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Wednesday  9  January

By faith are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man  should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.  Ephesians 2, 8 - 10.

2.

The salvation available to everyone who comes to God with a confession of his guilt is a gift such as could never be obtained by any amount of good works. We receive it only by faith  in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing that originates in us is of any use to God. He must be the Giver.

With salvation God grants us an entirely new start: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5, 17). Thus every believer is, from the spiritual point of view, a new creation, the work of God created in Christ Jesus, but created to what purpose? For good works.

Only after conversion does God’s Word speak of good works. These, however, are not our own works: they were “before ordained”. They have been prepared by God for us to carry out. In the strength of the new life that every believer receives he can undertake them. He does so through the constraint of that new life. That does not imply effort and toil directed towards in uncertain hope of earning God’s favor. It is simply following joyfully in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ, who glorified God on this earth and whose pleasure is that His own should take His place here below. Good works, as God understand them, are those undertaken by believers as a consequence of their salvation.

(concluded)