Ministerial transition can be difficult and emotional things. There was an elderly woman who was weeping as she said goodbye to the man who had been pastor of her church for several years.
"My dear lady," consoled the departing pastor, "don’t get so upset. Surely the Search Committee will find a much better pastor to replace me here." Sobbing, the woman said, "That’s what they told us the last time."
For the next four weeks we will be talking about various paradoxes. What is a paradox? In this case we are referring to statements that appear to entail a contradiction, but are true. Next week we will talk about finding freedom in obedience. On Palm Sunday our topic will be a Humble King and on Easter it will be Dying to Live. Today, we are talking about Good Works of Faith.
Why are Good Works of Faith a Paradox?
It goes back to Martin Luther and the protestant reformation. The Catholic Church of Luther’s day place a heavy emphasis on Christians doing acts of penance and works of charity in order to earn their salvation.
Luther, while doing a study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, came to the conclusion that the church had overemphasized good works and paid too little attention to faith.
One of Luther’s most moving explanations of this idea is found in his to Preface to Romans which appeared in Luther’s German Bible of 1522. In addition to the influence that this has had on the Lutheran church, it had a profound influence on the founding of the Methodist church a little more than 200 years later. That is because John Wesley credits his own religious awakening to his reading of Luther’s preface. Here is just a portion of what it says.
Faith is not what some people think it is. Their human dream is a delusion. Because they observe that faith is not followed by good works or a better life, they fall into error, even though they speak and hear much about faith. ``Faith is not enough,’’ they say, ``You must do good works, you must be pious to be saved.’’ They think that, when you hear the gospel, you start working, creating by your own strength a thankful heart which says, ``I believe.’’ That is what they think true faith is. But, because this is a human idea, a dream, the heart never learns anything from it, so it does nothing and reform doesn’t come from this `faith,’ either.
Instead, faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. ["An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans," Luther’s German Bible of 1522, translated by Robert E. Smith from Dr. Martin Luther’s Vermischte Deutsche Schriften, Johann K. Irmischer, ed. (Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), 63:124-125].
So what does this passage from Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus have to say about faith and works?
I am sure that you have seen those “before and after” TV commercials. You know the type that I mean. They show you an overweight lady in a bikini (I don’t know why these ladies are in bikinis in the first place, but that is a different question). They show you an overweight lady in a bikini, they show you that same lady 47 pounds lighter and actually looking good in a bikini, and then they tell you about some miracle weight loss pill. Weight loss supplements seem to be the biggest users of this technique, but you see it other places. You see it in ads for gym equipment. You see it in ads for baldness remedies and hair styling systems.
You may be surprised to learn that Paul the Apostle invented this advertising technique. We just read it. In this passage he talks about what it was like before experiencing Jesus, after experiencing Christ, and what life as a Christian should mean.
Here is the before picture. Paul wrote before TV, so you have to paint the image in your head.
1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
The first image that Paul uses for the life without Christ is the image is death. “You were dead in your sins.” He says that like we are supposed to be able to remember it. Is that how it was with you?
I didn’t think that I was dead. I was raised in a church going home. OK, we didn’t go all the time. Dad was an usher and had to be there the first Sunday of every month in order to take up the collection. Mom worked with the hospitality committee and took a turn as a hostess for the coffee fellowship. We went on those Sundays, but not on many others.
I went to Sunday School when I was little, but didn’t like it and stopped going by the time I was in middle school.
But I wasn’t evil, was I? Was I dead? Was I really an object of wrath? Paul can’t be talking about me, can he? What does my before picture look like?
For me, the first great moral dilemma that I faced was brought about by the Viet Nam War. I am sure that I didn’t know all the facts and didn’t have a well considered position, but as a young teenager seeing my older sister’s friends going off to war, I felt that the Viet Nam War was deeply immoral. As a consequence, I felt that the government was immoral. My dilemma was that my father worked as a research scientist working on contract to the government. His work was intended to help build better weapons. I felt dirty because my livelihood depended on an immoral system. I wasn’t dead. I turned to the church to find answers. I was interested in Jesus as a moral teacher - nothing more. I was enlightened and thoughtful. I was not dead. Was I?
Actually I was dead and Paul would have told me so in no uncertain terms. Paul himself had come from a good Jewish home and was an avid student of the Old Testament Scripture. Yet he describes himself as dead.
So why was I dead? My core problem was not that I felt badly about the war. My core problem was that I was far from God. My efforts to find some sort of moral bedrock were doomed to fail because the only thing under my feet was shifting sand. With God out of the picture, a search for firm moral principal is doomed. My problem was not out there somewhere, my problem was in me. With no moral center for myself, I was in no position to pass judgment on the morality of others.
I was dead. I was just too ignorant to understand that I was dead.
The other “before” image that Paul gives us is one of slavery. He never uses the word. But that is certainly what he is talking about. He says you followed the ways of this world. That means that we gave over our decision making to those around us. In Romans Paul calls it being “conformed to this world.” We followed the lead of our friends and our culture and the commercials that we saw on TV. We thought that we were making our own decisions, but freedom was an illusion and slavery was the reality.
So what sort of moral example does the world, our culture create for us? Here is a little exercise for you. Name a destructive and sinful behavior and ask yourself whether the culture promotes or condemns that behavior. How about violence? Does our culture glamorize that? How about lust? What do you see plastered on billboards, in commercials, and in our movies? Gluttony? That is too obvious to mention. What about greed? Don’t we glorify the desire to get ahead, no matter what the cost? We may give lip service to balance and generosity, but the people we revere are often self indulgent or workaholics.
The third element of this “before and after” image is gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature. Isn’t the very definition of freedom that I can do whatever I want? Doesn’t a free person follow their own desires? This paradox will be the topic of next week’s sermon, but the short story is that being driven by our baser instincts enslaves us. It makes us the most pitiful of creatures.
But what about this object of wrath thing? Before Christ, were we really objects of wrath? Whose wrath?
It could be that Paul was saying that we incurred the wrath of other people. It is certainly true that if you put a group of people together and they each seek to satisfy their own selfish desires that the result will not be peace and harmony. People will attempt to elevate themselves at the expense of others and relationships will be damaged. But I don’t think Paul is talking about the wrath of other people.
Could he talk about people being mad at themselves? I’ve had that experience. You know, I satisfy my desire for a piece of chocolate cake and then get angry at myself. Still, I would not call that wrath.
I think Paul is talking about God’s wrath. That isn’t a very popular thing to discuss, but I think that is what he means.
Why don’t we talk about the wrath of God? It certainly is there in the Bible. I think the problem is that we want to emphasize that God is love and talking about the wrath of God seems to contradict that. But the truth is that love and anger are not opposites. They are complementary feelings.
Think about a person whom you love very much. Now imagine that someone is trying to hurt them or something is threatening them. In that situation, feeling angry is natural and appropriate. Now that does not give you a license to do anything that you want. You have to channel your anger in positive ways, but the anger itself is positive.
The situation with God is similar. It is precisely because God loves us so much that God is angered by that which threatens us or our relationship with Him. God is even angry with us when our own foolishness puts us in danger and separates us from the communion that we should have with our creator. Now, while we have to work to channel our anger positively, God always expresses His anger in a way that leads us toward reconciliation. That is why the very next phrase, after mentioning God’s wrath, focuses on God’s mercy.
We have seen the before picture, now Paul presents the transition. This is the part where they would be demonstrating the gym equipment in the commercial. Here is what he said.
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Here the focus is all about what God has done through Jesus Christ. No one could ever get the impression that we did anything to earn the gift of God’s grace. No good works or obedience to rules played any role in our reconciliation with God. Hear the phrases Paul uses in just this one brief passage: his great love for us, rich in mercy, God raised us up, the incomparable riches of his grace, his kindness to us, and the most famous of all by grace you have been saved.
While the before image talked about us being dead, Paul points out that we have been made alive. This is not some minor course correction in our plans for our lives. This is a radical new beginning. Everything after this moment is about being a new individual and doing things in an entirely new way. The old “me” is gone. A new “me” has been born.
Finally Paul gives us the after picture. What are we like after we have been reconciled to God through Christ? 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
We are God’s workmanship. We were created to be God’s workmanship, we messed that up, but God has done some factory reconditioning and we are God’s workmanship again. The word here for “workmanship” is “poiema”. That is the root of our word “poem”. Literally, it means something that was done, but it carries the idea of a masterpiece. Imagine that you are an apprentice carpenter. You struggle to learn your trade, studying with your mentor. You grow in knowledge, you mature, and your skills improve with experience. Finally the time comes when you have an opportunity to create a piece all on your own. This is not just an ordinary piece; it is going to be the best thing that you have ever made. This will show off all your skills. Not only will you build it, but when you are done you will sign your name to it. Everyone who looks at it from now on will see that you claim it as your work. This will be your masterpiece. This will be your poiema.
But this passage is not about you creating a poiema. It is about you actually being a poiema. You were reborn in Christ as God’s masterpiece.
That is quite an image, but I generally don’t feel like a masterpiece. I see my flaws. I know how much I don’t do that I should. I see how many times I do what I shouldn’t. But do you see what is going on here? I am placing myself in judgment over God’s workmanship and giving God a poor grade. Who do I think that I am?
My mistake here is that I assume that God should have waived some sort of magic wand and made me perfect. That is not what happened. God is willing to put is signature on my life, not because I am now perfect, but because I have been made acceptable by Christ’s sacrifice.
There is another astonishing element of this after image. Paul says that as God’s masterpieces, we now need to be doing good works. Good works, as a way of earning God’s grace, signify nothing. But good works that flow out of us because of the people who we now are in Christ, those works are exceptionally important.
What is more, those opportunities for good works did not simply happen by chance. Paul says specifically that they are good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Think about that. Paul is saying that God has a plan and it involves each one of us. There are specific tasks in this project plan that God expects us to carry out. I have mine and you have yours. We are individually responsible, but we don’t do them alone. God has already been at work making things ready. God has specifically paved the way and arranged the circumstance and brought together the resources to make it possible. Now it is up to us. Not out of obligation, not in order to earn something, not even really as an expression of gratitude, but because that is who we now are.
I am not a golfer. Oh, I’ve played some putt-putt on occasion, but I’ve never played a single round of the real game.
Even though I’ve never played, I’m sure that I would be quite good. I have a natural talent for it. How do I know? My cell phone came with a golf video game built in. I play that occasionally to pass some time. Just last Friday, I played 18 holes while I was riding home from work on the bus. I finished 5 under par. The game of golf seems pretty simple.
Linda’s favorite author, Max Lucado, talks about playing golf. From what I understand, his play is about average. He tells the story about a time when he won a trophy and got his name in the paper for winning a pro-am tournament. That sounds like he must have played pretty well. He says that he didn’t.
Here is how it worked. He played as part of a foursome. The way that this particular tournament worked, all four players played each hole, but only the lowest of the four scores was recorded. With that scoring, Max might shoot a double bogey while his buddy, whose name happens to be Buddy, would shoot a birdie. It was Buddy’s score that got recorded, and Max’s score was forgotten. Out of 18 holes, Max’s score counted on just one hole. Still, everyone in the foursome got a trophy and everyone got their names in the paper.
Max compares playing in that tournament to being a Christian. As Christians, each one of us is in a foursome. The other three are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We play, often clumsily, but our score doesn’t count. Our buddy, Jesus, plays perfectly and we get credit for his score. That is a picture of grace. That is a picture of forgiveness. That is a picture of salvation.
But Max doesn’t stop there. He asks an interesting question. If it is Buddy’s score that is going to count, why should he even play? Why not sit on the sidelines, eat hot dogs, and root for Buddy?
Max reports that even though his score almost never counted, it was one of the best rounds he had ever played. He shot every stroke with Buddy giving him encouragement, advice, and instruction. Max gained from the experience and did some good for the team. The experience would have been valuable even if his score never made it onto the card.
The Christian walk can be like that too. We don’t have to do good works in order to have a positive report on some cosmic scorecard. Christ has taken care of that for us. Still, doing good works is something that is intrinsic to who we are, especially as people of faith. It is good for us. We are more genuinely the people whom we were created to be when we act as God intended us to ask. Doing good is not to avoid punishment, but to express compassion and love. It celebrates humanity as it was intended to be. And everything we do is with Jesus offering us encouragement, advice, and support.
So where are you in this commercial? Are you part of the before image. Are you dead, or enslaved, or an object of wrath? If so, know that the work of God is ongoing. Christ’s sacrifice is in the past, but it was once and for all. Everyone is invited, first to the foot of the cross, and then to the throne of God. That invitation is open to you today. Don’t wait until you are good enough. That will never happen. Just accept the gift.
If you are part of the after image, then you have to ask yourself. Are you living as if you were God’s masterpiece? Do people see God’s signature on you. Are you allowing God to work in and through you? Are you in touch with God’s plan? Do you watch for opportunities to be true to the new creation through doing good works for others? If not, surrender yourself to serve the God who loves you so much that he remade you in the image of His Son.
You recall that I began with a quote from Martin Luther. Later in that same preface he said , it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!
Faith and good works are not opposites competing for precedence in Christian thought. The truth is that when real faith grows, good works grow as well. One is an expression of our relationship to God. The other is an expression of our concern for the rest of God’s creation.
