Good Works
Good works, I know whence you come! Ye come floating down on the stream of grace, and if I did not have that stream of grace always flowing, I should never find good works coming from me.
In every age those who have held the doctrines of grace have exhibited in their lives a holy walk and conversation.
Good works spring from union with Christ. The more a man knows and feels himself to be one with Jesus, the more holy will he be. The very fact that Christ and the Christians become one makes the Christian Christ-like.
When once the human heart is put under the microscope of Scripture, and we see it with a spiritual eye, we see it to be so vile and filthy, that we are quite sure that, until we have a new heart and a right spirit, it would be just as impossible to expect to find good works in an unrighteous, unconverted man as to hope to see fire burning in the midst of the ocean.
The children of God are a holy people; for this very purpose were they born and brought into the world, that they should be holy; for this they were redeemed with blood, and made a peculiar people.
The man who comes to God’s house, and drinks “wine on the lees, well refined,” and then goes away and drinks the cup and enjoys the company of the ungodly, gives no evidence that he is a partaker of divine grace.
Until our conversion, there is not the shadow of goodness about us. In the eye of the world we may be reputable and respectable, but in the eye of God we are nothing of the sort
Good works prove that I have perfect righteousness in Christ; they do not help the righteousness of Christ, nor yet in any way make me righteous. Good works are of no use whatever in the matter of justification.
There is nothing like faithful practice and holy living, if we would preach to the world. The reason why Christianity does not advance with a mightier stride is simply this: — that professors are in a large measure a disgrace to religion, and many of those who are joined to the church have no more godliness than those who are out of it.
When our works are done from the best motives, nothing is a good work unless it is done with faith; for “without faith it is impossible to please God.” Like Cain we may build the altar, and lay the first fruits of the earth upon it, and it may appear an acceptable sacrifice in itself; but if destitute of the salt of faith, there it will lie — it will not be accepted by God, for without faith it is impossible to please him.
Christian men hold themselves bound to keep all God’s precepts; but the reason why they do so is, not because the law is binding upon them, but because the gospel constrains them; they believe that, having been redeemed by blood divine, having been purchased by Jesus Christ, they are more bound to keep his commands than they would have been if they were under the law.
A Christian should be a striking likeness of Jesus Christ. You have read lives of Christ, beautifully and eloquently written, and you have admired the talent of the persons who could write so well; but the best life of Christ is his living biography, written out in the words and actions of his people.
“We must not look for good works in an evil nature any more than we should look for the grapes of Sorek on the vines of Gomorrah.
We should be pictures of Christ, such striking likenesses of him, that the world would not to have to hold us up by the hour together, and say, “Well, it seems somewhat of a likeness;” but they would, when they once beheld us, exclaim, “He has been with Jesus; he is like him; he has caught the very idea of the holy Man of Nazareth, and he expands it into his very life and every-day actions.”
The best works of the best man, who is out of Christ, are nothing but splendid sins — varnished sins. You have as great need to be forgiven for your good works as you have for your bad ones, if you are out of Christ.
There is no motive which can be said to be good but the glory of God. He who performs good works with a view to save himself does not do them from a good motive, because his motive is selfish.
The Christian, though he feels he never can mount to the heights of complete excellence, and perceives that he never can on earth become the exact image of Christ, still holds it up before him, and measures his own deficiencies by the distance between himself and Jesus. Forgetting all he has attained, he will press forward, crying, Excelsior! going upwards still, desiring to be conformed more and more to the image of Christ.
Good works are a Christian’s sermon. A sermon is not what a man says, but what he does. You who practise are preaching. The sermon that is preached by the mouth is soon forgotten; but what we preach by our lives is never forgotten.
Do not the stars, while they shine, look down from heaven and say there is God? Do not the winds chant God’s name, in their mighty howlings? Do not the waves murmur it upon the shore, or thunder it in the storms? Do not the floods and the fields, the skies and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the streamlets and the rivers, all speak for God? Assuredly they do; and a new-born creature — the man created in Christ — must preach Christ wherever he goes.
Christians who think they can walk in holiness without keeping up perpetual fellowship with Christ have made a great mistake. If you would be holy, you must live close to Jesus. Good works spring only thence.