We Must Answer The Call To Salvation Before We Can Answer The Call To Holiness.

We are to seek ‘the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:14). This is not the ‘holiness’ of the Pharisee: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men...’ (Luke 18:11-12). It is the holiness that grows in the hearts and lives of those who have received ‘the grace of God’, those who have prayed, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’ (Hebrews 12:5; Luke 18:13). We do not earn ‘the grace of God’ as a reward for our ‘holiness’. Salvation is ‘not our doing, it is the gift of God - not because of works, so that no one can boast’. There is a call to holiness. We are saved ‘for good works’. Before we think about holiness, we must get first things first: ‘By grace you have been saved through faith... for good works’ (Ephesians 2:8-10). We must answer the call to salvation before we can answer the call to holiness.

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This is the thirty-fourth and final post in a series of comments on Ephesians 2.