Does God give someone their faith as a gift so they can be saved?

What is "the gift of God" in Ephesians 2:8?

This has often been discussed. Philippians 1:29 states that it "was given" to the Philippians to believe on Christ. That is not the teaching of Ephesians 2:8, however. The grammar doesn’t seem to support this. If the antecedent of "that" ("that not of yourselves") were faith (Greek: "pistis," feminine), it would be feminine. Faith is not the theme of the passage, so the context would not point to that, either.

The passage deals with grace, but saying that grace is not of ourselves is redundant. It is evidently of God and, by definition, undeserved.

The gracious provisions of salvation (verses 4-6) will be unfolded eternally (verse 7). Being saved, resulting from grace and received by faith, is not accomplished by works, but by God Himself. This is further supported by verse 10, because they were God’s workmanship. What grace made them - as a result of their being saved - had the imprint of God’s hand. He did the work.

Simply put, their being saved was the gift of God.

D. Oliver