Good News, Good Works

  • David Fairchild
  • May 2, 2010
  • Series: Ephesians

Good News, Good Works

Ephesians 2:8-10

David Fairchild

May 2, 2010

Over the last several weeks Paul, the writer of the book of Ephesians, has taken us on a journey.  He’s shown us how incredibly vast the gospel is by spanning eternity. 

If chapter one was the gospel from God’s perspective, chapter two begins to show the gospel from the human perspective.  Last week we looked at our previous identity before God broke into our lives.  We were dead in our sins and trespasses against God.  We followed the world in the ways of death and were enslaved to Satan.  We followed the sinful desires of our body and mind.  In all of this, we were children of wrath, rejected by God as spiritual orphans.

Yet Paul says, “But God!...”  God gives us life and forgives all of our sins.  He frees us so that we’re no longer slaves.  And He makes us His children and pours His love upon us as a Father.

This is what it means to be a Christian: To have life, freedom and adoption into God’s family.  This is true salvation.  But how does God do this for us?  How is it possible to have all these things promised to us? 

Verse 8 is the answer.

Saved by Grace 

Verse 8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”

Grace!  Grace is what saves us.  Grace transforms us and makes us new.  Grace motivates our hearts to live lives of faith in Him and love towards others. 

There is a tremendous danger in talking about the word grace.  We can become too familiar with the word that we miss its breathtaking meaning.


We’ve been saved by grace.  God has chosen to love us purely by unmerited favor--favor that doesn’t look to our works or performance but to His work and performance. 

In all of God’s dealings with us, from giving us faith, adopting us, changing us and bringing us safely to Him in the end, He deals with us by grace.  All that we have we have by grace.  There is nothing in us that contributes one bit to our salvation.  We bring nothing to Him.  This is what separates Christianity from religion. 

In religion, you obey and do good works because you’re trying to gain God’s acceptance.  In religion you believe in doctrinal truth, affirm it and can probably even teach it.  But functionally you are driven to live up to standards so that you will be approved. 

In religion you are developing a righteousness that you present to God.  In Christianity, you bring nothing to God but your sins.  In religion, you’re trying to sew together fig leaves to hide your shame.  In true Christianity, you realize your nakedness and come out from hiding to receive His grace.  There is no middle ground.  Luther says:

“For there is no middle ground between Christian righteousness and works-righteousness.  There is no alternative to Christian righteousness but works-righteousness; if you do not build your confidence on the work of Christ you must build your confidence on your own work.”

Did you hear that?  You either build your confidence on what Christ has done for you or you build your confidence on what you do for Him. 

Paul teaches us in Galatians that this isn’t a small deviation within the same religion.  He says that if we don’t believe that we’re saved purely by God’s grace, then we’re following an entirely different religion.

Galatians 1:6-8: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—  7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

He says that you either believe in the one true Gospel of grace, or you are accursed, cut off from the life of God. 

You see, in Galatia, Paul was dealing with a sect called the Judaizers.  They affirmed the essentials of the faith by proclaiming there was one God, that Jesus was the promised Messiah, that the Scripture was God’s word, and that faith was important. 

They could check off all the theological boxes, but they twisted the order of the gospel.  Paul was preaching: Believe in Christ, you are accepted, then you obey out of love.  The Judaizers were teaching others to believe, obey, and then you were accepted. 

This is a different gospel that is no gospel at all.  One is motivated out of a love for God and the other is motivated by duty to earn God’s love. 

The truth is that the church is filled with both kinds.  We sit next to one another, we both pray, sing, read our bibles and have fellowship, but inwardly we are driven by different motivations. 

Richard Lovelace in his great book Dynamics of Spiritual Life says this:

“Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in the lives…Many…have a theoretical commitments to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for their justification…drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.  Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the…righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance…Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure…Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce, defensive assertion of their own righteousness, and the defensive criticism of others.  They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.” 

This is what Paul is getting at in verse 9.

Verse 9: “not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The most common (I believe the most accurate) criticism the world has about the church is that we are arrogant hypocrites. 

How is it that this has become such widespread perception?  Lovelace says we become insecure because our righteousness is dependent upon our performance. Arrogance, defensiveness and a hypocritical spirit begin to permeate a community that forgets it’s saved only by grace. 

We start to believe that we’re saved by our works, and in doing so we boast in pride that we have the truth and are living good and upright lives.  We look down our noses at those who don’t have the truth (or not as much!) and aren’t living such good lives. 

There is a devastating communal impact when we forget we’re saved by grace.  Turn with me to Galatians 2 and we’ll see what happens. 

Galatians 2:11-13: “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.  12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.  13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” 

This is an amazing story that God records for us to read and consider.  Think about it, Peter spent three years with Jesus.  Jesus chose to build His church upon him.  Peter was the spokesman for the early church and preached the first gospel at Pentecost.  He is a pillar of the church.  It is 15-20 years after Jesus rose from the dead, and yet he’s completely blowing it!

Some of James’ boys come from Jerusalem where they were ministering to the Jews and when they showed up, Peter starts to slowly pull away from the Gentiles with whom he was eating.  He was afraid they would think he was breaking the law by not keeping the clean rules.  You see, they thought if you ate with defiled Gentiles, you would become defiled.  So they wouldn’t have a meal with them.  But Peter was just fine, having a great time, and eating away until they showed up. 

You can imagine how crushed the Gentiles would have been.  Peter was respected and admired, and yet he starts acting as if they weren’t accepted.  Worse yet, the sweetest and most encouraging guy we know of from the NT, Barnabas, was led astray by their hypocrisy!

Peter tried to keep the laws, removed himself from fellowship with his brothers, and then led others into the same hypocrisy.  It would have been easy for the Gentiles to say, “See, I told you they’d never accept us!” and leave. 

So what does Paul do about this?  How does he handle this?  How should we handle this?  Let’s read on.

Galatians 2:14-16: “But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’  15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

Paul says something pretty important.  He says that their conduct wasn’t “in step” with the truth of the Gospel.  In other words, their actions betrayed what they knew to be true about God and how God saves us by grace. 

Paul could have easily said, “Bad Christian! You should know better than to be racist,” but didn’t.  This would have been nothing but law.  He could have said, “Peter, shame on you for not having table fellowship with the Gentiles.  You know better.”  The problem is that Peter’s fear of not living up to standards was what got him in trouble in the first place.  To take the gospel and make it a law wouldn’t help Peter.  Instead of trying to be accepted by James’ boys through keeping the clean laws, he would have tried to be accepted by Paul and the Gentiles by not keeping them.  Either way, he would have been motivated by standards to be accepted. 

Instead, Paul masterfully reminds him that he’s not being consistent and walking in step with the truth of the gospel.  In other words, Peter, remember that you and I are saved by grace through faith and not by works of the law.  Remember that God’s love for us isn’t dependent upon how well we’ve done but how well Jesus has done for us. 

There is a real danger in turning the gospel into a law by using it to shame each other into obedience.  This is an opportunity for the devil to take the good news and turn it into bad news by making it a work we do. Luther says:

“It is the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold onto the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside. . . . Once I debate about what I have done and left undone, I am finished. But if I reply on the basis of the gospel, ‘The forgiveness of sins covers it all,’ I have won.”

Every time we’re tempted to believe that we haven’t lived up, every time we start to think about what we haven’t done or have done to show we’re righteous, we’ll slip.  Instead, we have to remind each other that the gospel is “good news” not “good advice.”  The gospel tells me that God has already forgiven my sins through Christ and given me a righteousness I couldn’t earn.  Once we remember that, we can tell the Devil to kiss our backside. 

This is the fight to remember God saves us by grace.  As we remember we’re saved by grace we can begin living lives of good works.  We can begin to love the law of God because we’re not keeping it to get His favor.  Instead, we keep the law because we’re grateful and want to be like Him. 

God is committed to our change.  Listen to this next verse. 

We Are a Work of Art

Verse 10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

The Greek word poiēma is where we get the word poetry; it means art.  We are his poetry and his work of art. 

We were created to be God’s crowning achievement in creation.  We were the only ones that were made in His image.  When we fell, we became distorted and marred.  We became twisted and defiled.  I’m not speaking about mere physical appearance, I’m speaking of the inward beauty or ugliness reflected in our actions. 

But God was not finished with us.  He set out on the long promise to make us beautiful again. 

Jesus gave Himself to make His bride spotless and splendorous.  He didn’t just die to make you live, He died to make you live beautifully.  His love is an awakening and beautifying love.  It’s a restorative love that takes junk that has been thrown away and is lifeless and it regenerates it and gives it a new power greater than what it had when first made.  We are created in the Master’s heart, held closely and treasured.   

As odd as it sounds for me to say this, in our Father’s eyes we are beautiful. We are valuable, and as His workmanship we are an expression of the inner being of the Artist. 

CS Lewis puts it this way in the Problem of Pain:

“When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some ‘disinterested,’…indifferent, concern for our welfare…You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked…is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way…nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work…”

Have you ever seen a sculptor take a piece of marble and make a work of art from it?  The artist chisels it, sweats and bleeds over it, and is fully consumed in his work.  Nothing is left to chance.  He is exalting in his work.  He uses the strength of his arms and the tender touch of his hands to take a hard block and make it art.  It is an extension of him.  It is a creation of his.  When done, all the hard work, all the pain and toil results in something he is gloriously proud of.  This is what God has done in Jesus to make us His poiēma.

And what is so strange about this idea of being God’s work of art is that He makes us complete on the one hand and yet is still at work to finish what He began.  He sees us as a finished work, but is finishing His work in us.  We are both His work of art, complete in His heart, and yet He is shaping us into the new form. 

It’s like an expensive work of art that has been heavily wrapped by paper and tape to be transported.  When it arrives, the artist who made it begins the task of unwrapping it.  Gently, carefully, the artist removes the tape and slowly the work begins to emerge. 

God has created this beautiful work and slowly He is unwrapping the plain paper of our life as He begins to show off His masterpiece.  Right now you may only have a glimpse of what’s underneath.  That is where faith comes in.  We have to trust that what He began, He will complete.  When we are completed, what we’ll see is no less than a self-portrait of the Artist Himself, Jesus Christ. 

This is why we’re told in Romans 8:29, “For those whom he foreknew (fore-loved) he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…”

God is fully committed to shaping and forming you into the very image and likeness of His Son. 

In this posture of faith, we trust His word and believe that He will make good on His promise.  This radically shapes our identity.  Instead of being a piece of scrap metal, we’ve been purchased by an Artist who loves us and has made us His own and is forming us into something beautiful. 

This also shapes how we see one another.  We begin to treat each other according to who they are.  As friends, we are to love each other as an apprentice of the Artist.  We’re to see each other as valuable works of Art that the Master loves and is committed to.  When we look at one another, we don’t see a cold block of marble, instead we see a work of art.  As His apprentice, He’s working through us to help that image and identity become realized. 

We become partners with God to see these masterpieces unveiled.  What an incredible task we’re given.  What a stunning truth to realize He didn’t just die to acquire us as His possession, but to make us beautiful, to make us His poetry, to create a work of art. 

Real grace is committed to real change.  He lived and died so that by His grace, we could be loved like Him and become like Him.  He is committed to our holiness. 

This real, beautifying grace is also an amazing comfort when life seems ugly.  When we’re stuck in what appears to be our old self, we can be sure that He hasn’t fallen asleep.  He is committed to us.

This means that some of you this morning are having rough and jagged corners knocked off with a chisel.  It may be that He’s putting pressure in a particular place that is causing you pain and loss.  He might be knocking your block off right now, but I assure you it is out of a deep and tender love for you.  He isn’t going to let you go until you’re like Him. 

The troubles in your life are actually the chisels that God is using to draw out what is hidden.  A good artist always sees the finished product when He’s doing His most difficult and painful work.  He never loses sight of it, and neither should we. 

Created for Good Works

What a strange thing to think that this God has made us into works of art so that we would live a life of “good works.”  A God who saves purely by grace and is unlike any other is the same God that saves us for something. 

We become a “good news” people so that we can live a life of “good works.”  In these “good works” we are displaying to the world what our God is like. 

The crazy thing about this truth of being saved by grace is that it makes you want to do good works. 

If we’re afraid we’d lose our motivation to do “good works” if we were already accepted, then our “good works” were never “good” in the first place.  Those works were to get God’s approval.  We used our works to gain something from God like an employee gets a paycheck from their boss.  But this isn’t love for people or God.  This is duty, labor, responsibility and wage.  Our so-called “good works” will always be dependent on what we think we can get for it.  We’ll always be thinking, “Will someone notice? Will God notice?”  God has chosen to save us by grace, not works.  His provision for us is a gift to receive, not a wage to earn. 

Grace leading to faith will always lead to good works.  If we’re struggling with a desire to walk in these good works that God has prepared for us, it may be because we have forgotten the path Jesus walked for us.  A path of patience, of grace and of tremendous love for the unlovely, and a path that lead to a cross waiting for Him. 

Remember saints, you are His poetry, His workmanship, created in Jesus to live poetic lives of humble service.  We walk in these good works out of grace because God already prepared all the good we’ll do in advance.  We are living, breathing works of art that display by our good works what our Artist is like. 

To the degree we believe we’re saved by grace, to that same degree we will be gracious to others.  So go, give yourself away.  You were made for it.  

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