Articles
“"It is the Gift of God"”
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9
Perhaps no other text in Scripture summarizes so succinctly and beautifully the doctrine of salvation as the text above. God accomplishes our salvation “by grace… through faith.” Paul goes onto say, “it is the gift of God,” so that all human boasting is excluded.
But what is “the gift of God”? The belief of many is that “the gift” refers to our “faith.” God either gives faith to us so that we can be saved or he withholds it. This reading would imply that we are completely passive in the process of salvation.
The argument goes something like this: In a state of spiritual death (2:1-3), we are utterly incapable of making any free and rational choice to obey the gospel. So we must be made alive (2:5-7), which God chooses to do on his own initiative and according to his own wisdom. Only then can we can accept God’s grace and be saved. Therefore, according to this view, “faith” must be a gift given to us by God.
Due to the subtle mixture of truth and error within this view, it is difficult to untangle. While it is true that the act of salvation is God’s alone and we are utterly dead and lost without him, it is also true that God has endowed us with freewill to respond to him rationally. If we examine the grammar of this passage, we will see that “faith,” by itself, is not what Paul refers to as “the gift of God.”
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
In the Greek language, like modern German, every noun has a gender that is either masculine, feminine or neuter. The gender of the noun “faith” (pistes) is feminine. The gender of the pronoun “this” is neuter. Therefore, the antecedent for “this” is not the word “faith”. “Faith” cannot be the “gift of God” because Paul’s own grammar won’t allow it. For “this” to refer to “faith” would require the corresponding pronoun to be feminine. For the same reason, “this” cannot refer to “grace” either, because “grace” is also feminine.
If this is the case, what are the pronouns referring to? What is “the gift of God”? When the pronoun is neuter it is referring back to a general thought or phrase. So, “this” is referring to the entire preceding clause, namely, salvation by grace through faith.
Therefore, the “gift of God” which Paul refers to with the neuter pronouns “this” and “it,” is not just “faith” or “grace” but the whole process by which God chooses to save us — “by grace… through faith.” We might put it like this for the sake of clarity: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this [being saved by grace through faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
God has chosen to save all those who have faith in Christ (Jn. 3:16). This is the gift of God, the wonderful way in which he saves us. He extends his grace to all humanity “bringing salvation for all people” (Titus 2:11) because he “desires all people to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4). Yet, God has designed it in such a way that only those who have faith in the good news of Jesus can be saved (Rom. 1:16).
Though the act of salvation is entirely God’s work (only God can give life to the dead), he gives us the dignity of choice in the matter (Gen. 2:16; Deut. 30:19; Josh. 24:15). That way, as CS Lewis put it, “no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” This self-choice is what makes love a possibility, and for this God has destined his children (1 Cor. 13:13). “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15), the gift of salvation “by grace… through faith.”
