Salvation Works #2

What are the good works of which Paul speaks?

As you read the rest of Ephesians, as we study it together, what we will see is that you live with biblical attitudes and according to biblical priorities in the life that God has providentially ordained for you. Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and Don will be bringing to a close our series, Your Sin and God's Salvation, with part two of a message titled, Salvation Works. Last time, Don reminded us of the source of our salvation, God alone. He rightly has that authority because, after all, he made us. Today, Don will turn to God's purpose in salvation.

We often think that purpose is all focused on us. In reality, according to scripture, God saves us for his glory. Let's see what the Bible has to say in Ephesians chapter two, as we join our teacher now in the Truth Pulpit. Now, this has a defining impact on so many things, and Paul is now going to pivot here in verse 10. He's going to pivot into what's going to occupy the rest of the letter at the end of verse 10. He is pivoting now.

He's made his point so that it is beyond being contested. He has made it and silenced all human pride, and now he pivots to this other aspect of salvation as we look at point number two, the purpose of salvation. We've seen for one last time, for now, the source of salvation, and now Paul goes on to talk about the purpose of salvation.

Look at verse 10 with me. This massive power of God that was brought to bear on us was for a purpose so that our lives would be transformed, so that our lives would have an eye on, that our hearts would be motivated, what he declares to be good, and the purpose of our existence now. He saved us, and now he owns us, and we like it that way.

We want it that way. Paul says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Here's the pivot point. Now he introduces the purpose for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

We'll spend the next few minutes just kind of unpacking what this means. Beloved, I want you to understand. I want you to see from Scripture, because it defines your life and it defines why we exist and what we do together as a church going forward in the years to come. This defines everything for us. The goal of salvation is not merely that you would go to heaven.

God saved you. God brought our church into existence so that you, we, I would live to the glory of God. That sounds so basic. That sounds so simple. You almost despair of saying, I'm saying things that are too simple, but you know what?

It really is. It's that basic. This point has to be clear in our minds, because this point affects everything. The main point, the primary point, is that we would do good works as defined in Scripture so that all of our existence, every living breath that God gives us, would abound to His glory out of a grateful response for this creative workmanship that He did in our hearts to save us from sin.

That little basic point is a lever that changes the trajectory of everything. Good works is a way of simply saying godly behavior. Look at the verse with me here. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. Now, as you first read that, if you're just reading that verse in isolation, you might say, well, what's good works? And, you know, you start to define it in all, you know, you could define it in a lot of different ways.

Well, you know what? We don't have to guess what Paul meant here in this verse. I told you that this is a pivot point.

What happens, now watch this. We're not going to define it any more than what we've already done in this broad way, but here's what I want you to see, is that Paul goes on and finishes chapter 2, and then he writes chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 in this book. And what he's doing from this pivot point on is saying and laying out, here are the good works, here are the demands of a godly life, this is how you glorify God in the church, in your family, in work, and in your prayer life. And so, when we want to know what the good works are that Paul is talking about, well, we just keep reading and studying rather than trying to guess what he meant by it. In general, we could say that these good works of which Paul speaks means that you live with biblical attitudes and according to biblical priorities in the life that God has providentially ordained for you. Let me say that again. There's a mouthful there.

I want you to hear it. What are the good works of which Paul speaks? As you read the rest of Ephesians, as we study it together, what we will see is that you live with biblical attitudes and according to biblical priorities in the life that God has providentially ordained for you.

God prepared things in advance for you to walk in. As we studied the doctrine of providence in the past, the very life that you have right now is the life that God has for you now. You don't have to second guess and wonder, well, what if I had made this decision or married a different spouse or said something different or taken a different job?

Forget all of that and leave it behind. None of that matters anymore. What matters is today, this is the life that God has given you today, and this is the life, this is the time in which you are to bring forth the good works. You can't live any other life than the one that God has given you. If it's a life filled with pain and sorrow, then, beloved, I want to encourage you that what God has set before you is for you to live to the glory of God and trust Him in the midst of your pain and disappointment. And that ennobles your pain and disappointment so that you say, okay, whatever else I do, I'm going to glorify God right here. I'm going to show the world what a godly Christian looks like living through sorrow, pain, and disappointment, without resentment, with courage, with cheer. That's the kind of Christian I'm going to be. That's the life of good works for you. For those of you that are blessed with prosperity, you live a life of good works according to a godly, prosperous man.

Godly, prosperous woman. It's not complicated. Here's the thing.

This is what I want you to get. Not because I'm upset with you, but because this is so transforming to your life and so utterly liberating. You do not have to become somebody else, speaking to Christians here. You do not have to become somebody else in order to live this life of good works that God calls you to. I realize that there are voices that sound really persuasive about do hard things, and you see stories of pastors that leave their church because they want to go live with people in Thailand.

And it creates this sense that unless I do something really, really dramatic, really, really big that gets written up by Christian bloggers or in Christian magazines, then my life really doesn't, you know, then it's really, I'm not like that. And you have the sense that I haven't done all that I could. No.

No. We utterly reject that and throw it out on the curb because of the false expectations and the false pressures that it puts on people. What Paul says, what Paul has in mind when he talks about good works can be seen in what he says. You know, he says, look at verse 10 with me again.

I need to pick back up on the text so that you can follow the string of thought here. Paul says, good works God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Well, he uses that word walk repeatedly in the rest of the epistle and shows us what kind of walk it is that he has in mind. Follow with me as we trace this word walk through the rest of Ephesians, and you can see that I'm not making this up.

Ephesians 4 verse 1, therefore, based on everything that I've said before, now, he says, verse 4, therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. You want to see a good work? You want to do a good work for Christ in response to your salvation?

Live in the midst of the people of God in a unified, harmonious, supportive way, preferring them over yourselves, and you're doing a good work according to the Scriptures. And yeah, no one's going to write a headline about it on earth. There'll be banners displayed in heaven.

There'll be enthusiasm in the voice of Christ when we live this way, and there'll be enthusiasm in his voice when he says, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. But no one applauded me on earth. I don't care! That wasn't what it was about. It was never about that to begin with.

It was about you seeing what I laid out in my word and living according to that. For occasional rare exceptions, they'll enter into prominence. Most of us will simply fade into obscurity, and that's the way we don't mind that. Let's say it that way. If Christ's name is lifted up and my name dissipates and people forget it, that's great!

And I don't care if anyone writes a book about it. Because, beloved, you see? And I'm not speaking just for me. I'm speaking on your behalf.

I'm illustrating this for you. If somehow, actually, our name stays out of the way, then the glory of God can be on greater display. And that's what we want.

Why? Because we're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus on the receiving end. He's being good to us, and I just want people to see the one who has been good to me. That's all that matters. That's the way we think as Christians. Chapter 4, verse 1. Chapter 4, verse 17. Paul says, This I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

And he goes on and on. We live this life of unity in the body of Christ. We live a life of separation from the world, disengaged from its lusts, disengaged from its desires, disengaged from its priorities, walking to the beat of a different drummer.

Why? Because we're created in Christ Jesus for good works. We're his workmanship. He did something for us. He took us out of that and set us apart for something else.

And it's not surprising that that something else doesn't result in us accumulating or seeking glory for ourselves. We surrendered that. We gave that up.

We sacrificed that. We were saved from that so that we might do the good works that God calls for. Look at chapter 5, verse 2. Well, you can start in verse 1. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us. That sacrificial, selfie-facing spirit that so many of you manifest day by day and in your walk with our church.

Chapter 5, verse 8. Just the simple life of holiness. Therefore, do not be partakers with them, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the world. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. Be separate from the world in which you live in.

Chapter 5, verse 15. A walk of wisdom. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Don't be foolish. Understand what the will of the Lord is.

Here's your good works. Don't get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody, always giving thanks, being subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Now, in one sense, that's calling us to do hard things, but it's hard because of the conflict of our remnants of sin, our indwelling flesh, rather than hard things that the world is going to praise us for, even if it's the Christian world, the so-called Christian world.

And so, beloved, here it is. You're understanding what the Scriptures are saying here. If you have a sense of release and liberation and a growing sense of gratitude coming upon you and realizing that this is different from what the world tells us to do, look at your current life in light of what we've said and realize that what God is calling you to is this walk of humility, this walk of separation, this walk of love, this walk of wisdom, and, beloved, you can do that right where you're at. You don't have to drop what you're doing and go someplace else and make up a life that was never on your trajectory. God has brought you to this life today, right where you're at, with the family, with the spouse, with the children, with the difficulties, with the prosperity, with the goodness that you have.

Right here is where you manifest this walk, and it is for this exact life that you have now in Christ that God prepared you to live, and God has good works for you right where you're at for you to do. This is wonderful. All of a sudden, everything about your life means something. All of a sudden, you no longer think, life passed me by. All of a sudden, you're no longer thinking, I should have done it some other way. All of a sudden, you do away with that sense of saying, I wish I was someone else.

I wish I was like him. There must be something wrong with me because I didn't attain like he did. All of that gets wiped away, and you see that it doesn't even matter because God prepared you for this life, saved you to live out the actual life that he gave you, not one that he didn't give to you. That's the implications of this verse. That's the implications of God's sovereign providence. Look back at chapter 2 verse 10 with me. Let me just say, just to be clear, that these good works of which Paul speaks, they don't do anything to improve your standing with God whatsoever. Your standing, the legal basis on which you can come to God, by which you are declared righteous with God, your legal basis is the righteousness of Christ, and that is perfect, and you can't improve upon it. And so Paul isn't calling us to keep up our salvation by doing these good works, and if we don't, we're going to lose out and our status will be diminished. No, Christ has secured a perfect status force with his righteousness. The righteousness on your account is perfect, and so it's not that suddenly you're warned to do these things or you're going to lose this salvation if you don't.

That's not the point at all. No, what Paul is saying here is that this is the purpose of your salvation. Look at it again in verse 10 with me. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Now listen, let me state it this way. These good works of which we speak must necessarily occur, not so that you can preserve your salvation and lose it if you don't, but rather these good works necessarily happen because of the very nature of salvation. You see, salvation was more than a moment of you praying a prayer. It was a miraculous work of God's Spirit on your heart that changed you into someone new. You had a new disposition, a new nature imparted to you, and now with that having been permanently done, you live according to your new nature. You've been changed, and therefore your life changes because of the interchange that took place inside you. God designed salvation so that we would reflect the divine design.

New things come from a new heart. That's why Paul can say this. God saved you so that you will do this. Now, and even in that, we're still giving God the glory.

Look at verse 10 with me again. Where it says that we're created in Christ Jesus for good works, I love this, which God prepared beforehand. God appointed your circumstances ahead of time. God laid out the path for you to walk. And so that gives us a sense of confidence as we move forward. We do away with anxiety, we do away with fear, we do away with doubting, and say, no, God has saved me. God has placed a path before me, and while it's difficult and I may not be able to see too far down the path, these are the steps that God has ordained for me to walk in. Let's go for it. Let's rejoice in it.

This difficult, mixed-up life that I've got, you say to yourself, if your life is difficult and mixed up, somehow now I see clarity. This is the way forward. God intends for me to prosper, to glorify him, to respond with biblical attitudes and priorities right here, right now.

I can do this right now. I can be grateful to God right now. I can rejoice in my salvation right now. I don't have to wait until things change. I don't have to wait until things change.

God prepared it in advance. And I would go so far as to say, the more difficult and impossible your circumstances seem to be in light of this teaching, the more emboldened you should be. Say, this is utterly impossible. This life I have right now, you'd say before you hear this, is utterly impossible. Now you view it completely differently and say, no, no, I'm a Christian and this life is somehow what God has appointed for me.

This is not impossible. I'll take the next step forward, trusting God, satisfied, content, and glorifying him in it. Because I see right here, God prepared this beforehand.

You say, I've been a Christian for so long and I'd never heard this before, and now look at all the accumulated stuff. Don't think that way, beloved. Just set that thinking aside. And rather than saying, what about all this lost time? Say, thank God I understand this now and I've still got breath to live some of this out while I can. Be grateful for the opportunity that's ahead rather than regretting the lost opportunities that are behind.

Forget it. Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. Paul says in Philippians 3, I press on toward the goal of the upward prize of God and the call of God in Christ Jesus. And so if you're in your 40s or 50s and you're just a new Christian, that's great.

It's not a cause for regret. Now look at life and live out the good works that God has for you right in front of you. So as we go on in Ephesians, Paul is going to exhort us to godly living in our church, our personal conduct, our family, our work, our prayer, our dependence upon him. But what we see is that God saved you to walk in precisely the life that you have now.

Look at the end of verse 10 with me. God prepared this beforehand so that, here's another aspect of the purpose, so that you would walk in them. There is a divine design at work in your life that God intends you to fulfill. You can do that without fear.

You can do that with courage. And you do it all with a sense of glorifying God in the process. God saved you to walk in precisely the life that you now have.

Period. A true Christian delights in that life that God has given him out of gratitude and out of respect for the God who did such a great work to save him. And beloved, what I want you to see is that that delight, that response, that willingness shows that it is God that is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Charles Spurgeon said, God's choice of us was not because we were holy. God chose us to make us holy.

So let's run the race that's before us, pursuing the purpose of God, which is to glorify him in precisely the life which he's given us, both physically and the spiritual life that he has so graciously, abundantly given us in Christ. Well, we've come to the end of our series, Your Sin and God's Salvation, here on The Truth Pulpit. And Pastor Don Green will have more edifying teaching from the Word of God next time, so don't miss a moment. But Don, we've seen that Scripture could not be more clear about God's absolute sovereignty over salvation. Why do you think the issue is still debated at all in some churches?

Well, Bill, I guess I would say two things in response to that question. First of all, we need to recognize the great inertia that comes from growing up in denominations and certain traditions. It's much easier to just continue on in what you were taught rather than going back to God's Word and searching it out for yourself. But secondly, an even greater concern for me is the tendency of so-called evangelical churches today to avoid these issues altogether, the thought being if we don't teach on them, they won't divide us.

My friend, that's a false unity. Unity comes from a deep consideration of God's Word and coming together around what it teaches rather than avoiding it. I encourage you to study God's Word for yourself as you go into this day. For more information, please visit our website at thetruthpulpit.com to learn more about this ministry. There you can learn more about podcasts and free CDs of Don's teaching. Plus, you can get all the info you need to plan a visit to Truth Community Church. Again, it's all at thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you next time on the Truth Pulpit.