Good Works – What Does This Mean?

Christians and Good Works

Encore Post: When the Bible speaks about good works, it really is not talking about the everyday things we think about when we mention good things people do. The good things people do are always colored with mixed motives. Maybe we did them so that people would sing our praises. Maybe we expected to get something from them, a reward, a trophy or a good deed in return. The Hindu idea called Karma is supposed to work that way. If you do good, good will be done to you. Sometimes the things we choose to do are our own ideas. All night vigils, long fasts, pilgrimages and similar feats are very impressive, but God never actually asks us to do these things.

So, none of them save us or even especially please God — unless we do them because we have faith in God and want to thank him for his love and mercy towards us. Strictly speaking, non-Christians cannot do good works. All the things they do are motivated by the desire to get something out it. Even Christians, who love and trust God, aren’t perfect when it comes to doing good with pure motives.

Truly good works, then, are the product of faith in Jesus Christ. Every thankful thought, grateful prayer of thanksgiving, things done because we love God, are good works. Even though a sinful thought or motive might tarnish them, because Christ earned our forgiveness on the cross, God does not count these sins against us, but sees only those things done because we love him.

Blog Post Series

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Old Man, New Man

Encore Post: When the Holy Spirit uses his gifts to create faith in our heart, he does more than just change our minds. He creates a whole new person within us. (2 Corinthians 4:6, 5:17) Our new self, our new Adam or Eve, loves God, is thankful for the salvation he won for us when Jesus died on the cross and desires to do good works, serving God and our neighbors. Our new person produces truly good works, deeds done because we love God. The Holy Spirit makes us more and more holy through these things we do for him and produces his fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Yet, in this life, even though our old self, sometimes called by St. Paul the flesh, is drowned in the waters of Holy Baptism (Romans 6:3-4), it is not quite dead yet. Our old self seeks to serve ourselves and looks out for our own interests, to satisfy our bodily hungers and appetites rather than channel them to serve the way God made them. It seeks praise from the world and fills our hearts and minds with evil thoughts and desires. Every day in this life is a battle between our Old Adam and our New Adam, our Old Eve and our New Eve.

The Holy Spirit does not abandon us to fight this battle alone. He uses God’s law to remind us of our sin, the Gospel to forgive that sin, reminds us of our baptism and its power, feeds us with Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper and uses the ears and the voice of the pastors he calls to care for us to hear our confessions of sin and forgive them with the sure promise of our Lord Jesus.

We are never alone, then. Our Counselor stays by our side, prays for us and calls to our mind and heart all that Jesus promised us. With him, we will grow holier until the day death finally kills the Old Person in us and we go with him to be with Jesus until the day the resurrection of all flesh.

What is a Good Work?

Encore Post: At first, the answer to this question seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? We all know what it means to be good. We start “advising” our children when they can barely walk to “be good.” Our schools, armed forces, institutions of all descriptions give awards for “good behavior.” Exceptionally good deeds attract occasional “feel good” T.V. news segments and feature articles. A few of these “go viral” on the internet.

But when you try to pin it down, the definition of good work changes quite a bit depending on the person we’re praising and who it is that notices the deed. What is good sometimes varies by age and by culture. A toddler who picks up her toys is being good. A firefighter that runs into a burning building to save a child or even a pet is a hero. Generally speaking, someone who takes care of others, especially if they do not have to, is often called good. We call this definition of good works Civil Righteousness.

For Christians and Jews, a person that keeps the Ten Commandments is thought of as a good, God-fearing and righteous person. We are tempted to think that if we can check off each one of the commandments in our daily routine that we are pretty good people. We’re tempted to pat ourselves on the back when we achieve this feat on the surface. It is very possible to be righteous on the outside, but in God’s eyes, this form of good works is simply not good enough. Without faith in Christ, our righteousness in like a dirty rag.(Isaiah 64:6-7)

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus takes on what the Jews thought it meant to be righteous — to be good people. God wants more than just holy deeds. He wants our every thought to be holy. “Be perfect,” he said, “as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) Only Jesus himself lived up to that standard. That is why St. Paul tells us that no one is saved by works done according to God’s Law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. (Galatians 2:16)

God and the Good Works Christians do

Encore post: Crafters carefully select the materials for their works. They weigh their qualities, imagine what can be done with them, use their experience and training to prepare them for use. With great care and the confidence that comes from their skills honed by years of practice, they prepare, shape and fashion a quality product. The best are held up as works of art, masterpieces of their craft.

Even more so, God prepared us for salvation. By his grace and through the faith he gave us, he made it so. Our sins are forgiven, their power over us destroyed and we will rise from the grave on the last day — all for Christ’s sake. But there is more to God’s plan for us than these things. He has made us in Christ a new creation — people who want to do good works and do so as naturally as a good tree bears good fruit.

And God does even more for us. He prepares the good works for us do. He gave us his law, so we know what his will is for us. He places us in the right time and place, then urges us to do them. Because we love him, we follow through serving him and loving our neighbor. (Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:12-13) So it is that we are instruments in God’s hands, doing good, showing his mercy to others and bringing the Gospel to them.

How Good is Good Enough?

Encore Post: One day, a sincere rich young man came to ask Jesus a common question — perhaps you have asked yourself the same question: “What do I have to do to get into heaven?” (Mark 10:17) From the way Jesus responded to him, we know the man wasn’t arrogant, looking for an easy way out or looking for a loophole in God’s law. He truly wanted to live with God forever. Yet he was asking the wrong question. He thought salvation was something you earn, even though his own polite words should have told him that. You do not earn an inheritance. It is something given to you by your father.

The young man was likely a Pharisee, but not an opponent of Jesus. He called Jesus a good teacher. Jesus reminds him gently what he should already know — there is no good person. Only God is good. He then set out to show him this path was a dead end. If someone was going to earn salvation, Jesus in so many words said, you needed to obey the Ten Commandments. The young man still didn’t get it. He told Jesus he always had kept these.

The fellow must have been very good at it, for Jesus did not challenge him directly. He dodged the question entirely. Rather than talk about what someone can do to be saved, Jesus told him how he could make his obedience to God’s law complete — he could become his disciples — sell all his goods, give it to the poor and become Jesus’ disciple. This is was not ready to do, because he was very rich. The scripture does not tell us if the man ever conquered his trust in riches to trust in God. Some people think this man might even have been the Evangelist Mark himself. But at this moment, he was not able to do this.

Eternal life, after all, is not something we purchase, but something we inherit from God. It is a gift that comes in Jesus’ last will and testament — the New Testament in his blood, shed upon the cross. Jesus is good because he is God himself. So he was able and willing to take all our evil upon himself and pay the price for it — death. Now that he has done so, he gives us that inheritance — his body to eat with bread and his blood to drink with wine. With this gift, God writes his law upon our hearts, so that we want to follow him now and forever.