Memory Verse Day 13: What is “this”?
(Efesios 2:8 NBLH)
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,"
(Ephesians 2:8 ESV)
I fell a little behind on the weekend, but the good news is that these are verses that I’ve already spent time memorizing, so hopefully I can catch up without too much problem.
This is of course a very well known verse, emphasizing that we are saved freely.
When Paul says this is not your own doing, what is he referring to exactly? Now what it says in the English is even clearer in the Greek, if I understand correctly what Greek scholars are telling me. The word this does not refer to faith – neither to grace – well, actually it refers to both. It refers to the whole clause that comes before it – by grace you have been saved through faith. So grace and faith and all of our salvation is a gift from God.
One thing I encourage people to do with Ephesians 2:1-10 is to take a page and make two columns, then write down in one column everything that we as humans did, and everything that God did. It’s an eye-opener, let me tell you!
Memory Verse Day 14: Boast, no. Praise, yes. — Finding direction
26 March 2012 @ 9:03 am
[…] I’m continuing to catch up on the verses from the weekend. This is the last part of a two-parter that we started in the last post. […]