2023-08-18 A Meditation on Good Works

“2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:1–10 ESV)

From here to somewhere across the field, we salute. For fruits of the spirit give rise to moments of clarity, inspired deeds of human God-like service. And the doctrine, untarnished, tells of a future life, a world where enmities cease and Man resides in pacific joy aside his or her neighbor. So, to the good deed, to the love for an aging citizen or troubled youth. To the patience with the unconverted. To the valuing of all lives as materially important, jigsaw pieces of a social puzzle adaptive, responding to, reacting unto, all and sundry of its members vis-a-vis their life together.

So to the salute, and to the doctrine: Man is hopelessly trying to validate himself, herself, with good works. Man tries to be an accountant of who and where the Christian output resides, rather than accepting and living into an urgent yet strange and unworldly Calm. No one can rule over anything by Law alone: Grace is needed, charisma, untold and mysterious steps of inspiration, the separation of the sin from the sinner: not, you were inevitably going to end up in jail, but, you had a brush with the wrong side, but we believe in second chances. We believe the deed of error no longer defines you. We forgive not once, not seven times, but seventy-seven times (Matt 18:22).

How, then to adapt our salute, how to merge our pride in a fellow traveler’s good works, to a doctrine of Grace? Only in this, that Grace does not deny good works exist, nor does it deny good works are the aim of our faith (1 Tim 1:5). What Grace teaches is that we arrive at this desired destination when completely honest about falling into the arms of a benevolent Creator. We list the good works around us, but do so from a bedrock platform of unconditional acceptance and belonging: for who knows but that the manifest sinner in our community, the hater or the sickly or the unreformed, the atheistic or lustful, proud or irreverent, are in fact the locus of Today’s Gospel. That they may on a dime turn and be counted among the elect, elect from before the foundations of time. Indeed, our hope is that all who hear our words of faith will prove in the final issue to have been marked for salvation.

So again we salute; we get warm feelings welling up inside, around a fellow traveler’s patient love for the brethren and for the sistren. We well up with joy at the thought of a reasoned Bible study hour (rather, quarter hour) that produces a willed good work. For such good works will spell a mountain of brightness to an unbelieving world. Such good works will prove that those frustrated conclusions (“all is futile; all life is a stasis of sin and death”) have met their end. Man is fundamentally flawed, yet Man sees in her and his world people caught up in this good spirit or fatally attached to that ill spirit. Man has a plethora of goodness in his and her capabilities, only it is too soon to end the teaching of the Babylonian captivity of the Church. The Church is captive. The Church is to a man tempted and erratic. Yet the Church, this homebody’s home or that homegirl’s station, eeks out a meager living by pointing plaintively, lovingly, patiently, to a few good works “out there”. The Church is thus liberated and no longer captive, because of following that Lead, Jesus, who went to the Grave teaching of a better Kingdom. Kingdom Now, ours to walk into, to joi with, and to share across a divide, over a field and glade, with that neighbor whom we salute.