“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-Not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
God has done a wonderful thing for us. Through His Son, Jesus Christ, He has brought us salvation and eternal life, and He does not want us boasting about what we have done. He does not want any flesh to glory in His sight, so even the faith, by which we are saved, God gives to us as a gift. We can’t boast about our believing the truth of God. You say, “The truth came to me and I examined the truth and I decided I am going to believe.” No! It was God that gave you the faith to believe (Romans 12:3).
God knows the tendency of human nature to want to receive praise and glory. That is a part of our sinful nature; and that is the very thing that tripped up Satan. Isaiah wrote, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: …I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation. On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.‚ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit” (Isaiah 14:12-14). But God said, “I am the Lord; that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to carved images” (Isaiah 42:8). “I will not give My glory to another” (Isaiah 48:11b).
God knows that we like to brag about something we have done, and therefore He placed salvation outside of our capacity, outside of our ability to earn it by some work that we can do. He gave us our salvation on the basis of His grace, through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and then He gave us the faith to believe it. He drew us to Himself, placed the faith in our hearts to believe His truth, and granted to us, through His grace, this glorious gift of eternal life.
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). The Greek word that is translated into the English word “workmanship” is poemi, from which we get our English word “poem.” A poem is how the poet seeks to express his or her work of art.
God is seeking to express Himself through you as He works in your life. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God gives you His Holy Spirit. He then wants you to allow His Holy Spirit to rule your life. You become His work of art as He conforms you into the image of Jesus Christ; you then become the revelation and expression of God to the world around you. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the express image of His glory (Hebrews 1:3). He said to His disciples, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20).
As God expresses Himself through us, He begins to knock off the rough edges and smooths out those rough spots in our character. A lot of the times, as God is doing His work in us and He begins to chip some of those clumsy edges off of us, we began to scream, “Why Lord?” Peter wrote, “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (1 Peter 4:9).
It is important that we submit to the work of God in our life. We will not always understand why God is doing a particular work in our life; we will not always understand why certain hard places have come into our life. But because we know that “All things work for the good of those that love the Lord and are called according to His purposes” (Romans 8:28). Because we know God loves us supremely, then we can yield these things to God. We can say, “Lord, my life is Yours, do with me what every You wish.”
As God works in our life, we can know that He has a purpose and a plan. God doesn’t work in us by happenstance. It isn’t because of a capricious act of God that we have been through these trials of life. It is a part of God’s plan in preparing us to do the work that God has already decided that we should do for the glory of His Kingdom. We are His work of art, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has already determined and foreordained that we are to accomplish for His glory.
Paul wrote, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Galatians 6:9-10).
If you live to please the Lord you can be sure that someone is going to take advantage of you and rip you off, but God knows what is going on and He will take care of you. Jesus said to His disciples, “It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!” (Luke 17:1). Living to please God is not always easy, but it is always the best way to live.