Toward a Practical Theology of Good Works: Finding Out What Pleases the Lord

When it comes to God and his good works, God calls all believers to participate with him as he does them

Some of my fondest and earliest memories are of my father teaching me how to straighten old nails. A survivor of the Depression, Dad made it a practice of saving any nail he pulled out of a board. He saved his rusty bent nails in a large jar on a shelf out in our garage. Through the dirty glass they looked like dozens of dead mangled worms. He would spill them out on his workbench, find ones that were just the right size for our project, and give them to me to hammer away on. I was probably only five or six years old, but I got pretty good at straightening those nails. It thrilled me that my father, standing so close to me as we worked that I could smell his Old Spice, would include me in his home projects.

One thing the Bible makes clear is that, like my dad, God loves to include you and me in his “home projects,” so to speak. He intends for believers to participate with him in his good works, not just stand by and observe Him as he does them. As we will see below, this invitation to join him in his work occurs again and again throughout Scripture.

We are children learning to do the good that pleases God our Father

But as we have seen in this series, “Toward A Practical Theology of Good Works,” doing God’s good works does not come naturally. Rather, they are an acquired skill born of a renewed heart. When it comes to doing good, all believers start out as novices who have to learn “what pleases the Lord,” as Paul says in Ephesians 5:8-10:

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out (dokimazontes¹) what pleases the Lord.”

Paul is saying that learning to do the things that please God our Father requires an ongoing, long-term commitment to consciously take our Lord’s desires into account as we live out our lives as believers.

To find out what kind of good works please God, we first looked at the good works God himself has done

Specifically, we looked at six periods where God did good works. Here they are, each with a summary of what we have learned.

God and his good works in creation…and how we participate in them

We learned from God’s creative activity that his good works originate with his speech. Therefore, if we are to do the good works God wants us to do, we must pay attention to his speech as well. That is, we must know and follow the Bible as our guide for doing God’s good works.

Furthermore, God’s creative good works “fit together” and build on each other like a grand, three-dimensional puzzle. In the same way, the good works God has for us to do are not just “random acts of kindness,” but purposeful, cumulative, regenerative, powerful, orderly and brilliant.

And just as God’s good works in creation were obviously good to God, and still are to us today, so also the good works God is calling us to do are undeniably good to everyone who sees them, including unbelievers.

And finally, God, through the Edenic covenant he established with Adam and Eve, invited them to join him in his creative process by ruling over his creation, tending the garden of Eden, and by being fruitful and filling the earth with billions of people.

Thus the most important lesson we learn from God’s good works in creation is that we always, always must do God’s good works as an expression of the covenant he has established with us. Our covenant with God is called the New Covenant and it forms a structure that organizes the good works that we do for him and with him.

God and his good works in response to the Fall…and how we participate in them

“All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags,” scripture tells us in Isaiah 64:6. The unbeliever’s attempts at good works only result in token good works; they are the equivalent of Adam and Eve’s futile act of clothing themselves with fig leaves in the presence of God. Adam and Eve would not acknowledge their sin, their rebellion, their spiritual death, indeed, their separation from God.

Before Adam and Eve could regain their ability to do God’s good works, they had to “undress” from their own good works, their own pitiful fig leaf clothes, in front of God and each other, and then dress themselves instead in God’s gift to them of a new set of clothes, tailored for them by God himself from the skins of sacrificial animals who died in their place that day. It was only when they came empty handed to God and accepted his free gift, his covering for their shame and sin, that they could again renew their relationship with him.

Like Adam and Eve, to this very day God invites us sinners to set aside our own good works and enter into a new covenant with him based on faith in Jesus Christ as God’s sacrificial lamb who atoned for our sins. God clothes us believers in Christ and sees us in him, radiant with his righteousness. Therefore, only God’s good work of redemption makes true good works possible in the life of the believer.

As Christians, then, we must be careful to distinguish between God’s good works and the world’s token good works that do not address the problem of our rebellious hearts.

A final lesson we learn from God and his good works in response to the fall is that the world we live in is no longer conducive to doing God’s good works. Our “gardens” are now full of weeds because the world is under a curse. Doing God’s good works can be difficult, perhaps even dangerous. But, like the garden of Eden itself, the end result is always a garden that is wonderful, even exhilarating. “Let us not become weary in doing good,” Scripture exhorts us, “for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9

God and his good works in history…and how we participate in them

To review God’s good works in history, we looked at several historical periods in the Bible, such as the periods from Cain and Able to the Flood, Abraham to Joseph in Egypt, the Exodus to the Judges, and the United Kingdom to the Divided Kingdom,

The main lesson we learn from God’s good works in history is that individual believers play a central role in carrying them out when they do so by faith. In a sense, as history progresses, we work hand-in-hand with God in accomplishing his plan and purpose when by faith we do the good works he has for us to do. Again, believers are not simply observers in a divine play, but active participants in its production.

The writer to the Hebrews makes this emphasis on individuals acting in faith throughout history explicit in Hebrews 11 where he names fifteen Old Testament individuals who participated in God’s historical good works through faith. Then, having elaborated at length on several specific examples of believers doing God’s good works through faith, he reaches a crescendo when he lists good deed after good deed after good deed in one long list:

“And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:32-38

Believers accomplished all of this simply by believing God and then doing the good works that God called them to do.

God and his good works in the Incarnation…and how we participate in them

The chief lesson we learn from the Incarnation about doing God’s good works is that attitude is everything when doing them. Right after reminding his readers to not look “to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others,” Paul reminds them to accomplish those good works in the following manner: “Have this attitude in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5) Paul then goes on to describe Christ’s attitude, which was one of absolute humility. That is, only when we, like Jesus Christ, set aside all pride, all pretense, all status, and all self service can we do the good works God calls us to do.

Without an attitude of humility, we will revert to “token” good works. To do the good works God saved us and called us to do, we must set aside our own agenda, our own pride, our own position in this world, and go wherever the love of God and his good works take us.

God and his good works in Jesus’ earthly ministry…and how we participate in them

Everywhere Jesus went, he did good works. He preached the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He called people to repentance and faith in him. He taught his disciples. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead. In the process, Jesus told his disciples something remarkable: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

And that is exactly what happened. At the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he had maybe a few hundred disciples in a very small geographical area. But after he died and rose from the grave, and after he gave his disciples the Holy Spirit and then ascended into heaven, his disciples took his message of salvation to the ends of the civilized world. Today, there are hundreds of millions of disciples of Jesus who are spread around the world, on every continent and in every country.

As the incarnate Son of God, as the one who perfectly obeyed God in every way, Jesus is our one and only paradigm for good works. In everything we do for the glory of God, we must look to Jesus as our example. Jesus invites us as believers in him to participate in his good works and “do even greater things than these.” How do we do these good works? Here are a few key principles taken from the life and teachings of Jesus Christ:

We must be born again and filled with the Holy Spirit to do the kind of good works Jesus did.
Jesus’ attitude of humility is everything when doing God’s good works.
The salvation of others and the discipleship of believers are the goals of our good works.
Our good works should focus on the poor and sick – the weakest among us – especially among fellow believers.
Our good works should aim to heal our relationships the way Jesus healed his relationships in the Upper Room.

Through faith in Jesus Christ, and with the presence of the Holy Spirit who indwells us, we have the power to do amazing God-honoring, Christ-exalting, and people-blessing good works

God and his good works in redemption…and how we participate in them

Now that we have been redeemed, we have been set free to do something wonderful: genuinely serve God by doing his good works from a grateful heart. Before our salvation we selfishly thought we could get away with just serving ourselves, but we were actually serving Satan. And we all know what the consequences of that lifestyle were: pain and alienation and even death!

Now, as an expression of our redemption, we have the opportunity to daily shrug off temptation and avoid sinning because we have a new affection, a new lover, God himself! Of course, we will never be sinless until we stand in God’s presence, as John in 1 John 1 tells us. But we can remain “functionally free” from sin by maintaining our fellowship with God. We can confess sin as God makes it clear to us and maintain our relationship with him and the good works he calls us to do. Or, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” Hebrews 12:1

But not only does our redemption set us free to do God’s good works, our redemption also shows us the quality of the good works God has for us to do. That is, God’s act of redeeming us is not just redemptive, but also exemplary. Again, John expresses this truth so well when he writes in 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Having experienced the benefit of Christ’s redemptive work, that is, our salvation, we continue to participate in Christ’s redemptive work on the cross by imitating it as we serve others.

Now that we have learned about the kind of good works God has done in relationship to our universe and to our world and to us as human beings, I want to give you one example of a Christian who learned the reality of what it means to follow God’s good works wherever they led him. The following is a post I wrote about him a few years ago. It’s about a man named “Inky” and he is an excellent example of the principles I have summarized above.

Inky Goes to Smokey Mountain Garbage Dump

“I haven’t done anything with my life!”

That’s how I felt when I left church yesterday morning. I was visiting Redeemer Temple in Denver to help promote their men’s retreat. I’m speaking at it later this month.

I was looking forward to hearing the pastor preach, but instead, they had Marty Huber, a visiting missionary from the Philippines, give the message. Everyone called him “Inky,” short for “incubator.” I’m told they call him “Inky” because he was born premature and kept in an incubator for days.

Over thirty years ago, Inky had been attending Redeemer when he was invited to go on a two week medical missions trip working with the poorest of the poor in a garbage dump in the Philippines called Smokey Mountain.

At the time, Smokey Mountain was home to 30,000 people and was notorious for its poverty, crime, filth, sickness and death.

As Inky began to speak, he broke into tears as he described the conditions he found. Every night, three to four children would die in the camp. Sickness, malnutrition and starvation were

everywhere. The stench of garbage, human feces, and dead corpses permeated everything.

During that short term mission trip, Inky would go to bed struggling with how God could possibly allow such suffering. Seeing his distress, a missionary challenged him to go up to the top of a hill overlooking the dump and listen for God to speak to him.

Inky did. And in that moment of distress, surrounded by garbage and human misery as far as the eye could see, he heard the voice of God calling him to minister full time in that garbage dump for the rest of his life. “I want you to tell these people how much I love them,” Inky said he heard God tell him.

From that moment on, Inky said the stench and filth of the dump no longer bothered him. Obeying God’s call, Inky set to work serving the poor, sick and dying in the camp. His stories of how God had used him to save the lives of hundreds of children and adults and lead even more to Christ kept me on the edge of my seat. Eventually, Inky and his fellow missionaries started a church at Smokey Mountain. God even used Inky to lead three drug lords to Christ!

Toward the end of his message, Inky showed pictures of several Philippino’s whose lives he had led to the Lord as children. They were young adults now and they were wearing caps and gowns. It was a picture of them graduating from college! Inky and his mission had arranged for the children they were working with to be sponsored by people in America, South Korea and other countries. With this financing, they founded a school for these “children of the dump,” educated them, and sent them off to college.

During his message, I noticed that Inky’s right hand trembled. As he finished, Inky said – almost as a side note – “By the way, last week I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In a few days, I’ll be flying back to the Philippines.”

Someone said recently that if you want to find Christians and the church at work, just go to any garbage dump in any third world country and there you will see them.

And if one of them has a trembling right hand, it’s probably Inky.

All of us believers live in a worldly, spiritual garbage dump

“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

(Revelation 3:17) God, to the angel of the church of Laodicea

Not all of us are called to do our good works in third world garbage dumps. But in a sense, all believers minister in garbage dumps. Our particular garbage dump here in America is our debauched culture.

Driving up and down the streets in most neighborhoods in America, one would think that all is well. But all is not well in our culture. The homes we see behind those manicured lawns house people who are hurting from all manner of sin and strife and alienation. Loneliness, disease, addictions, and emotional struggles stalk them. Financial problems keep them awake at night. Marital issues threaten their families. The chaotic culture that surrounds their homes on the outside and invades their homes on the inside only magnifies their pain. And many of them are without God and without hope in this world.

Like the people in the church of Laodicea, they think, “I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But in reality they are unaware that they are “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

All Christians struggle with the garbage dump that is American culture. But, like “Inky,” God has called us to minister in our own corner of the garbage dump we find ourselves in. And the way we do it is by joyfully participating with God as we do his good works with him.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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