the Third Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Ephesians 1:3-14
Why does God save sinners?
Read Psalms 8:1-9
We rejoice to know that God saves sinners. We rejoice to know that God saves sinners by grace through the merits of a Substitute. And we rejoice to know that God’s grace is both eternal and immutable. But why does God save sinful men? He had no mercy upon the angels that fell. Why is he gracious to us? Paul gives us the answer repeatedly: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ... to the praise of the glory of his grace... that we should be to the praise of his glory... unto the praise of his glory.’
1. God saves us because it was his eternal pleasure to bless us with his grace. God passed by the angels that fell; but ‘he hath blessed us’. God passed by multitudes of fallen men; but he ‘hath blessed us’. The cause of God’s blessing upon us is not in us, but in himself alone. Every saved sinner knows and acknowledges that fact. We do not deserve God’s favor. ‘He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy.'
2. God saved us so that we might bless him. Paul is calling us to bless God who hath blessed us. We can add nothing to God’s glory, happiness or majesty. God is totally independent and self-sufficient. But we can bless God, that is to say, we can speak well of him ‘who hath blessed us’. We bless God by simply trusting him. We bless God by celebrating his many glorious attributes. We bless God by faith in his Son. And we bless God by entertaining great thoughts of him.
3. God saved us to the praise of the glory of his grace. The ultimate end of all things is the glory of God. He could as well be glorified in our damnation as in our salvation. Like Pharaoh, we could have been monuments to the glory of God’s justice by our ruin. But, blessed be his name, God has chosen to save us, that we might be ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace!’ (See Psalms 106:8.) May God give us grace even now to praise and magnify his grace.
