Hi, I’ve been having toouble with something recently. I’ve been trying really hard to not think my works are my salvation. Sometimes I realize that we aren’t saved by our works and that works are only a part of our salvation but too often I keep thinking that our works ARE our salvation and that I’m not doing enough. I keep trying to remind myself that we aren’t saved by our works and that we are saved by grace but then I just keep falling into this pit of doubt that I’m saved because I can never “do enough” to be counted righteous by God. Even though I know that Christ is the only way to Heaven. Can anyone help me with this?
Well, it can become a sort of dichotomy leading to an artificial conflict.
I think the help is always to humbly read the scriptures, fully (that is, full passages, chapters, books, with a listening attitude).
Having recently read through Ephesians I'm comfortable taking out 3 verses, but I strongly encourage you to read through fully all the book.
Ah....you know, actually even the 3 verses of 2:8-10, even if one read the book in the last year, still it's better that full paragraph instead, even just as a remembering:
1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,
2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh
a and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
9not by works, so that no one can boast.
10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
So, as you see, because we are alive, because Christ makes us alive, now we will do the "good works which God prepared in advance for us to do".
It's this order: we are made alive, we who were dead, and thus we begin to follow Him.
Even if this helps, still the way to go is to read fully through the entire epistle though. And fully through a gospel every year or two, because of how listening to Christ aids us profoundly (as told to us in the Gospel of John).
