Hello Readers!  Welcome to a new week and a new post on Renaissance Woman!

In last week’s post, I started looking at the Breastplate of Righteousness.  That post contained a series of scriptures one of which was John 6:29: “Then Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent’.”

While conducting the study and writing last week’s post, I had also started reading Frances Ridley Havergal’s Kept For The Master’s Use.  I had no sooner scheduled last week’s post then I read, “What a long time it takes us to come down to the conviction, and still more to the realization of the fact that without Him we can do nothing, but that He must work all our works in us!  This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He has sent.  And no less must it be the work of God that we go on believing, and that we go on trusting.  Then, dear friends, who are longing to trust Him with unbroken and unwavering trust, cease the effort and drop the burden, and now entrust your trust to Him!”

I wondered if I shouldn’t add this quote to last week’s post but, since I do try to keep these posts from growing too long, I decided to wait until this week.  As so, I am still looking at the Breastplate of Righteousness but am asking this week, just what do we think the Bible is saying when it speaks of ‘works’?  Reading John 6:29 it does appear that Jesus is saying our doing the work of God means believing.  I also quoted Genesis 15:6 last week which says, “And he (Abram) believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness”.  This scripture also appears to be saying Abram (or Abraham as he was named by God) did something-He believed-and it was his believing that was accounted unto Him as righteousness.

There are passages in Revelation that stress the importance of our committing righteous acts.  Revelation 19:8 says, “And to her (the wife of the Lamb) is was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”  Revelation 20:12 says, “And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened.  And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life.  And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.”  James 2:26 does appear to be the final word on the necessity of Christians performing works for it says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Strong words!

But then, there are other passages of scripture that seem to be saying something contradictory.  There’s Romans 3:21-28: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.  For there is no difference: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  Where is boasting then?  It is excluded.  By what law?  Of works?  No, but by the law of faith.  Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”

Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).  The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has this to say about works: “For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His” (Heb. 4:10).

To work or not to work, which is it?  Perhaps it’s the type of works.  Galatians 2:16 says, “knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.”  Here, as in the passage I quoted from Romans, it is works (or deeds) of the law that are the problem.  We Christians don’t do works of the law: our works are keeping His commandments to prove we love Jesus, have faith in Him, and believe He is the son of God.

But then I run into another problem: is belief enough?  Going back to James’ letter: in the midst of his passage on faith and works, I find; “You believe that there is one God.  You do well.  Even the demons believe-and tremble!” So even our belief in God isn’t enough.  We have to believe in Jesus and prove we believe in Him by doing works.  That this is what is believed by a great number of Christians was brought home to me as I was listening to a Christian radio station and a well-known believer said it didn’t matter how long the lifespan; what mattered is what we did for Jesus during that lifespan.  Is this the truth?  Is that what matters?  Is it the sheer number of our works that equate to righteousness?  Is it the type of our works that equate to righteousness?

I would say none of the above.  I would say it is the source of our works that reveal the righteousness of Christ in us.  Are we working to prove the life of Christ resides in us or do our works flow out of His life within us?  As I return to John 6:29, I find a little Greek word that is often overlooked.  That word is tou and it means “of this person: his”.  It is the word chosen to relate Jesus’ words to us: “…this is the work of God”.  How do we read this?  Are we reading it as we are the ones doing God’s work or should it be read as His work as in “this is the work God does”?

I believe the latter.  I believe it because of scriptures like Hebrews 4:10.  I believe it because, when I continue on from Ephesians 2 verse 9, I read; “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (verse 10).  I believe it because we are crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.  Every work then flows out of His life and, like our Forerunner, we do only what we see the Father doing.  The righteous acts with which we are clothed are only righteous if they flow out if His life and are energized by His Spirit.  Anything else is the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This is too massive a subject to be covered in one or two posts so I plan to pick this up next week.  Until then, I leave you with another quote from Kept For The Master’s Use: “If we look at any Old Testament text about consecration, we shall see that the marginal reading of the word is ‘fill the hand’ (e.g. Ex. xxviii 41; 1 Chron. xxix 5).  Now, if our hands are full of ‘other things’ they cannot be filled with ‘the things that are Jesus Christ’s’. There must emptying before there can be any true filling.  So if we are sorrowfully seeing that our hands have not been kept for Jesus, let us humbly begin at the beginning, and ask Him to empty them thoroughly, that He may fill them completely.”

To which I say “Amen!”

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Green, Jay P. Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew Greek English, Volume 4, Authors For Christ, Inc., Lafayette, IN, 1976, 1985

Havergal, Frances Ridley, Kept For The Master’s Use, Scriptura Press, New York, New York, 2015

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990