“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was likely not even written by the apostle Paul, but someone writing in his name to honor him. This was done a lot during biblical times. They didn’t seem to share our modern sense of what entailed plagarism or libel. Anyhow, pseudo-Paul as we will call him, wrote to the early Christian community in Ephesus for a very distinct theological purpose. His goal was to get the Ephesians to see first that Christ’s sacrifice was a gift, and second that this gift should unify them.
It is in my experience that in many traditions of Christianity that the idea of faith being a gift that is given to us is mostly lost. Faith is not seen as a gift, but something we are supposed to do. In our culture of market and choice, we see faith and belief as a conscience choice instead of the gift of the Holy Spirit that it is.
