Grace vs. Works

“For by grace you have been saved through faith…” Ephesians 2:8-9 begins, “…And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” God has offered us salvation freely, knowing we could never earn it, knowing that the longer we are here on earth, the more need we have for this salvation.

And yet the Bible says that we were created unto good works and that faith without works is dead. We have each a calling on this planet, and that calling, of course, involves us doing something. So what place do works have in the life of a believer?

God gives us a wonderful example of the proper relationship between love and works in a marriage. When two people love each other, they will do things for each other, not to earn the other’s love, but to show their own. Flowers for no reason for her, his favorite dinner for him, little gifts or sweet nothings whispered – all show love for the other person.

Just as importantly, if these things are all absent from a marriage, even if one person claims to love the other, it is easy to see that love doesn’t really exist. If a man tells his wife he loved her every day, yet refused to do anything for her, whether she asked him or just to show her he loved her, how long would she believe that he loved her? For a while, she might believe it, might pawn it off as his being immersed in work or something, but it will eventually lead to her questioning whether he means what he’s saying. If this continues for long enough, she will eventually realize that these are nothing but words to him.

So it is with God, save that God can look into our hearts and see the deepest places of our souls. There is no fooling God as to whether we really love Him, but true love will inevitably cause works to be done to show it. It is one of the most observable phenomena in human psychology: the combination of our realization of our own fallen state and pure love, which by its definition is undeserved, serves to bring out one of two responses:

1. The loved person will devote a great deal of time, effort, and resources to pleasing the one giving the love in some attempt to earn what is being given. When it is realized that it can’t be earned, the efforts are merely redoubled in gratitude.

2. The loved person is more overcome by their fallen state than they are by love, in which case they set about trying to make the one giving the love dislike them so much they are not loved anymore. It is not that this person does not want to be loved; it is that they are so wrapped up in the idea that they have to earn it that they cannot just let themselves be loved.

God knows how much you really love Him. He sees past works, even those done in His name, that were not done in love. He sees past empty words and songs of worship sung without a heart of worship. But the works, the words, and the songs come as readily as fruit to a tree; if the love, like the tree, is strong, the works are the necessary fruit. Trying to grow fruit without the tree is impossible; it simply cannot happen.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that humans have put the cart before the horse. We do works to earn love. The works come first, and then we expect to get love because of all we have done for someone. We do not expect to be loved before we have given someone else a certain amount of service, gifts, quality time, etc. Once we have given that amount, we expect that we will be loved, that we have earned love. We even get very angry and hurt when the other person does not give us that love despite all we have done.

God’s love is pure and is completely different from ours. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a. The Bible says that while we were yet sinners, God sent Jesus to die for us. John 3:16 gets the order right, “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son…” He loved us first, then did works to show His love. He didn’t try to earn our love through this; He simply loved us.

Because we can’t do anything to earn it, it is impossible for us as humans to fully understand and embrace it of ourselves. It goes completely against all of our interactions with each other. The closest we can come is probably a parent’s love for a child. Even that, though, has its limit, where the child can ignore and hurt the parent so badly that the love finally ceases or at least cools off significantly. God’s love never does.

We can do nothing to earn His love and so our works must either be to show our love to Him or they are meaningless. By grace we have been saved through faith, so His love has been given to us to walk in without our having to do anything. What more could He do to be worthy of our love, our lives, and all the works we could ever do?