Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
By Grace, Through Faith, for Works
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, · WEB
Three verses that exclude works and then command them, and the order between the two is the whole point.
The formula is exact and each preposition is doing work. By grace — the cause. Through faith — the means. Not of yourselves — the origin denied. It is the gift of God — the origin supplied.
What the gift is has been argued over, since the Greek pronoun does not agree in gender with either grace or faith. The most natural reading takes it of the whole preceding transaction — the being saved, by grace, through faith — which is how the sentence reads if nothing is forced.
Verse 9 closes the door: not of works, that no one would boast. And the reason given is not that works are worthless but that boasting would be available. The letter is protecting something about the recipient's posture.
Then verse 10, and it is the verse that keeps the passage from being misread in either direction. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.
The same word is denied and commanded three lines apart. Works are excluded as the ground of salvation and named as its purpose — the preposition changes from of to for, and everything turns on it. And the readers are described as God's workmanship, which puts them among the works rather than among the workers.
The last clause seals the order: those good works were prepared beforehand by God, so even the doing is not the readers' contribution to their standing. Another letter reaches the same place from the opposite side, insisting that a faith which produces nothing is dead James 2:17, and a third calls it faith working through love Galatians 5:6.
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