Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: ⁹Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

Many times Ephesians 2:8 is used to support the teaching that faith is the gift of God. This is accomplish by assigning incorrectly ‘faith’ as the antecedent of the pronoun ‘it’. This is an error corrected by understanding and proper use of English grammar.

They assume some non-existent rule that the closest noun has to be the antecedent. There is not such rule; the antecedent could be three pages back. It is all in the context and grammar.

We are dead to the law in Christ, being dead the law has no power to condemn us. “All things are lawful,” as we are not in bondage to the law.

The first thing to note is that it is a compound sentence containing two independent clauses that can be split into two sentences.

• For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves.
• It is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

Starting with the first sentence we will rewrite it in normal order subject/predicate (verb).

• Ye are saved by grace through faith and not of yourselves.

Next we will remove the modifiers: adverbs, adjectives, etc. In this case the modifiers are in the form of prepositional phrases.

• Ye are saved by grace through faith and not of yourselves.

This leaves us with the simple sentence: simple subject and simple predicate.

• Ye are saved.

We will break down the second sentence removing its modifiers.

• It is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.
• It is the gift.

This leaves us with two simple sentences.

• Ye are saved. It is the gift.

You can clearly see now that the antecedent of the pronoun ‘it’ is the noun ‘saved’.

Prepositional phrases, as we all know, are additional information that can be taken out or moved around without affecting the meaning of the sentence.

• Ye are saved through faith, by grace.
• By grace, through faith, are ye saved.
• Through faith, by grace, are ye saved.
• Ye are saved through faith by grace.
• By grace are ye saved through faith.

The object of the preposition, or the noun of the prepositional phrase, is never the subject of a sentence as it will be in the object case and not the subjective. Hence. the antecedent of the subject ‘it’ is not ‘faith’ but the predicate nominative, the noun ‘saved’.

Salvation is the gift of God’s grace and it is granted to an individual through his faith in the gospel of Christ Jesus. Putting your faith in Christ Jesus is the condition to receive the gift of salvation. This is sometimes referred to as conditional salvation.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

“Believeth in him” is the condition men have to meet to receive “everlasting life.” It is by grace through the condition of having faith that we are granted salvation. Conditional Theology upholds faith, “whosoever believeth,” as the condition to receive the gift of God’s grace, salvation.

You may ask why it was not written were it would be obvious what was meant. It is a test and a trap; God wants to see who will diligently study and ensnare those that do not.

1 Corinthians 11:19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

As you can see, using basic grammar keeps us from making the error.

For those interested in sharping your grammar shills, I recommend Grammar Revolution, a very easy way to learn grammar, everything you need is free.

Works have no part in eternal salvation.
Works is in everything else.
It takes work to diligently study God’s word.

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