Although most artists create many different works, it seems that for most of them, they come to be identified primarily with one particular work. Let’s see if you can identify the artists who created each of these works that I’ll display on the screen. Since, as you know, I’m not very cultured, I’ve tried to keep this pretty simple and limit it to some pretty readily identifiable works.
• Mona Lisa – Leonardo da Vinci
• The Starry Night – Vincent van Gogh
• The Thinker – Rodin
• The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – Michelangelo
For each of these artists, the works we just looked at would definitely be referred to as their masterpieces, or at least one of their masterpieces.
So let me ask you a question this morning: “What is God’s greatest masterpiece?” Is it what I see each morning when I look out at the Catalina Mountains and Pusch Ridge? Or how about the Grand Canyon? That’s certainly a masterpiece. Or maybe it’s Mount Everest or Niagara Falls.
The Psalmist tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. I love to sit out in our backyard on a clear night and just marvel at the moon and stars I can see. And from my very limited knowledge of astronomy I know that I can only see a miniscule part of the immensity of the heavens. So is that God’s masterpiece?
The Psalmist also reveals that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Our bodies are intricately designed. My body contains about 75 trillion cells, each made up of 50 billion atoms. Every 4-5 seconds 50,000 of my cells die and are replaced by 50,000 new cells. So while you listen to this message this morning, your body is going to produce somewhere between 15 and 25 million new cells, depending on how long I preach. That really makes the sermon sound long doesn’t it? There are 75,000 miles of arteries, veins and capillaries in my body – enough to circle the earth 3 times! Surely the human body must be God’s masterpiece.
God’s creation, the heavens and our human bodies all reveal the glory of God, but none of them is truly God’s masterpiece. But as we continue our journey through Ephesians, Paul describes God’s masterpiece for us:
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
The word translated “workmanship” in this verse is the Greek word “poeima”, from which we get our English word “poem.” But the word means much more than a poem. It is a word that indicates a work of art or a masterpiece.
1. The preparation of God’s masterpieces
There are several characteristics of a masterpiece that are evident in Paul’s description of how God prepared us to be His masterpieces:
• Each masterpiece is completely the work of its creator
Not one of the art masterpieces that we’ve looked at this morning created itself or even participated in its creation in any way. It is the artist that does all the work, from the formulation of the concept to the planning to the actual creation of the work of art.
As we’ve seen so far in our study of the Book of Ephesians, the same thing is true when God creates His masterpieces. It is God who chose us before the creation of the world to be His masterpieces. It is God who created the plan to redeem us and make us His masterpieces through His Son. And it is God who has done all the work necessary to make us into His masterpieces. Perhaps Paul was thinking back to the words of Jesus, with which he was certainly familiar:
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit…
John 15:16 (NIV)
I know that I’ve emphasized that point over and over in our journey through Ephesians, but like Paul, I think that the point can never be emphasized too much. In fact, the English translation of this verse cannot adequately capture the extent to which Paul emphasizes once again that the work of salvation is all God’s work, apart from anything that we can do or offer to God.
First, in Greek, this sentence begins with the word “His”. Since in Greek the words in a sentence can be in almost any order, placing the word “His” at the beginning of the sentence gives it added emphasis. Literally we could translate the first phrase of this verse:
His [God’s] masterpiece we are…
Secondly, when Paul writes that we were “created in Christ Jesus”, he uses a verb that means to create something new that has never existed before. In other words, when God makes us His masterpieces, he doesn’t just change us, He makes us into something completely new and different. He doesn’t just remodel or restore some existing work of art; He creates us as a completely new masterpiece. I think that’s what Jesus meant when He told Nicodemus that he must be “born again.”
And Paul makes this point even more directly in his second letter to the church at Corinth:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
• The creation of a masterpiece is a process
The creation of a masterpiece is usually not the result of some brief, haphazard effort. The Mona Lisa required 4 years for Da Vinci to complete. In fact, x-rays have shown that there are three previous versions of the painting under the one that we are familiar with. Michelangelo took 4 years to paint the scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Rodin made his first plaster cast of ”The Thinker” in 1880, but it wasn’t until 1902 that he completed the large scale bronze cast.
In the same way, we don’t become a finished work of art all at once. Paul writes that we were created (past tense), but we are (present tense) God’s masterpiece. By now, you probably recognize that the present tense in Greek indicates a continuing action. So literally we are and will continue to become God’s masterpiece.
As all of us are painfully aware, we don’t immediately become everything that God intends for us to be the very moment that He enters into our lives and makes us a new creation. God allows us to go through a process, one that is often painful, so that He can mold us and make us into what He wants us to be. Like a skillful artist, God sometimes completes us with a master stroke of his brush and at other times chisels away at our lives to get rid of those things that would detract from our beauty. Once again, Paul writes about that process in another of his letters:
…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 (NIV)
• All of God’s masterpieces are created in Christ Jesus
Over the years, artists have used all kinds of media to create their masterpieces. The Mona Lisa was painted on poplar wood. One of Michelangelo’s assistants had to develop a special kind of mold-resistant plaster for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that became the base for Michelangelo’s paintings there. Rodin cast “The Thinker” from bronze.
But when it comes to God’s masterpieces, God only uses one means of creating those masterpieces – His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve already seen how many times Paul has used the phrases “in Christ”, “in Jesus” or their equivalents so far in Ephesians. And that’s no accident. Paul wants to leave no doubt exactly who or what comprise God’s masterpieces.
As magnificent as the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mt. Everest and the rest of nature may be, they are not God’s masterpieces. As immense and awesome as the heavens are, they are not God’s masterpieces. Even as intricately and wonderfully made as the human body, even that is not God’s masterpiece. God’s masterpieces are those people who have accepted the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ and who have been created anew through the means of His death and resurrection.
But Paul doesn’t stop by just recording for us the process by which we become God’s masterpieces, he goes on to describe:
2. The purpose of God’s masterpieces
Artistic masterpieces have been created for all kinds of purposes. The portrait of the “Mona Lisa” was probably commissioned by da Vinci’s father as a gift for some friends. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to fulfill a commission from Pope Julius II. Rodin created “The Thinker” as part of a commission to create and entrance to a museum in Paris.
Although we can find Biblical support for a number of different purposes for which God created us as His masterpieces, Paul focuses on one particular purpose in this verse. The word translated “to do” in the NIV is translated “for” in the NASB and “unto” in the KJV and those are probably more accurate translations in this case. The actual Greek word is a three letter preposition which is used to indicate purpose or reason. So what Paul is indicating here is that when God creates His masterpieces, their purpose is:
• To do good works
Even though Paul has already made it absolutely clear that there is no room for our own good works when it comes to our salvation, there is a place for good works in the life of a follower of Jesus Christ. Although good works can never earn favor with God, when God creates his masterpieces it is so that they might do good works.
In that sense, we are like a great work of art. No piece of art is capable on its own of doing any good, but in the hands of its creator, it is able to accomplish the purposes for which it was created. The same thing is true for us. On our own, we are incapable of doing anything that is truly good. But in the hands of the God who created us as His masterpieces, we can now fulfill the purposes for which we are created.
They are God’s works, not ours
Just last week, the TV show “American Idol” had a fund-raising effort called “Idol gives back” that has raised over $70 million to assist people in poverty here in the U.S. and in Africa. I don’t think that anyone would deny that was a good work, but is that the kind of good work Paul is writing about here?
Paul describes these good works as those “which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So it seems to me that efforts like those of the “American Idol” producers, no matter how virtuous their intentions, could never meet that description since they are works that men, and not God, have prepared. As God’s masterpieces, He doesn’t ask us to figure out what good works we want to do and then do them. Instead, He merely uses us as conduits through which He accomplishes His own good works.
They are a lifestyle
Once again the NIV translation leaves a little to be desired at the end of this verse. We are literally to walk, or to live in these good works, not merely “do” them. I think that’s an important distinction, because to walk or live in good works indicates that it is to be a lifestyle, not just a “to do” list that we check off each day and then figure we’re done for the day.
So what exactly are these good works that God has prepared for us to make our lifestyle? I think that is the question that Paul answers in the second half of his letter to the Ephesians. Let’s take a quick peek ahead to the first verse of that chapter:
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
Ephesians 4:1 (NIV)
This verse is a transition from the first three chapters of Ephesians, which contain basic doctrine, to the last three chapters which describe how to put that doctrine into practice on a day-to-day basis. Or to put it into Paul’s language, the last three chapters are a description of the good works which God has prepared for us to live in.
So good works include things like unity within the body, growing together in our spiritual maturity, changing the way that we think and the way that we treat others, husbands loving their wives and wives respecting their husbands, children honoring their parents and parents training their children to love God, being good employees and employers and putting on the armor of God. Those are all good works that God has purposed for His children to walk in them.
God has created each believer as His masterpiece and he has given us the purpose of living a life that is characterized by the good works He has prepared for us. But God doesn’t stop there.
3. The power of God’s masterpieces
Although Paul doesn’t directly address this aspect in this verse, it is certainly implied and it is a principle that has been present throughout his letter up to this point.
Before we were created as God’s masterpieces through Jesus, we were incapable of the kind of good works that Paul writes about here. Perhaps, like “American Idol”, we could occasionally do things that had some worth. But we were still dead to God and dominated by the world, Satan and our own flesh, so no matter how good those works may have been, they were still “filthy rags” in the eyes of God. And we certainly weren’t capable of a lifestyle in which we lived in the good works God had prepared for us.
But when God makes us into His masterpieces, one of the benefits is that He gives us the power we need to be able to live the kind of life that Paul writes about here. Paul describes that same power in his letter to the Philippians:
…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
Philippians 2:12, 13 (NIV)
The reason that we’re able to do the good works that God has prepared for us is that He is at work in our lives, giving us both the desire to do those good works and the power to carry them out.
The Bible is clear that we are saved by faith alone, but we are not saved by a faith that is alone. We are God’s masterpieces, created by Him for the purpose of doing good works. And it is God who both determines what those works will be and gives us the power to live that kind of lifestyle day-by-day.
