Ephesians 2:10
God has a beautiful purpose for your life. When He saved you by grace through faith, He saved you to the perfect plan for your life. As always, God makes the first move. He did a beautiful work in you before He expects beautiful work from you. He made you into a beautiful new creation.
This is what He did when He saved you. You were dead in trespasses and sins, the picture of ugliness. When He made you alive in Christ, you are now a work of art. He says that you are His “workmanship.” The term in Greek is “poiema,” (poihma) from where we get our word “poem.” This means that God has made us into a masterpiece, a thing of beauty.
Writing poetry requires more than just getting the meaning across. It requires the perfect words to express meaning, and to do so with charm and elegance. With regular prose, an editor can often achieve greater clarity be striking a word or two from every sentence. With poetry, taking a word away or adding an extra word ruins the artistry. When God created you anew as a Christian, you are exactly the way He intends you to be. Anything you add or take away will be defacing the beautiful poem He has written.
You are God’s masterpiece, created exactly how God’s wants, and you are beautiful, as God designs. Imagine how much trouble a person would get into if he or she stepped over the tape to draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Any adjustment to that masterpiece would actually be vandalism.
This leads us back to consider the relationship between faith and works. God intends us to do good works. He has already planned the works for us to do. Grace plus faith is to works as cause is to effect.• God gave us a seat in heaven; we should act like we belong there.• Good test scores do not create good study habits. The reverse is true.• You can tell that faith is genuine by the good work it inspires.
When you lock-in to your role in the Kingdom of God, you will realize just how God is. Your good work for the Kingdom will be perfect, a masterpiece, a work of art.
Chapel of the North Hills 