Two Great Verses, One Great Truth

I read this in Ephesians 2 this morning:

"...even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)... "(verse 5)

It reminded me of one of my favorite verses elsewhere:

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

That verse in Ephesians is a great verse. Here Paul is telling us that even though we were wallowing in our own sin, Christ made us alive. This is the wonder of grace. It's not that Jesus waited around for us to straighten up our acts, or to try to clean up our lives a little bit so we would be good enough to save...no, right in the midst of our being dead in our sins, Christ made us alive. I love the parenthetical statement: "by grace you have been saved."

Grace saves you.

It's not works.

Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves.