reward for any of your deeds of religion or philanthropy (“not by works” [v. 9]). This whole event and experience of being saved by God’s grace through faith is God’s free gift. Finally, Paul adds one more positive, decisive, and glorious affirmation in verse 10. We are God’s handiwork—or as F. F. Bruce has put it, “his work of art, his masterpiece.” Salvation is creation, re-creation, new creation. And creation language is nonsense unless there is a Creator; self-creation is a patent contradiction