Toward a Practical Theology of Good Works: Good Works and Old Testament Poetry and Wisdom Literature

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A thematic approach to good works and Old Testament poetry and wisdom literature

Obedience to God’s communal good works, beginning with Ruth and Boaz and culminating in the reigns of David and Solomon, brought a time of peace and prosperity to the nation of Israel. We should not be surprised, then, that we also observe a blossoming of music and literature during this period, as we see in the following biblical books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.

What, then, do these books teach us about doing good works?

To answer that question, instead of looking at specific examples of good works and specific teaching about good works in OT poetry and wisdom literature, I’m going to take a thematic approach. That is, what do the themes of each of these books teach us about good works?

Job: doing good works and responding to personal tragedy

“Job was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” Job 1:1

We all know examples of extremely tragic things happening to believers who know, love, and faithfully serve God with their good works.

“The Clarksons,” as I will call them, were members of my childhood church and were one such example. Helen and Louis Clarkson were actively involved in our fellowship. They had two sons, Will and Sean. One day tragic news spread throughout the congregation: Will, who was my age and participated in our youth group, had been diagnosed with metastatic bone cancer and lived only a few more months. Then, a year or two later, his brother Sean was diagnosed with the same disease and also died. And finally, Louis, the father, was also diagnosed with the same cancer and died as well. Helen was left alone, grieving the loss of her entire family to a terrible disease.

How is it possible that something like this could happen to such an amazing family, we all wondered?

Sometimes the things believers go through leave us speechless, and all we can do is ask, “Why, God?”

Everyone struggles with the question of why good people suffer terrible things. In its broader form, this problem can be stated this way: Why does an all-good God and an all-powerful God allow evil in the universe?  Called “theodicy,” theologians and philosophers have debated this issue since the dawn of time and it has become one of the main arguments against Christianity that is often stated in this form: If God is all-powerful, then he cannot be good, because he can eradicate evil but doesn’t. And if God is good, then he is not all-powerful, because he would eradicate evil, but can’t.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that the Book of Job, one of the earliest examples of human literature, specifically deals with theodicy. Interestingly, the Book of Job does not give us an solution to the problem. Instead, it ends by telling us that God, the creator of all that we see, answers to no one and we are just going to have to trust that he will work it all out in the end.

The Book of Job teaches us that one thing we must avoid when doing good works is transactionalism

On the other hand, there is one often proposed answer to theodicy that the Book of Job emphatically rules out: transactionalism. Simply put, transactionalism involves doing something for someone in order to get something from that person. Working in order to get paid is transactionalism. There is nothing wrong with transactionalism up to a point. But when it comes to doing good works and our relationship with God, we must avoid transactionalism at all costs. Indeed, transactionalism is what Satan accused Job of doing in his relationship with God.

“The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”” (Job 1:8-12)

Satan’s rhetorical question, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” is a transactional accusation. He is saying that the reason Job fears God is not because he loves God, but because of what he gets from God. Take away everything God has blessed him with, Satan says to God, and Job will curse him to his face.

Transactionalism can go two ways

On the other hand, transactionalism can also work in the opposite direction: “You are suffering this tragedy because you did something to offend God,” was the accusation Job’s three “friends” made to him. For example, Eliphaz says in Job 4:7-9, ““Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.” Eliphaz in effect tells Job, “You are suffering because you are reaping the sin you have sown.” Eliphaz implies that if Job will only confesses his sin, he will then be restored.

We reject transactionalism when we do our good works for God freely because we love him, not because we want to get something from him. The necessity to avoid transactionalism when we relate to God is especially true when it comes to our salvation. We have been saved, not because of the good works we have done, but because we have received God’s free gift of forgiveness through faith in Christ based on the good work he has done for us by paying for our sin on the cross.

On the other hand, while we sometimes suffer because of sin in our life, there are other times when we are living a consistent and fruitful life for the Lord and we still experience tragic events. So we must do our good works, all the while knowing that Satan is making the same argument with God about us that he made long ago about Job: they’re just serving you, God, for what they can get from you, not because they love you.

Our faith in God, and our love for him, must transcend any tragedy we may experience as we continue doing our good works

Therefore, if great tragedy strikes us even when we have been faithfully serving the Lord with our good works, we must keep that debate in heaven between God and Satan in our minds and understand that sometimes God allows Satan to attack us viciously in order to prove the very important point that love and not a transaction motivates our service to our Lord. Our faith in God, and our love for God, must transcend our tragedy.

As Job himself said, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Job 13:15

Psalms: doing good works and practicing personal piety

“God is spirit, and those who worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24

In the mid 1800’s, as revival spread across Norway and other Nordic countries, an evangelist by the name of Hans Romsdalen visited Oppdal, Norway and held revival meetings there. He preached on the importance of “having a personal, vital relationship with Jesus Christ entered into by faith” (a direct quote from my Reese family history  book, “Some Pioneers and Pilgrims on the Prairies of Dakota”), and on the importance of rejecting the empty ritualism of the state church. One of the persons who was saved in those meetings was a sheep and goat farmer by the name of Baeraug Olsen Rise, my great-grandfather. (My last name, “Reese,” is an anglicized version of “Rise.”)

Personal piety is a central tenant of conservative Christianity

As evidenced by that revival, the concept of a “personal relationship with Jesus” has been central to the conservative, Protestant movement for centuries.

But what does it mean to have a personal relationship with Jesus and how does it relate to our topic of doing good works?

What it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus is to understand that Jesus, who is God incarnate, is alive and, as believers in him, he is present with us right now. As such we can know him by meditating on the Word of God and allowing the Spirit of God to speak to us and reveal him to us. And we can respond by communicating truthfully to him about our spiritual, emotional, and mental states, whether it be our thankfulness, our awe, our praise, our worship, or our fears, our guilt, our shame, our repentance…everything that is going on inside of us.

Furthermore, we nurture our personal relationship with Jesus as we share it communally in weekly worship at Church, and individually by spending time daily in prayer and Bible reading.

The Book of Psalms is the primary book in the Bible dedicated to personal piety

The term I use to describe this personal relationship with Jesus as God is personal piety and the one book in the Bible that best expresses personal piety is the book of Psalms. In the Psalms we have an honest, unvarnished, written record of the inner spiritual lives of David and others as they honestly express themselves to God.

For example, on the positive side, David expressed these feelings to God with:

• a psalm of praise to God for his Creation. Psalm 8
• a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from an enemy. Psalm 34
• a psalm of worship of God for his holiness. Psalm 29
• a psalm of contentment and peace resulting from God leading him. Psalm 23

But on the negative side, David also expressed these feelings to God with:

• a psalm that describes his intense fear. Psalm 56
• a psalm about falling deathly ill. Psalm 41
• a psalm of desperation while in prison. Psalm 142
• a psalm about betrayal by a friend. Psalm 55
• a psalm of confession of sexual sin. Psalm 51

David’s brutal honesty with God, as illustrated by these Psalms, is why God called him “a man after my own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) and they illustrate the beauty of genuine personal piety.

But conservative Christians tend to emphasize personal piety at the expense of good works

Over the past two decades I have come into contact with hundreds of men’s ministries and their publications. The one thing I have noticed again and again, is that their publications overwhelmingly emphasize personal piety and almost never mention good works at all. And that is a great tragedy, because men are doers by nature. Instead, we have men sitting at tables on a Saturday morning eating pancakes and “fellowshipping.” Then we send them home to pray and read their Bibles.

Make no mistake, fellowship, prayer, and Bible reading are critical for spiritual growth. But Christian men are asking, “What do I do now?”

This problem of focusing on personal piety and ignoring good works is not just a problem with men’s ministry, it extends to the entire church. We simply do not have a proper balance between the two.

Without good works, our personal piety is vacuous

Every husband knows that expressing love to our wives with our words is important. But our words must be coupled with our actions. We are to love our wives both by expressing our inner selves to them and by the things we do for them.

In his autobiography, John Denver admitted to a history of violence against his wife, coupled with marital infidelity. Often, he would try to make it up to her by singing her one of his songs. But the songs seemed like empty words to her and eventually his wife divorced him.

Our worship rings hollow in God’s ears when we do not put our words into practice. Eventually, God gets to the point where he hates our worship, as we read in Isaiah 1:13:

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.”

But four verses later, God says:

“Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.”

Proverbs: doing good works and acquiring wisdom

“Don’t cast your pearls before swine. If you do, the pigs will trample the pearls with their little pigs’ feet, and then they will turn back and attack you.” Matthew 7:6

When it comes to doing good works for people, I am sure many of us have had negative experiences. We may have been defrauded by someone who is lying to us about their need. Or perhaps we discover that the need is way to great for our meager resources. We may even realize that the recipient of our good work is mentally ill and we have put ourself in danger. All three of these situations have happened to me personally.

Clearly, anyone who is serious about doing God’s good works for people needs to have great wisdom in discerning between who they should do their good works for and who they should not do their good works for. While we have yet to review the New Testament’s teaching on this subject, we do have a reference book in the Old Testament that gives us much wisdom as we seek to answer that question: the Book of Proverbs.

The Book of Proverbs helps us distinguish between “the righteous poor” and the “rightfully poor”

One way to answer the question, To whom should we do our good works? is to think of potential recipients in two groups: the righteous poor and the rightfully poor.

By “righteous poor,” I am using this term in the broadest possible sense; that is, generally good people who are poor through no fault of their own. And by “rightfully poor,” I mean people who are poor because of a flaw in their character; that is, there is a moral issue they need to repent of before they can begin to deal with their poverty.

The Book of Proverbs vividly describes both the righteous poor and the rightfully poor and teaches us to focus on the former and ignore the latter.

The righteous poor: the people we should focus our good works on

We can think of the righteous poor in the Book of Proverbs as the protagonists. Proverbs describes these people as those we should help and emulate. I list them here, along with corresponding verses from Proverbs that describes them.

• The Genuinely Poor – These are people who are poor through no fault of their own. They include widows, orphans, fatherless children, the infirm, the weak, and the oppressed. Proverbs mentions this group 30 times. “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.” Proverbs 19:17

We do not normally think of the following protagonists as poor. On the contrary, Proverbs tells us that, in general, these types of people prosper. But as we learned from the Book of Job, tragedy can befall any good person. And so I list these groups along with the poor as candidates for our good works.

• The God-Fearing – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 1:7
• The Wise – “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.” Proverbs 1:5
• The Righteous – “The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight.” Proverbs 1:5
• The Diligent – “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance.” Proverbs 21:5
• The Upright – “The integrity of the upright guides them.” Psalm 11:3
• The Generous – “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.” Proverbs 19:17
• The Discerning – “The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way.” Proverbs 14:8
• The Humble – “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” Proverbs 11:2

The rightfully poor: the people we should ignore with our good works

We turn now to the antagonists in the book of Proverbs. Not all of these people are poor all the time. But they do often experience poverty due to their character flaws and alienation from God. Proverbs tells us to avoid these types of people.

• The Fool – Mentioned 40 times in Proverbs. “A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent.“ Proverbs 15:5
• The Scoffer – “A scoffer does not like to be reproved; he will not go to the wise.“ Proverbs 15:12
• The Sluggard – “As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.“ Proverbs 26:14
• The Wicked – “The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but he loves him who pursues righteousness.“ Proverbs 15:9
• The Adulterer – “The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.“ Proverbs 5:3-4
• The Gossip – “Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets; therefore, do not associate with a simple babbler.” Proverbs 20:19
• The Oppressor – “Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.” Proverbs 22:16
• The Drunkard and Glutton – “Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty.” Proverbs 23:20-21
• The Deceiver – “A lying tongue hates its victims, and a flattering mouth works ruin.” Proverbs 26:28

Ecclesiastes: doing good works and finding meaning

“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:9

“The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.” Ecclesiastes 1:1-5, 8, 9, 11

Stop gaslighting me, Teacher!

When I read the Book of Ecclesiastes, the first thing that comes to my mind is, how did this depressing book make it into the Bible? Life is so tough being filthy rich, the Teacher tells us. O, cry me a river. The Teacher’s problem with the meaninglessness of life isn’t anything that couldn’t be solved with high doses of Prozac. Or better yet, if only the Teacher had met Jesus, Jesus would have told him, “Go, sell all that you have and give it to the poor and come follow me.” That would have solved his problem with depression.

I want to shout, “Stop gaslighting me, Teacher! And please don’t wish me a happy life with my wife ‘all the days of this meaningless life that God has given’ me. That’s like telling me, ‘Have a great vacation in that dilapidated car of yours that is probably going to break down in the middle of nowhere.'”

I forgot that Christians live in a completely different reality than the Teacher did

“O, wait a minute, Teacher. I just remembered. When you wrote Ecclesiastes, you didn’t have all of the Bible yet like we do. So, obviously, you didn’t know the rest of the story. God became a human being and lived a life here on earth just like we do. His name is Jesus. He lived a perfect life, died on a cross for our sins, and rose from the dead. Now he lives in heaven waiting for those of us who believe in him as their Lord and savior to join him. You see, Teacher, that changes everything. Life isn’t meaningless after all. No, instead, everything we do has eternal significance. Our good works will be rewarded for all of eternity! Here’s how Peter, an apostle of Jesus, put it.”

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:3-9

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything

“You are right, Teacher. Life would be meaningless if Jesus had not died and rose again. But he has and it isn’t. Soon Jesus will come again. That is the greatest meaning anyone could have and the greatest motivation for doing good works we could wish for.”

Song of Songs: doing good works and experiencing beautiful, God-ordained sex in marriage

Question: What does sexuality have to do with doing good works? Answer: Everything. A simple observation of modern life tells us that how Christians handle sex has a massive impact on our good works, both positively and negatively.

Song of Songs vividly pictures for us the beautiful and thrilling positive side of sex when experienced in its proper setting, marriage

Sometimes explicitly and sometimes unmistakably metaphorically, Song of Songs describes sex between two married lovers again and again. For example, references to “breasts” occurs eight times in its eight chapters. Here are two examples: “”My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts” (1:13), and “”I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine…” (7:8, see also 4:5; 7:3, 7; 8:1, 8).

Several other passages in Song of Songs also refer to sex, such as, “”Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine… Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers” (1:2-4, where “the king’s chambers” symbolize his privates) and “”A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed… Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow” (4:12-16, where “a locked garden,” “a spring locked,” and “a fountain sealed” refer to the bride’s chastity and “let its spices flow” refers to their sexual consummation). In 2:3-6, the passage, “”As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight, I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste… His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me,” describes the marital couple enjoying sex in bed as experienced from the bride’s point of view. (See also 5:1; 7:6-9; and 8:5.)

God ordained marriage-affirming, love-affirming, and life-affirming sex as his way of forming lifelong spiritual, emotional, personal, and physical unions between a man and a woman. It is upon this kind of foundation that families and civilizations are built. As such, this type of committed sex is one of the best good works any married Christian can do.

Old Testament poetry and wisdom literature deal with issues that are of vital importance to doing good works

In summary, our review of the five biblical books that comprise Old Testament poetry and wisdom literature – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs – has given us important answers to some key questions regarding doing good works.

• Job – We learned from the Book of Job that doing good works does not guarantee that we will not experience severe tragedy in our lives. We also learned the importance of avoiding transactionalism when doing good works.
• Psalms – We learned from the Book of Psalms that genuine personal piety is honestly communicating our inner spiritual and emotional states to God. We also saw that personal piety must be balanced by good works.
• Proverbs – In the Book of Proverbs we saw the importance of exercising wisdom in distinguishing whom we should do our good works for. Some — the righteous poor — should receive the benefits of our good works while others — the rightfully poor — should not.
• Ecclesiastes – I contrasted the Book of Ecclesiastes’ view of life with that of the New Testament following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We saw that Christ’s death and resurrection gives us hope and motivation to do good works in a way that was completely absent in Ecclesiastes.
• Song of Songs – In the Book of Song of Songs, we were reminded that sex within marriage between a man and a woman is a wonderfully beautiful thing and is a good work in itself.

In my next two posts, I will cover the major and minor prophets and what we can learn about doing good works from them.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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