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Christian Network

We can do the right thing because God is turning us into "the right thing". It is in the realization and appropriation of His righteousness, now within us, that we may begin to truly do the right thing for the right reason. All good works done apart from His Spirit are not really good works in the truest sense because they originate in the system of "works-righteousness" that is part and parcel of our sin nature. The flesh taints such actions, no matter how admirable they may seem on the surface.

This is a very hard pill for human beings to swallow. It requires that we consciously abandon the deeply ingrained conceit that we have any goodness in and of ourselves, apart from God. We desperately want to believe that we are innately good. The alternative is to face the darkness within us as well as the eternal ramifications of that darkness. Coming to grips with our sinful hearts is the ultimate watershed in our lives. It quite rightfully leads to despair, but it can also lead to salvation.

Yet even after salvation the temptation to work out of our old nature remains. The Pauline books of the New Testament are replete with exhortations to cease doing the right thing for the wrong reason. These epistles are addressed to believers. A primary process in the Christian life is the rooting out of wrong motivations. One of the most intractable of these motivations is the tendency to continue doing good out of our flesh instead of out of the newly formed character of Christ within us.

The solution to the oxymoron of "works-righteousness" is to let the Lord progressively reproduce His character within our deepest hearts. God is love and it is in the nature of love to give. Love works for the benefit of its object solely out of a pure and true desire to bless that object. Such work is absolutely sincere. There are no hidden agendas of self-centeredness present. Jesus has often been described as a "Man for others". In this the Son of God embodies His Father’s nature. All his works are rooted and enabled by that nature and are therefore good in the ultimate sense of the word.

If we are children of God we have the character of God. We gain this character at the moment of salvation. In the ongoing sanctification that should occur from that point onward the believer practically appropriates and moves in the likeness of Christ that first entered the heart at the time of conversion. In one of the greatest paradoxes of the Christian journey we begin to turn into what we truly are. In this mystery lies the power to die to wrongly-motivated works and become able to do the good things we do solely out of the good new heart that The Father has placed in us through our faith in His Son. We work out of who we are, and are becoming, and our motivation finally becomes sincere love for those we are working for.

The good deeds that come out of a heart of true love are not a burden but a joy. When we were doing them out of the compulsions that come from trying to work our way into God’s good graces we found the yoke to be hard and the burden heavy. This was because we were not acting in love but in fear; the fear of not being able to earn our way to God. Such a fear is completely legitimate for God seeks those who worship Him in both Spirit and truth. That means, among other things, receiving the free gift of salvation "by grace through faith". Part of that gift is the ability to love as He loves. When we move in His love, put within us by the presence of Jesus Christ in our hearts, we finally work for the right reasons and become a true blessing to God, others and ourselves.