New Thoughts (9/24/03-9/25/03)
We come now to the subject of works. Here is the place where the Protestant divide begins. Here, we are forced to recognize the true order of things, and must decide once and for all whether we will accept God's view of our condition or continue to insist on our own corrupt perspective. Paul has made clear in the statements of this chapter that there was nothing in us that could have recommended us to God's attention, nothing which was deserving of the rich reward of eternal life. It was a gift. It could only be a gift. An honest accounting of our lives prior to salvation ought to make that clear. Yet, even today there are many who will cavil at such an assessment, who will insist on pointing to the things they have done as worthy. There is forever this desire in us to see ourselves in a better light.
There is a tendency, strong in the heart of man, to forget what God has said regarding our attempts to act in righteousness. All our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isa 64:6). Moses made it clear to Israel: It's not because you are such a righteous people that God is giving you this land. You are, after all, an incredibly stubborn people (Dt 9:6). Yet we will point to those deeds and say, 'have I not done good in Your sight?' But on this point, even Clarke and Calvin, as different as their theology may be, come in agreement. The work cannot be good except God be in it. I really like the perspective that Clarke gives on this. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that without faith it is utterly impossible that we should be found pleasing in God's sight. From this, Clarke argues, we should understand that works done without faith cannot be good. What is good is pleasing in God's sight. What is not of faith is therefore not pleasing, and to pursue the thought to its proper conclusion, if it is not pleasing to Him, it cannot be good.
The best of our efforts before Christ has come, giving us hearts of faith, cannot be good, for they are done in rebellion, even though they be the right things. "Faith must go before in such a manner that good works may follow," writes Calvin. Works cannot lead us to salvation, for they are never deserving of salvation. However, salvation must inevitably lead to works. Good works must follow upon the birth of faith within us. The example is seen repeatedly in Scripture. We might even look at the things Satan does.
At church, we have been studying the story of Job. At the opening of that book we find Satan in the courts of heaven. God turns his attention to this upright citizen and Satan suggests that his uprightness is only as strong as the blessings God showers on him. Take away Your gifts and he will swiftly turn from You, he suggests. Satan is given permission to put Job to the test in this. He is, then, working in pursuit of God's own command, God who is good. His works, therefore, must be good, right? Not at all, for they are done with a purpose thoroughly rebellious to Him. They are done in obedience to His command, but not with a heart united with His.
Other examples abound in the history of Israel. The kings who came to punish Israel's apostasy were also instruments of God's purpose, bringing His judgment. Yet, they were not accounted as good in God's sight for having done so. Why? Because where God's purpose, of which they were instruments, was to bring Israel to repentance, their own purpose in acting upon His orders was to destroy Israel. The works were in accord with God's purpose, yet they were not good.
What of the Pharisees? Here was a sect wholly caught up in trying to live out the holiness God required in every detail. But their hearts were not right. They sought not so much to please Him by their actions as to be impressive in themselves. They sought to satisfy their own pride. Indeed, for long ages Israel was convinced that they could earn God's respect by their careful attention to these acts of holiness. It continues today. I was having a discussion with a couple of Jewish men at work recently wherein they were discussing the issue of lighting fires on the Sabbath. This was work, and therefore forbidden by the Law. The discussion, however, turned mostly upon how one could circumvent this prohibition without actually breaking the Law. It was a search for loopholes! Perhaps one could devise a mechanism which could be started up prior to the Sabbath, that would switch on the lights at the proper time. Perhaps one could have a servant who habitually turned on lights when it became dark. If he were not of the faith as well, it would be acceptable for him to throw the switch so long as one didn't specifically ask him to do so. I pointed out to these gentlemen that their own Torah indicated that the Law of God was to apply to themselves and all their household. If one served in their house, he was to obey the Sabbath every bit as much as they. I was informed that this was a subject of debate. The Torah is subject of debate? God's Law is a matter for man to decide? Can you see in this the emptiness of man's good works? Even in the contemplation of obedience there lies rebellion.
We are no better ourselves. We tend to want it both ways. We want to have salvation, but we also want our pleasures. We want God to be pleased with us, but we'd as soon not have to work too hard on being pleasing. Only faith, the faith which is not of ourselves, but a generous gift from a loving God, can bring us to the place of doing the right thing for the right reason. We love, John wrote, because He first loved us (1Jn 4:19). There is an order here. First, He loved us. Indeed, He loved us before creation was. He displayed His love for us magnificently in the giving of His Son that we might be saved from ourselves. He made His love clear to us in so working upon our hearts that we could understand the love He has for us. The response of the heart He has reborn because of His love can only be to love Him most dearly. It is quite natural for us to respond to love with love. Any one of us who has experienced love on a human scale knows how our natures respond. The whole world seems a better place for the love we have in us. Everybody seems just a little bit nicer, all our problems seem to fade to insignificance. That same effect is in play, and amplified a thousandfold, when it is the perfect love of God which has so filled us. Knowing that love, and responding to that love, we are finally enabled to love others as we should. This is the motive that leads us to do good, and motivated by the perfect love of God, by the faith in which His love has led us to walk, the good we seek to do, however imperfectly we may actually do it, is good in His sight.
The works we do in this life of faith are indeed good, and they are assuredly profitable for those who are the objects of the works we do. The meanest neighbor will certainly benefit from our loving labors on his behalf. God sends His rain upon good and evil alike, and He calls upon us to work out our love, His love, in the same fashion. This is unnatural to us. It may be perfectly normal and expected that we would do nice things for our friends, that we would treat them well. But the call for the Christian is to show that same good will towards even those who persecute us. This is the mark of something different, something infinitely better, come into the world. They will know you are Christians by your love. They will know that I AM by your love, for love on that scale is unknown to the ways of man.
Therefore, be active in the pursuit of doing good works. Don't simply wait for opportunity to come, seek out the opportunity. It's going to require active involvement from us, an eye attuned to opportunities arising, a life focused outside of self, a sense of our property as God's property, ever at His disposal for the benefit of others. Truly, this is the culminating fruit of salvation in this life, the evidence of the humility and compassion which flow from knowing His love for us, from comprehending our total unworthiness of that love. It is the outflow of a life lived with a Kingdom focus, for such a focus leads us to wish to make evident to those around us the wonders of the Kingdom whose citizens we are.
The works we do in this life are also good in that they confirm our own faith, being clear and evident fruits of that faith. Our salvation, it seems to me, is always in question in our own minds. I suspect that even those most firm in faith suffer such moments of question. Here, our gracious God has given us the means of knowing for certain where we stand. It's a most visible way to have an answer to the question, "how's your heart?" We need only look to see if we are doing good by our neighbors, treating all men well. We need only consider, if we are indeed doing such things, why it is we have done them. Have we done them in hopes of reward? Have we done them out of some 'enlightened self-interest?' Then we are still doing the works of man. Have we done them out of an overflow of love within us? Have we done good by those around us even to our own hurt? We are surely on the right course.
Sound doctrine, training us to a fuller understanding of God's love and preparing us for a life of doing such good works, is also good not only for us but for those around us. A nation can only profit by the presence of earnest Christians, trained in the Truth of God and living out that Truth in their daily lives. The blessings which God pours out upon those He is pleased to call His own children are too great to be contained in those children alone. His blessings are designed to overflow these vessels of clay and pour out to the surrounding regions. The alien dwelling in Israel shares in the blessings of Israel's obedience.
By the same token, the alien dwelling in Israel shares in the wrath that comes upon disobedience. In times past, God tolerated the failures of the nations for they walked in ignorance. But now He has made Himself manifest to all, and all must come to the crisis point. All must choose. Either they will acknowledge Him as King of kings, and learn to walk in His ways, or they will rebel against His rightful rule and walk in their own. All excuse has been removed. All mediating circumstances have been taken out of consideration. Yet, there remains a remnant, and where that remnant is found, His blessings are found. Where His blessings are found, they are found flowing in abundance, pouring out upon the land in a floodtide.
What great blessing, then, to the nations, when God's people are active in the pursuit of doing good works! God is pleased to look upon those who are pleased to be His children, who are pleased in pleasing Him. God is pleased when He can in His justice bless His children, and those who are in their company. It is not His desire to punish, it is His duty as the Righteous One when He is faced with unmitigated evil. When we do good things, when we are manifestly sons of God, walking in His ways, we present Him with the opportunity to display His goodness instead of His wrath, and angels rejoice in heaven.
There is a corollary to this thought, which Matthew Henry makes clear. "We must not expect the benefit of God's mercy, unless we make conscience of our duty." Perhaps 'clear' isn't quite the right word here. We must not expect His mercy, yet we have, if we are indeed saved, already experienced His mercy in grand fashion. He has poured out His mercy upon us in spite of our actions. What Mr. Henry is addressing here, I think, is the continuation of His mercy, it's the issue of presumption. Many Catholics, looking at the tenets of the Protestant church, see what appears to them to be an attitude of presumption. They see in the doctrine of salvation by grace alone a permissiveness. They see too many of us taking liberty for license, continuing on in unabashed sin on the theory that all is already forgiven so we can do as we please. Woe to us if we fall into that trap! Indeed our hearts have deceived us if we have been convinced that this is the way of it.
Works are the evidence of lively faith. "We must make conscience of our duty." That's rather an odd phrasing, but I think the idea being presented is this: If we have known His mercy, we must also understand that there are duties which are ours as citizens of the heavenly Kingdom. We each one of us have an office, the office of ambassador. The office carries with it responsibility, the responsibility to properly represent Him whose ambassadors we are. Yet, if we simply do our duty because it is required, we have done no more than the Pharisees. The heart and soul are not yet in it, we're simply following orders. Make it your conscience. Is this not having His Law inscribed upon our hearts and minds? Make what could be simply a sense of duty an ingrained matter of what we construe as right.
I remain utterly convinced that we are designed by God to arrive at the place where, when faced with the ethical challenges that abound in every moment, we don't have to think about what it is we should do, we don't have to ponder the course our actions should take. It should be second nature to us, but second nature only because it has required our rebirth, following on the death of our first nature, to arrive at this point. Yet, arrive we surely must! It is the nature of God to do the right thing, and in the rebirth He has brought to us, we are made partakers of His nature. Our conscience, once atrophied and almost useless, has been restored to full function. Our decisions ought to be instant, and ought ever to reflect what God would do in the situation.
I saw a cartoon recently which spoke rather poignantly to this matter. In that cartoon, an elderly woman was depicted, dealing with a flat tire. She held out her tire iron to a passing gentleman, well dressed in his best suit, in an imploring fashion, clearly seeking assistance in a task too great for her own strength. The caption to this picture read something to the effect of "Sorry, can't stop to help. I'm on my way to church." Sadly, this is the image that much of the world now has of Christianity - nothing more than hollow ritual; all surface show, but no reality. Sadly, I suspect it is true of a large part of what passes itself of for Christianity today. Church has been allowed to become a matter of social status, a question of being seen in the right place with the right people. It is being used. It is being used to promote every sort of personal profit. Politicians are careful to be seen in church, however much their lifestyles may deny anything even vaguely Christian. Corporations, seeing money to be made, adopt a 'Christian' tag, develop a 'Christian' line of merchandise. Is there anything 'Christian' about the corporation? We probably don't even check. We just accept their offer and throw them our money.
We cannot allow what that cartoon has depicted to be the reality of our walk. God deserves better. The world desperately needs better. We ought to know better. Good works require effort. Tune in to the opportunities God has prepared for you to do, and don't even hesitate to do them. Make it a matter of conscience, a matter of natural reaction to the circumstances around us. See it all as God's Providence in action, and devote yourself to participating in that Providence.
One thing more we should consider in regards to this verse. There is another crisis point presented just below the surface here, one which will become more clear with subsequent verses in this chapter. The church of Crete was being forced into a decision, "Who will you believe?" Whose words will you take to be definitive? Will you put your trust in God's words, or will you put your trust in the vanity of human opinion? The correct answer ought to be obvious. We have only to consider the vacillations which are the rule in human understanding. There was a time when men understood that abortion was the taking of life. Now that understanding seems to be lost. There was a time when men considered it acceptable and right to hold other men as property. Now men understand the horrendous wrong of such practices. How long before they change their opinions again? Drinking used to be bad for you. Now we have doctors telling us it's actually good for your health (in spite of the many who have died from its effects). How long before they'll decide that drug addiction is actually a good thing, too?
But, God does not change. His word does not change. His definitions of good remain as they always have been, because He is as He always has been, and He is Good. He is the definition. He is the standard. Look at the difference! The ever changing tide of public opinion, or the eternal perfect determination of God; which shall you pursue? Which foundation will hold when difficulties arise? Whose report will you believe?
