Real Spirituality

You are saved by your good deeds, not by grace, so that you can feel good about yourself.

That quotation is not a quotation at all. It’s a twisting of Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8-9. But it describes what many in the Christian world seem to think.

One of the most prevalent ideas I hear among believers today is the need for Christians to be involved in good works such as community service, help to the poor, and acts of charity. These acts could be small, daily actions. Or, as is more often the case these days, people may go on short-term mission trips to their own communities, across the nation, or across the globe.

I like these acts of service. Just after the verse mis-quoted above, Paul says that Christians are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10). In the context of that passage, the good works are most likely within the congregation. But the life of Christ and the history of the church show that care for the disadvantaged is characteristic of God’s people. Service to others is built into Christian DNA.

The problem is when we forget the “created in Christ Jesus” part of the passage. Many seem to do good deeds because the deeds are good, not because it is an expression of their re-created nature in Christ.

A news magazine article illustrated this to me a few years ago. I had just come from a meeting about a spring break campaign going out from a Christian university to do service projects. Later, I read the news magazine article. It talked about the proliferation of spring break community service projects across American campuses. Secular campuses. State universities had the same program for community service projects as the Christian campus did.

Then I started listening to Christians talk about the service projects they were doing.  It was quickly clear that good deeds were a justification in and of themselves. One woman was raising money for a “mission trip” to an orphanage in Africa so she could hold babies and children who needed love and affection. The orphanage was secular, the director an atheist, and there was no church near. The goal was noble: to alleviate suffering. But I have a hard time calling “mission” anything that does not connect back to God’s mission to redeem humanity and the world.

Good deeds are not Christian in and of themselves. But being re-created in the image of Christ will result in communities of people doing good works. This is because of God’s work in Christ and in us, and any deeds must connect back to that work. [Just a note: The answer is not to only serve an individual after that person listens to a sermon/lesson. That is not charity; it is manipulation.]

Sometimes we call our acts of charity “being the hands and feet of Jesus.”

But Jesus is more than just disembodied hands and feet. Christians are created to do good works, but not for the sake of the good works.

Note that Paul’s discussion of good works in Ephesians 2 is followed by a discussion about how Gentile Christians had been brought near to God through the blood of Christ. Christians’ good works connect people to a good God.

Here’s a “test” to see if your good deeds are an expression of God’s work in Christ: Ask yourself:

How is God working in the situation, and how will my actions connect others to his work?

Good works without the connection back to God are a futile band-aid on overwhelming problems. God has called us to be more than charity workers for him. We are called to be part of his work. And his work points back to him.

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. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  —Ephesians 2:8-10

[This is part three of a three-part series; find the other parts here and here.]