pearliegates

What caught my attention today was Chrysostom’s interpretation of Eph 2:8, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” He takes the antecedent of “this” to be faith, while I think I have always understood it as grace; that is, grace is the gift that God gives us that allows us to be saved when we have faith.

Chrysostom said, “So that you may not be elated by the magnitude of these benefits, see how Paul puts you in your place. For ‘by grace you are saved,’ he says, ‘through faith’. Then, so as to do no injury to free will, he allots a role to us, then takes it away again, saying ‘and this is not of ourselves’ … Even faith, he says is not from us. For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe?”

I will take this on tomorrow to study the verse in greater depth.

Maeghan
Picture by Dimiter Tzankov