mand­ments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 but who­ever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is per­fected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: 6 he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

Thus, the Eph­esian pas­sage is not about going to heaven. It is about God call­ing sin­ful Gen­tiles into the covenant, who, through con­fes­sion and repen­tance, escaped the wrath of God that was expected to speed­ily come upon the world.