THURSDAY December 7th
Ephesians 2:10
‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.’
In the previous devotion, I mentioned that Paul would have been in awe as he considered the great salvation that God had wrought in his life and was still working out through him as he continued in the mission to which he had been called. And I am reminded of what Paul had written in Ephesians 2 in the verse I have used today following on from the verses we looked at previously, ‘For we are his workmanship’.
The moment that we are saved we become the workmanship of God created in Christ Jesus, having been saved God works through us, in us and upon us, he works to fashion us or to shape us into the people he wants us to be as his children and here specifically Paul says ‘for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.’
We have already seen that good works do not and cannot save us, but once saved, good works should become the evidence that we have been saved.
In John 15, Jesus talked about the need for us to be abiding in him and as a result we should be bearing fruit, what is this fruit? Well one of the answers is that the fruit is the good works that we should be doing which God has already preplanned for us to be doing. That means it is essential that we learn to discover what is the good, pleasing and acceptable will of God for our lives as we read in Romans 12:2. But Paul says in Colossians 1:10 that the good works only become evident as we walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, ‘so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God’.
Imagine if Saul had remained as Saul, and continued to walk in the manner of his old life, consider the outcome, no missionary journeys as we call them, the gospel would not have reached in the various areas to which God had called him to go, but because he learned to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, he set aside everything to live only for Jesus and as a result we see the evidence of the ‘good works’ that God had prepared beforehand for him to do.
Now, the word of God should and must challenge us, and I wonder for myself how much of what God had prepared for me to do have I failed to do in those times when I have not walked in a manner worthy of the Lord? What about you? It should cause us to stop and think of those things we so easily get involved with or attached to that keep us from walking in a manner worthy of the Lord and have a knock on effect of us not producing the good works that God has prepared for us to do. Perhaps one of the ways to help us to learn to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord is to keep asking ourselves as we go through each day, ‘Would Jesus be pleased with where I am and with what I am doing today?’