Read Ephesians 2:1–10

“By grace you have been saved” (v. 5). This short sentence helped to start a revolution. Among other passages of Scripture, especially from the epistle to the Romans, this statement prompted Martin Luther to launch the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago.

It’s still a revolutionary thought, for the simple reason that we don’t act as if we believe it. How would our lives look different if we truly believed that God’s grace has saved us and we don’t need to do anything to earn God’s favor? Would that kind of freedom change us and our behavior? Would it free us up to love more and worry less, to give of ourselves more generously and trust God more truly? I think it would.

The idea that we are saved by grace was touted heavily in the Southern Baptist church of my youth, but the message got cloudy when it was accompanied by a long list of rules and regulations, dos and don’ts, thou shalts and thou shalt nots. It was as though we professed to believe in the sufficiency of grace, but deep down we were sure it wasn’t enough. Grace and right living. Grace and evangelism. Grace and service. There always seemed to be an “and” after grace. That strikes me now as fear-based religion, not a love-based orientation to the divine. Instead of resting in the ocean of God’s love we too often keep toiling away, struggling against the breakers that crash relentlessly on the beach.

I don’t mean to pick on my home church, or even on the Southern Baptists, for that matter; many different people from many different denominational backgrounds could say the same thing. It’s a human foible, I guess, this penchant for anxiety, this distrust of love. That’s what it boils down to, I’m afraid: a fundamental lack of trust that the love of God will be enough to summit the mountain of our sins or a fear that God will change God’s mind about saving us. So we keep on striving, seeking to add more tallies to the plus side of the ledger and hoping the total will be greater than the minus side.

But that’s precisely what the writer of the letter to the Ephesians is arguing against. He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (vv. 8–9). God’s love is enough. God’s grace is bigger and mightier than our sin. We can’t add or subtract anything from the unconditional favor God has already shown us.

So what about good works? Does grace-based salvation mean that we don’t have to do anything, that we can be libertines and hedonists, trusting that God will not count our trespasses against us? No, it doesn’t, as the writer points out in the next verse: “For we are what [God] has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (v. 10). We are created for good works. They are to be our way of life. Not a hobby or an occasional pastime, but the way we live each day of our lives.

The difference is that the works we are created for come as a result of grace, not as a means to earn it. Good works are the natural overflow of a life full of love. When we truly experience grace, we can’t help but respond in loving ways in an effort to spread that grace to the world.

Have you experienced that kind of grace, or are you living a fear-based life of striving? Let yourself fall into that ocean of God’s love. Trust me, you’ll float.