2:8 you have been saved. Salvation is a completed action that has a present effect. In his earlier letters Paul usually refers to salvation either as a future event (Rom. 5:9, 10) or as a present process (1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:15). One exception is Rom. 8:24, where Paul puts salvation in the past, but qualifies it as needing completion at Christ’s return: “in this hope we were saved.”

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. This parenthesis is thought by many to refer to the whole complex of salvation by grace through faith as a gift of God. Others, however, take “this” as referring specifically to “faith.” Sinners are dependent on God’s gracious gift for their believing response to Christ from the moment of conversion. Paul makes explicit here what is implicit elsewhere in the New Testament about the ultimate source of saving faith (Acts 13:48; Phil. 1:29).