As we look at God’s good works in history. we are learning that what God does reveals his nature. In creation, we saw that God’s good works reveal his omniscience and omnipotence. In his creation of Adam and Eve in his image, we learn that God himself is personal. And in his establishment of a covenant with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – called the Edenic covenant – we learn about God’s lovingkindness.
But the goodness of God’s creation does not last long. Adam and Eve sin, breaking their covenant with God. But it is the very breaking of their covenant that provides God another opportunity to practice even more good works. But this time, God’s good works in response to Adam and Eve’s fall are not just physical, but spiritual and moral. In his treatment of Adam and Eve, God demonstrates both his justice and his mercy, his righteousness and his love. These dualities will resonate throughout the Old Testament and culminate at the cross.
“Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Psalm 85:10
God’s first good work in response to the fall: he pursues sinners, even when we don’t want to be found
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:8, 9
If there is one thing that Adam and Eve’s fall teaches us – and which we all know from our own personal experience – it is that sin is embarrassing. Evil is one thing. But sin is a personal affront to a personal God who keeps trying to find us, which is why non-believers talk a lot about evil, but never about sin. The concept of sin raises a whole host of embarrassing issues non-believers spend their entire lifetime trying to avoid, just like Adam and Eve when they hid behind trees. Modern sinners hide from God in their fancy homes, in their massive trucks towing their trailered boats, and behind their desks in their corner offices. Hiding from God is a lifelong chore.
Sin is embarrassing because it kills things and assigns the responsibility to us. What sin kills is our relationships. It kills our relationship with God. It kills our relationship with our self by killing our spirit. It kills our relationship with our spouse. It kills our relationships with our children. It kills our relationships with our neighbors. It kills our relationship with the natural world. And, eventually, it kills our relationship with our bodies.
The embarrassment that sin causes manifests itself when, again, like Adam and Eve, we try to pretend before God and others that there is “nothing to see here.” “I’m doing just fine, God. Thank you very much.”
All of us have at one time or another tried to amend our ways with token good works; our own version of furtively sewing and donning an inadequate fig leaf suit of clothes to cover our sin. Like the man who boasts about his safe driving record because he stops at 99% of red traffic lights, we boast of how “I’m really not all that bad.”
If only God would just leave us alone we would be fine, we think. But he doesn’t just leave us alone. He keeps calling out to us. He calls out to us in the form of our conscience. He calls out to us in the form of beautiful sunsets. He calls out to us in the form of a holy book called the Bible. He calls out to us in the form of an uncomfortably relevant sermon. He calls out to us in the form of concerned friends. He calls out to us in the form of a tract we pick up on a bench. There is just nowhere to hide from the God who keeps calling out to us in unexpected ways and at inconvenient times: “I’m here! Where are you?”
This, then, is God’s first good work in response to the fall: he doesn’t give up on us sinners. Instead, he relentlessly pursues us.
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“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
– Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven
God’s second good work in response to the fall: he shows us mercy at the expense of his reputation
Something to keep in mind as we look at God’s good works in response to Adam and Eve’s fall is that their fall is not the first fall that God is dealing with. By the time Adam and Eve arrive on the scene, Satan, and a third of the angels of Heaven, have already rebelled against God. As a result, God evicted Satan and his sinful hoard from heaven. But now God tells Adam and Eve that if they sin, they will die.
In fact, God had told Adam and Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit, they would die that very day, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
But the Serpent, who was Satan incarnate and who had not died when he sinned, at least not physically, tells Adam and Eve, “You will not certainly die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
At first blush, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit, Satan seems to be the one who is telling the truth and God the one who is lying: Adam and Eve do not die that very day, their eyes are indeed opened to know good and evil, and God does acknowledge that “The man has now become like one of us.”
Observing all of this, as we are told they often do, the remaining faithful two thirds of the angels of heaven must be asking “What is happening here? Why didn’t Adam and Eve die? God said they would. Why is he allowing evil to go unaddressed in the world?” And that question, “If there is a God, why does he allow evil in this world?” is still the primary objection to belief in God that unbelievers raise to this very day.
To be sure, Adam and Eve do die upon eating the fruit. They die spiritually, and their subsequent experiences will show them just how profound their spiritual deaths are. But God allows them to continue in their physical “life” in order to show them mercy and hint at their redemption. However, he does this at great cost to his reputation. And this – God’s demonstration of mercy in spite of looking soft on evil – is his second good work in response to the fall.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends:
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.
Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.
The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire,
and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” 2 Peter 3:8-10
God’s third good work in response to the fall: he deals justly with our sin, which causes us pain
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Galatians 6:7
I have written on “the consequences of forgiven sin” before, but it bears repeating: yes, God does forgive Adam and Eve of their sin, as we will see below. But nevertheless, Adam and Eve – including all of us descendants after them – will still have to live with the consequences of their sin. God’s justice requires this. For example, God forgave Moses of his sin, but Moses still could not enter the Promise Land. God forgave David of his sin. But David still suffered from the rebellion of his son Absalom. God forgave Peter of his sin. But Peter still would eventually suffer death by crucifixion. And God forgave Paul of his sin. But Jesus told Paul in his vision on the road to Damascus, “I will show you how many things you must suffer for my sake.”
The consequence for Adam’s sin is that he will have to work by the sweat of his brow. The consequence for Eve’s sin is that she will give birth in severe pain. And the consequence for Adam and Eve’s marriage is that it will always involve some degree of strife. In all of this, God demonstrates his justice. But God has something else to prove with his good works.
God’s fourth good work in response to the fall: he provides a way for us to reconcile with him through blood sacrifice, which eventually causes him pain
“Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” Hebrews 9:22
But if there are always consequences for our sin, even for forgiven sin, then what good is forgiveness? Why bother to repent and seek forgiveness at all?
The reason we seek forgiveness and restoration in our relationship with God, in spite of the fact that, in this life, we still have to experience consequences for our sin, is because to know God and to walk in harmony with God is everything we could ever need or want. Reconciliation with God is life itself. God is perfect love, perfect beauty, perfect intelligence, perfect creativity, perfect peace, perfect power, perfect good, perfect…well, God is perfect in every good quality that we could possibly imagine. Nothing, no embarrassment and no consequence from our sin can compare to the tragedy of being alienated from God, especially being alienated from God forever.
And so God provides a way for Adam and Eve to be reconciled with him. He removes their pathetic fig leaves and gives them their own tailormade animal skin suits. But of course, this means that animals had to be sacrificed for Adam and Eve.
It must have been shocking for Adam and Eve to see God kill animals, skin them, and then make coverings for them out of those skins. They knew they were the ones who were supposed to die, not those animals. But he “left their sins unpunished, ” all the while knowing that he would sacrifice his Son, and his Son would sacrifice himself, for their sin.
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” Romans 3:25, 26
What God’s response to the fall teaches us about our good works
Our own good works are now inadequate
“All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6
The doctrine of total depravity often gets a bad rap. The reason is because many think it teaches that all people are as bad as they can possibly be and that no one, therefore, does any good works, ever.
But we know from simple observation that most people are fairly decent in their behavior most of the time. We also know from everyday observation that most people practice good works in some form. Indeed, every religion in the world teaches the importance of good works.
But the doctrine of total depravity is not saying that all people are as bad as they can be and therefore they never practice any good works at all. Rather, the doctrine means that sin infects all people to some degree or another and, consequently, everything we do, even the good things we do, are also infected with, and affected by, sin.
Like a waiter who drops a fork and knife on the floor, picks them up, wipes them off on his sleeve, and then gives them to us to eat with, our own good works are not sterile to God. They are compromised by our rebellious souls. Just as the waiter did not adequately account for the prevalence of germs on the floor, so we, too, often do not account for how sin permeates us and our good works.
Adam and Eve’s “good work” of making themselves fig leaf coverings does not account for their disobedience. They are infected with sin and simply taking fig leaves from a fig tree and weaving them together to cover themselves does not solve their problem. Their good work does not address their real issue: sin.
Only God’s good work of redemption makes true good works possible in the life of the believer
Token good works, therefore, are the best the unsaved person can do. These good works have the appearance of a solution, but they do not address the actual problem of a rebellious heart.
It is only when we admit the insufficiency of our own good works – the fig leaf coverings that we have made for ourselves – and, rejecting them as Adam and Eve rejected theirs by undressing themselves in front of God, accept the good work of redemption accomplished freely for us through Christ’s death – that is, when we clothe ourselves with Jesus Christ through faith in him – then and only then we can then be reconciled to God and do the good works he redeemed us to do.
In this way, by rejecting our own good works and doing the good works God saved us to do, we demonstrate the reality of our salvation from slavery to sin. Or, as Paul put it in Romans 6, we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace… You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness… Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.” Romans 6:11-14, 18, 19
Token good works, therefore, are good works that we choose, that fit our lifestyle, and mesh with our agenda. They are simply an expression of our own autonomous selves. But doing God’s good works comes from the heart of the one who has been born again; who has been “conquered” by God and by his love for us. God’s good works are designed by God himself for us to do in joyful obedience to Him.
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works; which God has prepared beforehand for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10
Doing God’s good works must now be done within the context of a cursed world
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
The 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 world is filled with spiritual thorns and thistles. The good works God has saved us and called us to do must now be done by “the sweat of our brow,” so to speak.
No longer is obedience to God simply a picnic in Paradise. Doing God’s good works on earth is like planting a garden on Mars. This world belongs to Satan now and us believers are aliens. Doing God’s good works is countercultural in the deepest sense of that term. Now we must “overcome evil with good.” Our resistance may result in “the shedding of blood.” We may suffer “for doing what is good.” We have to “encourage one another to love and good works.” Indeed, we may even be tempted to give up because we have become “weary in doing good.”
It is no wonder, then, that modern conservative Christians, especially modern conservative American Christians, almost entirely ignore the subject of good works. Instead, we live the good life and forget the good works that God gave us a new life to do.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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