Friday, August 19, 2016

Good Works Follow Faith

UV 2045/10000 Good Works Follow Faith
Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.
Amos 5 v 14

Though good works is not the root of our salvation, the seed being the gospel of Christ, the root being our faith believed and confessed by us, it is fruit that follows after we begin to believe and profess our faith. While good works by itself are like “dirty rags unacceptable to the Lord” and it cannot clothe us or hide our shame, these become sanctified once we believe. We should therefore aim to do what is good, acceptable and perfect in the sight of the Lord. After we get grafted onto the branch of Christ, we should desire to be good and to do good and to depart from all manner of evil. We should actively and diligently seek to be good.

It is a law or axiom of life that if we sow good, we reap good. If we sow evil, we reap evil. We should seek good in all that we think and all that we speak. The Word exhorts us to do good to the needy, the widows, the orphans, the distressed, the poor. Our hands become the very hands of the Lord to reach and help such as these. Our eyes become the eyes of the Lord to look upon them with compassion. It is written that when we give to the Lord, we lend to the Lord. The implication is that He remembers it as a debt and never keeps it but returns it to us manifold in terms of blessings upon our lives and the lives of our near and dear.

The genuineness of our faith is proved by the good deeds and actions we do. We can no longer be partakers of evil in any form. We authenticate or validate our faith by our goodness and good works. It is like the seal or stamp or signature of our souls. It pleases the Father when we conform to the image of Christ in us. This uni-verse promises that His presence will be with us as we endeavour to be good and to do good. The Lord will also direct the armies of angels or ministering spirits to be with us. It is not the extension of our influence or our good name or reputation that we seek but the extension of the reign and rule of the Lord over the lives of our fellow beings. As we do so, the Lord will send forth into our lives the enabling conditions or blessings of Deuteronomy chapter 28 v 1 to 14 while preserving us from the curses that follow in the same chapter.

Prateep V Philip

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