Life is a gift. Your life is a gift. Each day that you wake up and experience the world God made is a present from God to you. You do not earn the right to receive another day. It is a gift from day to day. Your life is also a gift from the beginning. What decision did you make to come into this world? What did you do to deserve to be born? Nothing, of course. Being born is what happened to you. Your mother and father had something to do with it. God himself had the most to do with your being born. Your life is a gift from God.

Eternal life, new life in Christ, a right relationship with God—all these are also a gift. Just as you do not earn the right to be born, you do not earn the right to be born again. So what must you do in order to get to heaven? This is a trick question. Your place in heaven depends not on your doing, but on what Jesus has already done. That is why we say we are saved by grace alone (Sola gratia). Grace means a gift from God. If you take the letters of the word grace you can make an acrostic to define it. GRACE: God’s riches at Christ’s expense. I benefit from Christ’s death and resurrection because God gives me this benefit.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in 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 (v 1). How does the apostle describe the condition of being outside of Christ? Is it slow? Sleepy? Sick? Groggy? No, no, no and no. He says you were dead in your sins. Dead to a relationship with God. Dead to the possibility of heaven. Except for the grace of God, this the condition of every human being since sin entered the human. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful desires…Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath (v 3).

Since this is our condition, we are in deep trouble. What is worse, there is nothing we can do to remedy the situation. An ignorant man can be educated. But our problem cannot be solved with education. A sleeping man can be roused. But our situation is not that we are spiritually asleep. We are spiritually dead! What can a dead man do but stay dead? Because we are spiritually dead, there is nothing we can do to even contribute to our salvation.

What is the remedy for being spiritually dead? It is to be made alive. Just as we do not do anything to earn being born, we do not do anything to earn being born again. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved (v 4). God saves us because of his great love for us. Does he love us because we are loveable? No, we were sinners, even dead in our transgressions. Does he love us because he sees potential in us? No, without his work, there is no potential. God loves us because he loves us. His saving work is a gift. It is by grace you have been saved.

Here we get to the nub of the matter. Without Christ you are spiritually dead. Your need is to be made spiritually alive. Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. He was not talking about a mere change of opinion, or a change in (church) club membership. The theological term is regeneration, which is just a fancy way to say what Jesus said, you must be born again.

How then can you be made spiritually alive? The Holy Spirit moves in your heart so that where once you did not care about God, now you care deeply. Where once you did not desire to be in God’s presence, now you relish it. What caused the change? The grace of God. You have been born again. You are spiritually alive.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (v 8-9). We are saved through faith in Christ, but this faith is not a result of our own works. We are able to have faith because God has made us alive by his grace. The faith that you have in Christ is a result of God’s gift. Most of us who have had some sort of conversion experience remember a time when we did not believe in Christ. Then there was a time when we did believe in him. What made the change? Was it a fancy argument? Not really. Was it a powerful speaker? Perhaps, but no—there were other good speakers who produced no change in us. What was it, then? I don’t know. All I know is that I did not believe and now I do. Something inside me changed. What happened? God, who is rich in mercy, made me alive in Christ. Even the possibility of my faith is traced directly to God’s grace alone.

Don’t try to earn favor and forgiveness from God. Receive the gift he offers through Christ. Do you trust in Christ as your Savior? Today is the day to do it. Today I call you to trust in him