What Good Works Does God Accept? | Comforts From the Cross

Comparative Righteousness and the Harm of Measuring Christians Against Each Other

The church, but this is why it's stupid for us to start comparing our works and our deeds to one another and our own righteousness to each other's righteousness as though there is some merit attached to that, as though some of us are more inside the favor of God than others, or that God is more pleased with me than he is you because I'm more disciplined than you are, or whatever it may be.

And what that does, John, I mean, I'd love for us to riff on this for a minute. Comparative righteousness and measuring one another against each other in the church, what does that lead to? Has it ever produced a good thing in the church?

Answer, never. And what does it produce? Disunity. It produces pride. It produces bickering. It produces backstabbing. It produces trying to cut other people down, diminishing the good works of others.

It does all of that nonsense in the church. And it does not foster love or peace at all. It makes the church a terrible place to be. It's the least safe place in the world to be in the church when this is how it's going.

It can't be a haven for sinners. Anyway, continue on this thought. Well, man, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, the two things that Jesus says in John 17, which is love will produce unity. My love and affection for you, the Father's love and affection for you, which is equal amongst everyone, will produce unity.

My glory given to you will produce unity. Let me go back to our confession. We weekly mention one of the chapters in our confession. So, a couple of weeks ago, we finished chapter 16. Let me just read to you what the confession says here, because I think it's very helpful and clarifying.

It says, good works are only those works that God has commanded in his holy word. Period. Stop. First of all, I can't tell you how many evangelical works are created. For Christians, they have nothing to do with God's word.

For instance, I'm going to go after the new sacrament of personal quiet time with the Lord. Albeit it can be helpful, not a command as far as it relates to personal Bible reading. We're going to leave that there for another time.

Good Works Commanded by God Alone

Well, and this is why the confession says, as it relates to scripture, you can go and look these up yourself. Works that do not have this warrant are invented by people out of blind zeal or on a pretense of good intentions and are not truly good.

Did you hear this? Are not truly good works. Now, I will say this, and Justin and I will openly confess this so we're not antinomian. These good works done in obedience to God's commandments are the fruit and evidence of a true and living faith.

Through good works, believers express their thankfulness, strength, their assurance, build up their brothers and sisters, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of opponents, and glorify God.

Now, point three, this is where we're getting to as far as equality. Their ability to do good works does not arise at all from themselves, but entirely from the Spirit of Christ. There, my dear friends, if you are accomplishing good works, and I will just simplify them, to love God and love your neighbor, all good works, all commands are wrapped up in that.

If you are actually accomplishing that, you need to stop and go, well, praise God that His Spirit's in me doing that because on my own, I cannot do this. So for you to take credit for your good works, you are denying the very scriptures that have been handed to you and the historic confessions.

If you were a confessional, I'd encourage you to even just read them. But we have been told time and time again, I mean, Philippians 2 .13, Philippians or Hebrews 6 .11, or we are told even Ephesians, where it says works prepared for you before the foundations of the world, these are works given to us by the sovereign God, not you.

So the moment you start judging or comparing yourself, saying that I have sanctified myself or I have improved myself based upon my works and efforts, I'm like, you are actually taking credit for something that doesn't belong to you.

Traditions of Men and Self-Righteous Spiritual Disciplines

Okay, I know that I've like stirred the fire, but go for it. Yeah, I'm trying to control myself here. So a few thoughts. One, when you were talking about the good works that are invented in the evangelical church, I can't help but think about Mark 7, where Jesus will indict the Jewish religious leaders and say that you teach as doctrine the traditions of men.

I mean, that is rampant in our current church context. The traditions of men taught as doctrine. I mean, let me just go ahead and say it, personal spiritual disciplines are that. They are the traditions of men taught as doctrine.

I mean, they are good, there is goodness in them in that you can apply them and they can be useful, but to teach them the way that they are often taught as though they are the definite article way that you will endure and grow in the faith is a tradition of man.

It's not given to us in God's word, as you already alluded to. And I know that's a hot button topic for some, but somebody needs to say these things. And then I'm thinking about the good works piece that we actually do.

You're exactly right. We cannot take any credit whatsoever for the good works that we do. That's part of what it means to be in Christ. And we'll, you know, we use good, like we know what to say. You know, we do this humble brag stuff where we'll talk about, you know, the way our lives are changing and the ways that, you know, I've been doing this and reading this and whatever.

And then we'll just be like, you know, by God's grace, we'll just kind of throw that in there. You know, that's kind of like the equivalent of like bless his heart. And I can say anything about him I want.

As long as I say by God's grace, I can just brag on myself and talk about the ways that I'm being sanctified. You know, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to impugn everybody's motivations here and mow down everybody and burn the village down.

Paul’s Example of Grace-Fueled Labor

But I know, I mean, I think we've all done this, you know, where we, it's like, oh yeah, but you know, by God's grace, and it's like, even when I think about first Corinthians 15, which is where we often get this from, you know, when Paul will talk about how he was, think about what he says though.

He talks about me, you know, as one untimely born, right. I wasn't even really worthy to be considered an apostle. So he's talking, he's talking about the fact that he is unworthy. And part of what he means by that is because he persecuted the church for crying out loud.

He was unworthy to be an apostle. And then he says, but yet, you know, I did work harder than any of them. And then he says, yet, but it wasn't me, but it was Christ in me that did that. You know, and so that's what we end up always saying is whenever I do a good work, like sincerely, when I do a good work, yet not I, but through Christ in me is how this is happening.

And if we really believe that, then we would never like walk around like a peacocks or like a bunch of boy scouts wearing all our merit badges, you know, with respect to all the things that we've been doing for Christ or in our personal spiritual disciplines or whatever.

And we would read the Bible and realize that like you said, any good work we are doing, not only is it because of Christ in me, it's because it's been prepared beforehand because we are born and created in Christ as his workmanship to walk in the good works prepared beforehand for us to walk in Ephesians 2 .10.

So we just need to just quit this nonsense of comparing our works to others and ranking people, you know, like from, you know, best down to the least in our local churches. It's just terrible. Anyway, rant over.

Um, yeah.