by John Reiss
CGG Weekly, January 31, 2025
"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."
Abraham Lincoln
Although we must willingly cooperate with God to be saved (Philippians 2:12-13), our salvation depends on the work of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. We can never forget that we owe everything we call worthwhile to the providence of God in heaven. In other words, we are His handiwork. He has provided us with everything we need to become a member of His Family. He loves us, and we must return that love to Him by agreeing with Him and obeying His instructions readily and eagerly.
Even though we must respond, Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." Paul writes of this salvation in the perfect tense, which implies that these Ephesians were spiritually saved at some point in the past, and their salvation continues to the present. The apostle's words include today's converted Christians. God saved us of His own volition before we did anything.
The next verse, Ephesians 2:10, tells us why. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." God has delivered or rescued us from our sins to allow us to live the same way our Savior does (Acts 10:38 provides a general description of how He lived as a human being). Eternal life begins now, as we seek to live that way.
In a 1997 sermon, God's Workmanship (Part One), John Ritenbaugh exhorts us to consider the order in which this verse was written. By God's grace, we were saved at some point in the past, and salvation is continuing. Everything in our salvation depends on what He has done first. We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works today and every day.
Yes, this priceless salvation imposes obligations on us, but they are liberating obligations. It requires that we live a godly way of life. Sometimes, however, we get things backward, thinking everything in this way of life—what we call Christianity—depends on us. From this mistaken idea, we begin to believe that our works save us, pushing God's work on our behalf into the background. Christianity then becomes a burden rather than a joyous redemption.
Another effect is that some accuse God of making unreasonable demands on us—that our efforts to live as God lives are too difficult and too different from how others live. But even our everyday lives teach us that, to succeed at anything, we must work diligently. The principle applies to maturing spiritually, that is, becoming holy, often called sanctification.
As Herbert Armstrong often explained, although our works do not save us, only those who do work will be saved. The apostle Paul confirms this in Romans 2:13: "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified."
Thus, our cooperative efforts with God do not save us; the work of God and Jesus Christ saves us. Note how the Easy-to-Read Version translates I Peter 1:3-4:
Jesus has the power of God. And his power has given us everything we need to live a life devoted to God. We have these things because we know him. Jesus chose us by his glory and goodness, through which he also gave us the very great and rich gifts that he promised us. With these gifts you can share in being like God. And so, you will escape the ruin that comes to people in the world because of the evil things they want.
God and Jesus are workers (John 5:17). They are working for our salvation, and we, too, must willingly work with God in this project to bring it to fruition. We must always remember that Jesus tells us that without Him, we can do nothing of spiritual value (John 15:1-8).
This is God's plan, and He has provided everything we need! He is the ultimate "First Cause," and we owe Him everything. God provided the environment for existence, completing it even before He breathed life into Adam. Beyond that, He is the Source of even the possibility for human beings to become members of His Family. Genesis 1:26-27 reads:
Then God said, "Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion . . .." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
The prophet writes in Isaiah 64:8, "But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand." The Hebrew word for "work" is ʿāśâ, closely related to the word God used when saying He would make us into His image. God brought us into existence; we are His workmanship. His spiritual work follows this blueprint.
Consider this: Like us, Adam and Eve's part in His creation was not physical but spiritual. God provided everything for them, and in return for this providence, He required obedience and godly living from them. Their failure to obey His command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the first recorded human sin. From the beginning, God's focus has been on attuning His human creatures to His glorious way of life, but few have responded.
One of their sons, Abel, however, Jesus calls "righteous" in Matthew 23:35. To be righteous means that he was obedient. Abel was a commandment-keeper. Later, Enoch and Noah received similar commendations as walking with God and as preachers of righteousness, teaching God's way of life to others. Even so, that world sank into evil, necessitating the Flood to destroy a corrupted humanity. God's destructive actions saved millions from having their consciences irreparably seared.
Afterward, God called Abram, who obeyed God's charge, commandments, statutes, and laws. His descendants grew into the nation of Israel, to whom God gave His commandments and the Old Covenant, providing a righteous, peaceful, and orderly way of life for His people to live. Amos 3:2 attests that of all the families of the earth, God has covenanted only with Israel.
These actions are also God's handiwork, leaving us an example that without the gift of His Spirit, even people who try to follow God's law will not attain salvation. Their human nature will eventually drive them away from God and His righteousness. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23, all have sinned, falling short of God's glory.
Two thousand years ago, God sent Jesus Christ, the Creator (John 1:3; I Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2; 2:10), as the only One who could truly pay for mankind's sins. When Jesus came, He magnified the law and made it honorable, fulfilling it so God's elect could see how to observe it fully (Matthew 5:17-18). Again, we see the providence and handiwork of God. He taught and modeled that His people must do more than merely obey the law's letter but stop sin at its source, in the heart and mind, before they carry it out. Doing so forms righteous character; it changes the heart to resemble God's.
A person can do so only with God in him through His Spirit, which He also provided His people on that first Pentecost (see Acts 2). It fulfilled the promise in Ezekiel 36, that God would put in His people a new heart and a new Spirit that will cause (āśâ) them to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments. As Revelation 22:14 says, "Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life . . .."
Ultimately, God's handiwork will transform us into His very image. As Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:49, "And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the heavenly Man." The apostle John says something similar in I John 3:2: ". . . when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"! But never forget what John writes next: "And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (John 3:3). The glory He will bestow on us at His return, along with rewards for our obedient cooperation with Him, is the final part of His workmanship.
Compared to what He does, what God requires of us is so little, though it seems formidable at times. However, our part is so meager that God says eternal life is a gift (Romans 6:23), so again, our works do not—cannot—save us. As Psalm 100:3 says, "Know that the LORD, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves." He just asks for our cooperation in His marvelous work of creating sons and daughters of the Most High God.
We are God's workmanship, and we owe Him everything!