The Christian God's workmanship

The Christian is God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works

Paul likens the Christian to a work of art, an article of furniture or a machine. For we are God's workmanship he says created in Christ Jesus. All that has gone before would fit with that. The Christian is no self-made man. We do not turn ourselves into Christians. No, God does it. It is by his grace we are saved and even the faith we express is a gift from him. Now when God created this machine, this work of art, he created it with a purpose. And what was that purpose? To do good works! That's the reason why God makes Christians. He doesn't create them simply to make them happy or let them do as they wish. No, he fashions and creates them so that they may do good works! One writer says rightly “The primary object was not to bring us to heaven. It was that we should be 'holy'.” There are people who say they are Christians yet they seem to have no interest in good works. They seem to think that because we are not saved by good works then good works are somehow unimportant and it doesn't matter whether you do them or not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, if you say you are a Christian and there are no good works, something has gone wrong somewhere. Either, you are not a Christian or you have completely misunderstood. No, if you really are a Christian then your whole aim in life should be to do what is good and pleasing to God.

It is the Christian who is ideally placed to do good works. He is not doing his good works to get himself to heaven. That is already certain. He's doing it for God's glory.

One thing that stunts good works is the thought of past failure. The Christian is forgiven for all his sins and every new day or hour he starts again with a clean sheet. All his bad deeds, all his failure to have done good in the past is all forgotten and he begins again to do what is good.

I want to urge you who believe to good works then. There a thousand different ones, from little acts of kindness to great acts of charity. We cannot do them all but we can, by God's grace, do some. Let's do all we can. In John Wesley's famous words “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”

Saved through faith

The Christian is saved through the gift of faith

Paul then adds that this grace comes through faith – and in case you are then tempted to think it is, after all, all a matter of what we do, he adds and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Even faith itself - putting your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, leaning on him – is a gift from God. Faith is more a matter of the means by which God's grace is received.

If I drink a milkshake with a straw I don't say I'm drinking the straw – I'm drinking the milkshake through the straw. The milkshake is the thing not the straw.

If I say to you “come and see me” I will tell you my address and you will knock on my door and I will open the door to you. The knocking on the door and the door are important but quite incidental really. It is just the means to the end.

In case there is any confusion, however, Paul says that even faith is a gift from God. You can't have it unless God grants it to you. It really is all of God's grace. The through faith is important though. To have faith is to believe. It is to put your trust in.

How the Channel Tunnel was made and how good works happen

The good works spoken about in Ephesians 2:10 were prepared in advance for Christians to do by God himself.

Let's not miss this encouraging bit - which God prepared in advance for us to do (literally to walk in). God not only prepared us who believe to do good works but he has also prepared the works that need to be done too.

You know that when they dug the Channel tunnel, they didn't simply start this end and work through to France. No, they started at this end and at the other end, in France, too. And then on one historic day (December 1, 1990 it was) the two halves met and were joined to make a whole.

Now in a similar way, God has worked not only to make believers capable of doing good works but he has also prepared in advance good works for them to do.