We who preach with any regularity are used to hearing complaints about our use of big words. I tend to defend “big words” because big words carry so much good news.
I have learned it is just as important for me to argue for the little words of theology. Some of the most important little words in all the Bible, I think, are prepositions. Prepositions are links that indicate relationships between or among other words. When it comes to theology, prepositions define the logical relationship between or among terms and ideas. Giving careful attention to prepositions helps us to think clearly about the gospel.
It’s a classic example — and an important one: We know that grace and faith are related to our salvation. What role is played by each of these, and how do they relate? This is hardly an academic question. Our answer says much about our practical religion.
What does grace do for us? Which comes first, grace or faith? Is it grace that produces faith, or is it faith that gives us grace? Can we trust our own faith to save us? If so, what does grace really mean?
This confusion experienced by many I know can be relieved by appeal to prepositions found in the text of Holy Scripture.
In one important salvation text, the Apostle Paul uses prepositions to relate grace, faith, and salvation; “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). Salvation results from two things: grace and faith. So what is the role that each plays? The answer is found in the prepositions “by” and “through.”
The first preposition — “by” — concerns God’s grace; Paul says we are saved “by grace.” This prepositional phrase is constructed in the ancient language of the New Testament by use of the Greek dative case to signify agency. “By grace” means “by the agency of grace.”
This answers the question: Who saves us? God saves us by his grace! Paul has insisted that we “were dead” in our “trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), so that we are not able to do anything to initiate our salvation. “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5).
So what, then, is the role of faith? To answer this, Paul continues, “Through faith” (Eph. 2:8), that is, faith “in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). The key preposition for faith is “through,” which refers to the means or instrumentality by which we are saved.
We are saved by God’s grace (grace is the ground and agency of our salvation) through faith, which is the means by which we receive the gift of salvation. Faith is viewed as that way by which God’s gracious gift of salvation is received — through our faith — the way water flows through a pipe.
When we line up the relationship between and among grace, faith, and salvation in terms of these prepositions, we discover a glorious gospel. It is because our salvation is “by grace” that we may rest all our hope in God. God does not — and cannot — change, and his grace is completely reliable.
God’s gifts — and salvation by grace means that salvation is God’s free gift — are never taken back (cf. Romans 11:29). If we have been saved by grace, we have been saved by God, and what God begins, God always finishes (cf. Philippians 1:6). Instead of worrying about our salvation, we are freed to devote ourselves to praise. By grace! By God! What praise God deserves from us!
How do I know I have received this grace? The Bible’s answer is “through faith” in Jesus Christ.
So what are we to trust? Are we to trust our faith? Not at all, for as Paul continues, “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Even our faith is God’s gift, graciously given for our salvation.
So does our faith matter at all? Yes, it matters very much! Without the faith that God gives, God’s grace cannot be received. Through faith, we can know that God has saved us by his grace.
Thank God for prepositions! In the little words of the Bible, we find big truth for our growth in Christ.
David A. Dobi is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Greenville.
