Trusting God In My Godly Works

When we first come to Christ the experience is so jarring and dramatic that we find ourselves eagerly seeking, maybe even demanding a way to express our joy.  Sometimes we are so new to the Kingdom of God, and we know so little, that our greatest usefulness is in the study of the Word.  So we often do that and sometimes a great deal of time is involved.  The danger here is that our learning occasionally becomes head-focused, not heart-focused, but eventually there comes a time for every believer at which he or she begins to engage in things with the intent of furthering the Kingdom of God.  The common expression for this kind of engagement is Godly works.

The phrase ‘Godly works’ encompasses a wide range of involvement from cleaning the bathroom, to manning the coffee bar, to singing with the Worship Team, to speaking at service, to top level leadership.  All of these, even the humblest, are valid expressions of one’s love of Jesus.  But there is a trap here.  Why do we do these Godly works?  Every answer to this question is going to be on the order of, “Because I want to bless Jesus!”  I’ve said before that people all are jaded in some way.  It’s not that most people are evil; it’s that most people compartmentalize their sin nature away from their intentions.

I’m fairly sure Jesus knew this.  During the Sermon on the Mount Jesus (Matthew 5-7) is teaching about Godly living.  In verses 5:21-23 he says (The Message Translation):

“Knowing the correct password—saying ‘Master, Master,’ for instance—isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, ‘Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our super-spiritual projects had everyone talking.’ And do you know what I am going to say? ‘You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don’t impress me one bit. You’re out of here.’

Paul  also knew these things.  In 2 Corinthians 5:9-10 he says (also TMT):

Sooner or later we’ll all have to face God, regardless of our conditions. We will appear before Christ and take what’s coming to us as a result of our actions, either good or bad.

I don’t think anyone working in the Kingdom does so in a manipulative or deceitful manner.  But all of us have a sin-nature, and that sin-nature can be expressed in subtle or ‘background’ ways.

Here’s an example of what I mean.  When I was young and still at home, I had an absentee father.  Mind you my parents were still together, but he was just not available for a variety of reasons.  I was raised in the late fifties and early sixties at a time when oft was heard the refrain, “Just wait until your father gets home!”  Dad was the disciplinarian, mom the enabler.  The result was I learned the best way to get along was to be a people-pleaser.  That emotional background doesn’t translate very well into the Kingdom of God.  When I was a young believer, I worked for a pastor who was also a disciplinarian.  I thought I was working to please God; actually I was working to please the pastor.  Do you see the subtle difference?

When Jesus was rebuking the posers in the Sermon on the Mount, He was pointing out that Kingdom life requires complete obedience to His Father’s will.  This is not so much a requirement of subservience, but a recognition that our sin-natures are determined to separate us from the love of God.  It might be a difficult thing to grasp, but we should realize that while it is OK the receive appreciation and blessing for one’s hard work, it is not OK to be sinfully prideful about it, or do those things for the purpose of receiving the appreciation.

When God called us to Kingdom life and salvation through His Son, He was also calling us to a life of holiness.  You see God wants us to be with Him in Paradise for all eternity, and He wants us to further the Kingdom by bringing others to faith in His Son.  To achieve that He calls us to a life of holiness.  1Peter 1:15, quoting various Leviticus verses, says, “Be holy as I am holy”.  This is no small thing.  We are called to run hard after God, put aside the flesh and unrighteousness, and pursue holiness with all our hearts.  As an outgrowth of that pursuit of holiness we do things in and for the Kingdom.  But as it is to be expected, Satan tries to counterfeit all things Godly, so he deceives us into thinking we are ‘all that and a bag of chips’.  We are going to talk about this a great deal when we get to the section about our identity in Christ, but for now just remember that because of our acceptance of Christ as Savior we are already holy.

But what does all of this have to do with trusting God in our Godly works?  Well first, if we are doing those things because we have a need for approval, then they are not really Godly works; they are self-centered fleshly activities.  In that sense they are no different than any other human frailty and can be healed as can any other sin or illness.  But there is another abuse of Godly works which is much more pernicious.  I am speaking here of the leaders of mega-churches and multi-venue ministries who use God for personal gain.  These men and women are guilty of using God’s people and their frailties as a means of self-advancement and are in deep danger of being cast into the pit.  Of course there are ministries which are truly God-seeking and above board.  But when mega-church leaders begin to compare themselves with comparable grade worldly leaders and begin to expect 6 figure salaries their feet have already begun to slide down that slippery slope.

The slippery slope is a metaphor for the ever-quickening slide away from God.  To avoid that we must get to the place where our human spirit is so aligned with the Holy Spirit that we come to know Christ not just as the forgiver of our sins, but as our very life, our very existence.  This is what I am suggesting about our Godly works:  If we do them because of our need for attention they are fleshly and are of no spiritual use.  Godly works are not a box to be checked off on a list.  But if we do our Godly works because we love Jesus so much that they are just the thing to do, then they are reflective of our life in Christ and are of great spiritual value.