It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. (MSG)

This first paragraph is a paraphrase of Ephesians 2:1-6, and while it misses some of the specifics and nuance of a more direct translation, I love how it gets to the heart of the message we are supposed to hear.

In life it feels like people fluctuate between the extreme of too much self-confidence and too little self-confidence. We rarely seem to take a balanced accurate view of ourselves or our place in the world. But Ephesians 2 is pushing a lot of the possible worry out of the way. Before Christ’s saving work on the cross, we were stuck living stagnant lives and stuck in the drudgery of sin. It is only through Christ that we are brought back to life.

And we don’t bring anything to this equation. God didn’t look at you and say, “this one is worthy of salvation.” God saw only a sinner who was loved and who needed a savior. When we come with empty hands, we come with all we need.

Since we have been saved in Christ, God raises us up, and we will see the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us. For by grace we have been saved, not because of anything we have done. It is the gift of God.