“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” - Ephesians 2:10
I was mulling over questions to ask a friend for our meeting time, and one particular thought hit me like a ton of bricks: “Would you rather people be moved by your life, or your deeds?” I was not sure whether this would hit my friend as hard as God just spanked me. The question seems innocuous, even a bit (unnecessarily) pretentious and perhaps hair-splitting, but there is truly a lot here
We live in a day and age where our worth and identity are defined by what we do. Don’t believe me? How would you answer the question “what do you do?”
“I am a student.”
“I am a teacher.”
“I am a ditch-digger.
...or more shamefully, at times: “I am between jobs.”
We define ourselves by what we produce! ...Why?
Look at Ephesians 2:10 again. Paul says that God, Himself, prepared us beforehand, so that we would walk in good works. To use another phrase often employed by the apostle Paul, this occurred so that we cannot boast. In other words, the works are not ours to claim!
There I sat, asking myself this question again and again: “Would I rather people be moved by my life, or by my deeds?” A more profound wording of this question would be pro daring whether I would rather have those around me moved by God’s deeds or my own. Like an elementary-aged student blindly answering “Jesus” to a question in Sunday school, I gave the right answer... of course, I would rather God get the praise. However, I am afraid that was not my real answer; I want people to see me.
It is sobering to realize how quickly we forget the value of our works. Recall if you will, Paul counted his righteousness as “rubbish.” This Greek word refers to dung or excrement; poop!
So, if we define ourselves by what we produce... what are we really producing? Dung! Probably not worth bragging over, considering the fact that the most infantile and handicapped of all creatures accomplishes the exact same feat.
I quickly tried to shift lanes to see if there was any other option to recategorize my own good works. But there was nothing that was going to glorify my own status. Realizing despite the fact that I am a factory that exclusively produces dung, God can choose to use me to spin gold. This is humbling, to say the least. It is crazy how a change of perspective alters everything!
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation...” - 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
The only way that anyone can be positively affected by what I do has nothing to do what what I can do and everything to do with what has been done by God. For someone to be moved towards Jesus through my life (and your life), is hopeless unless it is recognized that the fruit of a Christian’s life comes directly and solely from the fact that we are already the fruit of God ourselves.
Here is my challenge for you, for my friend that I posed the question to initially, and for the man in the mirror that I cannot escape from: quit looking down at what your hands can produce. Quit looking at your schedule to see if you have filled every available minute of the day. Quit looking within to see if your will to act has added jewels to your crown. Quit looking around you to see how you are looked at by others and simply look up. If you are truly belonging to God, you are His workmanship. His purchasing you on the cross and inserting His Holy Spirit into your unholy one made you His. God does not leave a project unfinished, so quit trying to add to what He is doing. Dung will not help His project anyway! Get out of the way and trust that the One who created, saved and called you has a better grip on how to do the same for others than you do! In other words, learn what God has made you according to His Word, cut everything else out, and obey the One who formed you!
Stop working in order to redeem your own workmanship and begin living out your life as His!