NOTES for Eph 2:1-10

Words about saving grace have become commonplace in the Christian vocabulary. And today we usually give little thought to their meaning. What is this saving grace? Exactly how and from what does it save us? The correct theological answer is well known: from sin, which became the consequence of the fall and shows itself in our life.

Sin hinders our salvation; by our own strength we cannot defeat it completely, and for such a victory we need the grace of Christ, which saves us from sin and from eternal ruin. But what stands behind these words? If we understand them in the context of everything the Bible says about a person's relationship with God, we have to acknowledge that they describe a certain spiritual dynamic. A process. A process into which a person is drawn through his relationship with Jesus. And these relationships themselves, in turn, are an element of the process.

These relationships are precisely what should be called grace. Grace is not simply some divine energy diffused through the world, or some force proceeding from Christ in every direction. It is the unity of Christ with His Father, into which the person who has trusted Christ is included. A person experiences this inclusion in Christ's relationship with the Father as grace. Through this inclusion and in connection with it, the Christian comes to share in the life of the Kingdom.

And such sharing takes place in spite of the sinfulness that, by definition, belongs to fallen man. Through the overcoming of this sinfulness. Through a person's resistance to his own sin with the support of that power of God and that breath of the Kingdom which enter a person through his inclusion in that very spiritual process. In this way God, through Christ and in Christ, changes a person. He transfigures him.

He changes his nature so that sin no longer has any place in it. And more and more He makes the person being saved from sin a resident of the Kingdom. That Kingdom where the whole fullness of grace is opened to a person. The whole fullness of life, not some separate life, but life within the relationships that unite the King of this Kingdom with His heavenly Father. In the end, their relationship forms the foundation of the Kingdom. The whole fullness of grace is there, between the Father and the Son. And all others share in it as they are included in Their relationship. And in the life of the Kingdom, where there is no longer any place for sin.

The apostle Paul speaks of our salvation as an accomplished fact. The apostle uses the perfect aspect of the past tense to emphasize that in God's great love all this has already taken place, already exists. And the person who believes in the reality of God's gift becomes a full participant in the salvation already accomplished by Christ.

The apostle notes that this is a free gift, not compelled by our works. For him this is important because since salvation is given to us according to the riches of God's mercy and not according to our merits, so that no one may boast, it follows that it can be received only by faith, not by works of the law. The apostle expresses this thought many times in different letters, because over us hangs, like the sword of Damocles, the temptation to think that by our labors we deserve God's mercy. But this mercy, this gift of Christ's Blood, is so great that nothing can earn it. As for good works, according to the apostle's word they are the goal and content of that new life in Christ to which we are called.

For a person who has come to believe in Christ, life truly changes, especially at first: what used to be unbearably hard - being kind, honest, loving - suddenly becomes possible (too bad it soon becomes hard again!). And all around is the same world as before, sinful people... How can one avoid becoming proud, avoid exalting oneself?

The apostle Paul addresses precisely such people, reminding them that they, and all of us, have done nothing to deserve this grace of God, that it was sent to us not for our "feats," but because of the redeeming voluntary sacrifice of the Son of Man. And the faith by which we receive this grace of salvation is also not our merit but a gift from God, because He is the One who made us capable of believing, and He also sent us the Holy Spirit, who directs our faith in the right direction.

We have nothing to boast about except God, because we owe Him everything good in our lives. That means we have no reasons and no right to condemn those whose faith and works do not please us.

How should we understand the apostle's words that we are appointed by God for good works in Christ Jesus, and appointed, according to the meaning of the original text, from the beginning of time? Does this mean that we cannot do any works except good ones? Or can the original calling still be violated? And what, then, should we make of the freedom to choose one's spiritual path, about which so many biblical books speak?

One could, of course, say that God really did appoint the human being to good works at the very moment of creation, and if we suppose that God's intention for humanity appears at the same time as his intention for all creation, we could speak even of the beginning of time. But this intention, as can be seen, also included human freedom, freedom so complete that even the fall became possible for the human being, a direct violation of the prohibition God had imposed. As can be seen, calling is calling, and freedom is freedom.

But the apostle is not speaking simply about a calling, but about a calling "in Christ Jesus." This approach changes the matter somewhat: now the question is not simply about the human being, or even simply about the people of God, but about the Messiah and about that messianic remnant of which the prophets spoke. Traditional ideas about the Messiah included precisely the teaching that the Messiah and the people of God had been conceived by God before the creation of the world, at the beginning of time. If so, then everyone who has become a Christian has become part of this plan and of everything connected with it.

Of course, there can be no talk here of predestination with regard to a particular person, for people are not born Christian. Whether to follow Christ or not, each person decides for himself and, naturally, with complete freedom. But when the choice has been made and a person becomes a Christian, he becomes a co-worker in carrying out a plan that truly was conceived by God at the beginning of time. And he receives a new calling to good works in Christ Jesus.

In today's reading, the Apostle Paul says of Christ that He has been appointed head of the Church. The apostle then turns his thought toward clarifying what this means, saying that the Church is His Body and the fullness of Him who fills all in all. These two related aspects define the true, invisible essence of the Church. It is neither an organization nor merely a community of people, although it is both populous and ordered. It is the fullness of God's presence in all things. Moreover, the Church is not only the presence of Christ; in it He fills all things with Himself. What is astonishing and beautiful is that entering into this presence and fullness is not only possible, but even quite easy. To the Church, whose doors are open to everyone who comes, you bring very little: your willingness to receive baptism and to live. And you receive, as at the multiplication of the loaves, the infinite gift of God's fullness.