Free Gift

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Ephesians 2:8-10 says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:  Not of works, lest any man should boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

     I can’t say that I got an allowance from my Mom and Dad but we still did things around the home such as gardening which always required the pulling of weeds.

I did get a small job at the farm across the street which involved the shoveling of a wagon load of corn after school.  I got a quarter for that small task and a quarter was okay in 1949.  It  took about an hour for me to do from a wooden Studebaker wagon that had nail heads sticking up.  It  was work and I got a “salary” for doing  it.  Later on, I got a wage by the hour for small jobs around the farm across the street. Wages are something you get when you complete a work assignment .

     There are many religious groups which require some sort of work in order to receive salvation.  You have to do something  in order to be deemed qualified to be saved and fit  for heaven.  Spiritually speaking, the only thing tha  we earn  through our actions is death where it  says in Romans 6:23 tha the wages of sin is death.   Sins are those things that  we do  that are contrary to God’s standard.  When it comes to salvation, we have to observe the above passage which says that we are saved by grace  through faith and that it is a gift from God.  You can’t earn God’s grace.  It is free and it is unearned.  I know,  they mean the same thing.  You can earn a wage but you cannot earn a gift.  If a gift requires any thing , it  is not a gift but a wage.  In the case of salvation, the Giver  is God and item that is given is salvation.  Therefore, I cannot take a class for  salvation or do a physical requirement such as crawl up a set  of concrete steps or memorize a creed.  All of those things would be works and therefore not a gift  from God.  Does salvation then rule out  good works?    No!  The next  verse reminds us that we do good works “because” of salvation and not “for” salvation.   You can offer praise to God for   the wonderful gift of salvation that God has given to you.