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I began 2020 on a sabbatical in Myrtle Beach. Looking back, I’m extremely thankful that I did so because this year has been a doozy! We’ve all dealt with so many things and had to adapt in so many ways. We’ve had to try and get a handle on what’s going on. We’ve missed parties, milestones, and vacations. We’ve had financial setbacks. We’ve have had funerals that we could not attend. I talked to someone recently who finally made the difficult decision to put their Mother in assisted living . . . in February! They just saw her in person for the first time since March! Besides all this, we have the concerns over COVID itself. People I know have lost parents and important people in their lives to COVID. The struggle is real.
As I talk to people in a variety of churches, ministry workers had to figure out how to make church and ministry work without buildings or in-person meetings. One church hasn’t met because the place where they met does not allow large gatherings. Going back to in-person meetings has helped, but it required a lot of adjustments. And . . . not everyone liked the adjustments. Some thought they were too strict. Others thought they weren’t strict enough. Has anyone noticed that COVID has been controversial? It’s a good thing that we’ll have a vaccine soon, and the controversy will be over.
In the midst of all this, people have got to find a way to function. I want to suggest to you today that this passage and many like it gives us a firm foundation in the midst of a mass of confusion. It provides the stability that can enable us to function well in any difficulty.
What we need in the midst of all this anxiety is to go back to the basics. And when I say basics, I mean basics, like you can see color, you can feel, you can touch. You can understand what you see and praise your Creator. You are accepted. You are loved. You are forgiven. And, you are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. That’s what our passage teaches us today.
The Context
Ephesians is such a beautiful letter that it would do us good not to write or speak about it all. Instead, we could simply read it and then offer our praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. That is the purpose of the letter: praise to our gracious Father.
The letter discloses the Father’s glorious and wise purpose to us. It is to bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, Jesus Christ. This is God’s plan, and He will bring it about according to His great wisdom and power, just as He works out all things according to His great purpose and power. He then calls those who have submitted to Jesus Christ to do everything in their power to conform themselves and others to the reign and grace of Jesus Christ.
This, of course, does not mean that it is simply our effort. This is a book about grace, God’s gift. God’s gift has given Christ for us, and the Holy Spirit works God’s gifts and grace within us. In the verses prior to Eph. 2:10, we read as powerful an expression of this as you will find in the Scriptures, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one can boast.”
But—though we are not saved by works; we are most certainly saved unto good works. That’s what our passage says. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. It’s not by works but unto good works; not because we were holy but because He chose us in Him to be holy. Good works don’t precede being justified, but they certainly follow in the one who has been justified.
This was God’s purpose for us—to make a people zealous for good works. He prepared them in advance for us to do them. This means that we were destined to be God’s workers. As Paul says in Eph. 1:4, we were chosen to be holy not because we were holy. We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.
The Encouragement
A few years ago, I started using a Scriptural phrase that to encourage my children with God’s promises to them. It was taken from Song of Solomon. It was, “You are the beloved’s, and His desire is for you.” Whenever I could, I began to share this with them. I still say it to this day. This phrase would help them and encourage them. I remember one time when one of my daughters was upset, my wife said, “You are the beloved’s, and His desire is for you.” Her frustration began to dissipate immediately, and a smile came to her face.
I also have a son, and I quickly realized that telling him, “You are the beloved’s, and His desire is for you” would not affect him in quite the same way. He would acknowledge its truth and accept it, but it would not touch his heart in the same way that it did my girls. I’ll be honest here. The same was true for me. That’s when I realized I needed to use this passage, “You are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” God wants to do something significant through you. That doesn’t change, no matter what.
The message of God’s love is indeed a powerful one, but the Gospel is broader than that. God not only offers us love; He offers us friendship. He not only loves us; He also likes us. God not only accept us; He wants to use us. We are His workmanship.
If we begin our explanation of the Gospel with the doctrine creation, then we will see that God created us to do good works, significant things that bless ourselves and others and glorify God. Understanding that God created us for good works, we can understand that God restores us to good works in salvation, which is precisely what our text says.
Once we get this, a whole host of the benefits of the Gospel and its promises are opened to us. God is our friend who makes known to us what He is doing. He is our companion who wants to work alongside us in His mission to the world. We are co-workers with God. God makes us holy, meaning, we are set aside for His service. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.
The Confirmation
Now, how do we know that God wants to use us? God has given us all ample opportunity to see how He values us and wants to use us. He has already used us in a variety of ways. He has used us to serve and work in the world. He has used us to build families. He has used us to build community. He has used us to make our homes beautiful in ways that bless the community. He has used us in all sorts of small ways to contribute to the well-being of the world.
He has also used you in innumerable ways in the work of redemption. You have supported the work of the church with your money and time. You have taught your children the things of God. You have loved your neighbors. You have built friendships that encourage people. You have taught Sunday School classes and contributed to small groups. You have cooperated in the work of missions, as our men’s group did when they went to the MNA Warehouse.
All these things are evidence of God’s good work in us and that He values us and wants to use us. We should not downplay these good works. We sometimes are guilty of false humility. Humility, says theologian Josef Piper, is an estimation of ourselves according to truth, and that is almost all there is to it. We should acknowledge our sins and failings, but we should not be afraid to acknowledge that we have done good things as well, giving ultimate credit to the grace of God.
Few people have praised the value of good works more than Martin Luther. Listen very carefully to these words:
We teach that to reconcile God, to make righteous, to blot out sin, is so high and great and glorious a work that alone Christ, the Son of God could do it and that this is indeed such a pure, special, peculiar work of the one true God and His grace that our works are nothing and can do nothing. But that good works should be nothing or be worth only a penny, who ever heard of such a thing, or who could teach such a thing except the lying mouth of the devil? I would not give up one of my sermons, not one of my lectures, not one of my treatises, not one of my Lord’s Prayers, nay, whatever small work I have ever done or am doing, for all the riches of the world (Cited in Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 3:59–60.
Luther saw that the Christian was really God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.
The second way that we know that God wants to use us is the Gospel promises, like the one we are considering today. We have to admit that we can make the mistake of confusing our good works as evidence of God’s value of us with seeing good works as the basis of God’s value of us. If we do that, then they will fall apart. We always have to go back to God’s free acceptance of us in Jesus Christ as the our most ultimate foundation.
We can easily wrongly estimate our value when we’ve failed or sinned. It’s at such times that we tend to think we are worthless or that God doesn’t want to use us. But that’s not true. However much we’ve failed or sinned, we are still God’s workmanship. He still wants to use us today to do significant things that bless ourselves and others and glorify God. That doesn’t change based on how well or poorly we do. God’s value of us remains the same.
At these and many other times, we need to go back again and again to this basic foundation: You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
Dear friends, that’s a Gospel foundation that will get you through the tough times. That’s a Gospel foundation that will get you through failure. That’s a Gospel foundation that will get you through COVID. That’s a Gospel foundation that will get you through this election. That’s a Gospel foundation that is a resource for a lifetime of ministry wherever the Lord may lead you. Amen.