You’ve heard “for by grace you are saved through faith” from Ephesians 2:8 so many times it barely registers as a sentence anymore. It’s on coffee mugs. It’s cross-stitched and hanging on someone’s wall. If someone stopped you on the street and asked you to explain, in your own words, what grace and faith are and how they work together, could you? What does it mean that grace works through faith? Would you be able to explain that? A lot of Christians would struggle because these words have been repeated so frequently, we stop thinking about what they mean. They are now “churchy” words that are almost cliché.

But you have to look past the cliché to see what this passage teaches. Once you do, the picture is both simple and solid.