If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour who died and suffered for your sins in the three hours of darkness on the cross. If you have repented of your sins, that is, you have seen yourself as God sees you in your sinful state with all the sins that you have committed. If you have come to God with a confession, if that has happened once in your life, but you have no assurance of salvation, you don’t know whether you’re really saved. Sometimes you feel saved. Sometimes you don’t feel saved. Sometimes you think you will be in heaven, but then other times you’re not so sure. I have something for you. I would like to draw your attention to a Bible verse that you might know very well that you have heard and read many times in your life, but which will change your perspective on your salvation fundamentally. You may think that this bio verse says something that the whole New Testament says multiple times, but actually what this bio verse puts us and the way it puts it to us is something that we hardly find anywhere else in the New Testament. I would like to draw your attention to this by verse, Ephesians 2, verse 8 and 9. And there it says for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. As I said, we may know this by verse very well and we might say, yeah, I know this, I’m saved by grace, saved through faith, by grace. And we may maybe focus on the grace aspect or the faith aspect. But I would like to turn your attention now to this little phrase. You have been saved, a phrase that the apostle Paul under the guidance of the Holy Spirit uses a second time already. You will find the first time in at the end of verse 5. And we need to look into this by verse and also need to investigate a little bit how the apostle Ball wrote it in the original Greek. No worries. It’s not going to be difficult. It’s going to be easy to understand. I hope so. But let’s focus on this aspect. You have been saved on this phrase. Now, in the Greek original in which this letter was written to the believers in Ephesus, this phrase is a paraphrasical, perfect passive construction. We’re not going to worry about the periphrasca now, but we have to understand the perfect aspect and the passive aspect. And I start with the passive aspect. The passive aspect says we have not saved ourselves. It is God who saved us. It is by grace. It is God’s grace that has saved US. Grace is this unmerited, undeserved love or favor of God. Salvation finds its source in God. He is the origin of salvation. He has splendid crafted, executed it. Salvation is of God. But how has this salvation found its way to us? And the channel is through faith. That was something that was necessary on our side. Faith is necessary on our side. It is God’s grace that puts the focus on God. It is through faith that puts the focus on us. But even that faith it says, and that not of yourselves, of yourselves, again says it is not over out of of our yourselves. That is, it doesn’t find its source in you. You are not the origin of that faith that was necessary. No, it is the gift of God. And then verse 9, we read not of works, lest anyone should boast. Yes, if we work for all salvation, then we have something to boast. I can tell God, well at least a little bit, I deserve to be in heaven. No, God says no, it’s not of your works, it’s not of yourself. It is God’s gift, it is of God, it is God’s grace, and he is the originator of salvation. Salvation is of God. And therefore, if you want to boast, we boast of God, we praise Him that he has this desire, had this desire to save you and me, but we could not save ourselves. Salvation is of God. And henceforth the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, uses a passive construction here. You have been saved. You didn’t save yourself, God saved you. Now let’s move on to the perfect aspect here of this phrase. Now depending on what we want to say, well, that’s true for all different languages. We use different tenses and the the purpose that we have dictates what tense I use. Now when scripture uses a specific tense or any specific words, there is a reason for it. Now the apostle Paul uses perfect here. He doesn’t use the future tense or the present tense or the arrowist, which is a particular tense in the Greek. No, he uses perfect tense. Why? What is the purpose here? Now, the perfect tense we use when there is an action in the past which is accomplished, it is done with, it is dealt with, it is finished, but it has lasting, remaining continuous results in the present. And that is the detail of what wanted you to turn to. Our salvation has happened in the past. When we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ with repentance and faith, that is where we were saved. I don’t know how many years that is ago. For you. It may be a long time ago, 50 years. It might only be recent. But that is something that has been accomplished in the past. But now the meaning of the perfect comes in. It has continuous results even until now. We could also say with that salvation in the past which is accomplished, we have entered a state of being saved and we remain saved. That is the meaning or that is the purpose behind using the perfect tense here and to bring it to a conclusion. We could say we are now just as saved as we will be in heaven. Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are now just as saved as they will be in heaven. Or to put it the other way around, in heaven we will not be more saved than we are now. We are now already eternally saved. When it comes to the state of our soul, we are eternally saved and nothing and no one can change that. Oh, that is such a blessing and we praise God. We can say so because salvation does not depend on me, it depends on God. He is the origin of salvation. Salvation is of God. And if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can know I have been saved and I’m still saved and I will remain saved. I will reach the eternal destiny in heaven one day when my life on earth is finished. I will be with God. I will be in the glory of God. I will be with the Lord Jesus Christ. Does that make us indifferent concerning how we live? No, if we understand that God has saved us to stay and remain saved, that makes us to boast of God, to praise Him for what he has accomplished. That he there was something in his heart that he has planned and that he has executed, and that we are saved on the foundation of the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because I know I am saved, I want to live a life that is glorifying God, that is pleasing to God. You have been saved. It’s an accomplished act in the past that has remaining continuous result. Now we are saved and we stay saved. Praise be to God. Thank you for watching this video and until the next one I say goodbye and God bless.