Joined to You

Work, Work, Work

 January 6, 2021 – if you watched the news that day and you were in the DC, VA, or in my case, MD Army National Guard, it was pretty likely that you were cancelling your plans for that weekend.  In response to the January 6^th United States Capitol Attack, my unit was sent for a security mission, and I as the Unit Supply NCO messaged one of my supervisors to ask what to bring – she said "the more resources the better."  I had 25 people from my unit going, so I load up 3 racks of M4 rifles into a truck and we were off.  When we got to the Capitol, I found that we did not have 24-hour security set up to watch our weapons yet, and I had 5 more rifles than soldiers in my unit.  So, we wandered around the Capitol sleeplessly for 44 hours; I took responsibility for carrying the extra weapons.  When we finally got the chance to rest. I laid down with 6 rifles on the floor of an indoor tennis court in the Capitol Building (by the way, that building has indoor tennis courts), I felt like the dumbest Supply NCO in the National Guard.  What do you do when you feel like your work is completely futile, that you’re just doing things wrong?  I’d like you to consider, trust that you are not big enough to stop the work of God…

Ephesians 2:⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We’re so prone to think that the quality of our work is what saves us.  If I do enough good, if I work well enough, I’m sure to be okay in whatever endeavors I pursue.  And then life happens, and in spite of our best effort, our mission goes awry and our work isn’t good enough.  We have this attitude in our earthly work, and it translates to our spiritual work as well.  Surely if I do enough good work in this life, God will reward me in the next life.  And yet our verses today won’t allow that.  Salvation, the gift of eternal life, is not by work that we do, but by grace through faith, given as a gift.  Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, and you get that by believing, and all of that is a gift that you cannot earn.  How do you know that you have that gift?  Your faith is not a blind faith for its own sake, but a trusting belief in Jesus Christ, that he lived and worked in perfect obedience so that we can have his record of righteousness, and took our record of sinful failures to obey God, paid for it with his death on the cross, and then defeated sin and death and hell in his rising from the dead.  This is where we place our faith so that we have the salvation of eternal life.  We are not big enough to stop the work of God.

If our work is not good enough to earn eternal life, then why work?  Verse 10 tells us – we are God’s workmanship, created to do good works that he set out in advance.  As one saved by the work of Christ, we now do the work that God has set out in advance for us to do, not to earn our salvation, but because we are his workmanship.  We live to reflect how he has made us to be in Christ.  And if God has set out those works in advance for us to do, then we are not big enough to stop that work… He will use that work to accomplish his purposes.

What does this mean in our work right now?  For me personally, I'm in a place where most of my day is spent doing work that feels wholly insufficient to accomplish anything that I need... it's downright futile.  I need to first remember that the work of our eternal salvation is not earned by this work, but by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  And second, I need to remember that the work we are doing was set out in advance by God.  Let’s do it faithfully, honestly, and with courage knowing that whatever good work we do is for the sake of Christ in us.