Working in You

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV).

There is deliberate tension in Scripture regarding man's responsibility, and God's ability, especially as it applies to the issue of salvation.

All religions except one, Christianity, make it the job of man to reach toward Heaven and earn God's favor. Yet the Bible makes it clear that such an endeavor is impossible, we are defeated before we even start. Therefore it was necessary that the unbridgeable gap (from mankind's perspective) be spanned by God Himself.

This was accomplished by the coming of Jesus, His perfect life, and voluntary sacrificial death. This Man satisfied God's holy and righteous wrath against sin, and enabled us, through faith in Christ, to appropriate His righteousness to ourselves – a transaction that could only have been initiated from Heaven.

We can choose to reject this bargain by refusing to believe, but we cannot negotiate any other terms; neither performance, charity, vows, rituals, other sacrifices, or anything conceivable can alter the Contract. Believe and be saved, or proceed to everlasting torment by your own hard-hearted rejection. There is no third option.

Now this is clear teaching that pervades the whole Bible, from Adam through Abraham through Moses, David, the Prophets and the entirety of the New Testament. Christ made salvation possible. He did it all, and yet...

Remember me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people. Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for its services! (Nehemiah 5:19; 13:14, NKJV).

And,

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; (Philippians 2:12, NKJV).

And,

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10, NKJV).

And,

Do not let a widow under sixty years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, well reported for good works: if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work. (1 Timothy 5:9, 10, NKJV).

And the focus verse above includes the phrase in every good work to do His will.

How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory emphases?

The answer pertains to the purposeful tension I mentioned above, and is best summarized by the next verse following the Philippians citation:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12, 13, NKJV).

Do you see the balance, the expression of the perfect spiritual equation illuminating the very mind of God Himself?

Our good works done in our own strength and in our own fallen natures are like filthy rags to the God of Heaven, but the works we do indwelt and empowered by His Holy Spirit are worthy of immeasurable reward, so much so that even a glass of water given in His name reaps boundless merit.

Good works, in this most important sense, can only come after belief, because only in belief can we acknowledge our utter helplessness and complete dependence on the God of our salvation. And He, rather than we ourselves, receives the glory.

Do not make the mistake that God is therefore “hungry for credit” or “starved for glory”. That is as far from the facts as Heaven from Hell.

He knows we are incapable of goodness without being made alive again, born again, through faith in His Son. And that transformation is, by definition, His doing.

As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so we must reflect the Source of our light, or our light is darkness. Without Him, from the spiritual realm, we are in fact, invisible.

This is what Jesus meant in the Sermon on the Mount, when He told His disciples:

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22, 23, NKJV).

Christ is all in all.

Everything that is not of Him will perish and burn.

Everything in Him is guaranteed never to be lost.

We do good in the eyes of God when we are truly saved, not because we have to, but because we desire to please Him out of love and gratitude rather than obligation or fear.

In providing comfort, we are emulating Him.

In providing support, we are emulating Him.

In being kind, merciful, truthful, loving, and above all, forgiving, we are emulating Him.

This is our purpose in this life. He empowers us to carry it out, something we could never do on our own.

When we are done He will take us home, not because of anything we have accomplished, but because He has accomplished everything in us.

Completion

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV).

“You complete me,” has been the refrain of soap opera love affairs and pop singles for generations. It has been the sophomoric declaration of “young love” for longer still, but from the human perspective it is sheer romantic fantasy, a paltry substitute for the true “completion” that can only come through a personal relationship with the living Lord of the Universe.

He created us for deep fellowship with Him, as evidenced by Adam walking with God in the Garden. When rebellion broke that fellowship, God initiated His predetermined plan of redemption, but the immediate impact on our Edenic parents was a realization that without God, each one was woefully incomplete; empty, shattered, alone in themselves as they were never meant to be.

Fortunately, faith in Jesus causes healing of that brokenness, filling that innermost void with the only thing that will truly satisfy: God Himself.

But it does not end there, for the healing must proceed beyond the adolescent yearning (which is only a pale, gossamer shadow of the real thing), to being fully conformed into the image of Christ. This is God's desire and plan. It is the thing that His covenant guarantees. He will not only give us Himself as our exceedingly great reward, but He will make us like Him in purity, beauty, grace and mercy.

He will make us complete.

And this completion is not static or “once and done”. In this life it is an ongoing process of sanctification. In the next, it is best represented by the eternal and inexhaustible pursuit of the glory and manifold wisdom of God. There is no end to His riches in glory, and His desire from the beginning has been to make us heirs so that we can know all of Him that is knowable, and share in His likeness.

Now, it is impossible to earn our way into Heaven by good works. There is no amount of things that we could do to make up for even one of our many sins; to repay even the smallest debt incurred. For the only wage of sin is death. (And death is not a remedy, but a judgment. Nor is death annihilation, as so many atheists desire it to be. It is the eternal punishment due those who continue in willful rebellion against their Creator.)

But once saved, we become endowed with the ability for good works done in the character of God and in the power of the Spirit of God. Until then, that is impossible, and any good works done in our own strength are as filthy rags before a holy God, for they are corrupt from the start since, prior to salvation, we ourselves are incurably corrupt. Everything we do and say in our own strength is tainted and impure, no matter what the outward outcome.

But as His children by faith, He equips us for truly good works so that even a cup of water given to someone in His name is cause for great reward. I believe this is true because His desire has always been for us to manifest His nature in all things, so that whatever is done as a believer surrendered to His will, walking in the Spirit, is by definition good and pure and worthy of reward. It is not the act itself, but the reason and intent behind it.

This is what is meant by His promise to make us complete in every good work, working in us what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ.

By virtue of living moment by moment surrendered to the indwelling Spirit of God, walking in fellowship with Him as Adam was intended to do, everything that we do and say is a manifestation of God, and thereby a “good work which He has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

But do not lose sight of the prerequisite conditions: indwelt by, and surrendered to, the Holy Spirit.

These are no small things. Instead they are supernatural miracles of God transforming us into the image of His Son. And while they are solely His doing, He has ordained that we may exercise the power to resist, for He created us as free moral agencies. He will not compel us to do good or to be like Him. He offers us the choice which we must freely accept by faith.

When we do, He begins that good work in us that renders us complete – in His time, and according to His perfect will.

Until death, or His return finishes that transformation, we will never manifest His character, love, and holiness perfectly, but each instance that we come close advances us toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Finally, there is at least one other similar reference to this process in the New Testament in Paul's letter to the Philippians:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12, 13, NKJV).

Thus, the ineffable partnership between human effort and godly purpose is seen once more. For the most part, our role is one of trusting surrender. The Lord Jesus supplies the power, wisdom, and ultimately causes the result.

The Everlasting Covenant

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV).

Signed in the blood of Christ, the everlasting covenant is the fulfillment of God's promise to Adam in the Garden of Eden after The Fall.

Even at that point in the ancient annals of mankind, the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head in order to restore man's broken relationship with his Creator was made known; a promise that would entail the serpent bruising the seed's heel (symbolic of the shedding of Christ's blood on the Cross and His dying temporarily).

And unlike the Mosaic Covenant, which was conditional based on man's performance, the everlasting covenant of the gospel is based solely on sincere faith in the Son of God's virgin birth, sinless life, and resurrection from the dead. A faith which cannot help but transform the believer into Christ's image.

Not only are we guaranteed eternal life in Christ, but we are assured that He will complete that good work in us that began at the moment of our conversion. We will become true sons and daughters of God, true reflections of His image, meaning, incredibly, that we will become like God.

What does this mean?

Certainly, it does not mean that we will be gods, or have all the divine attributes of God, for even if that were so these characteristics would be granted to us by God, and thus by virtue of that fact alone, the grantee would always be less than the grantor.

The Apostle John writes:

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2, NKJV).

Part of being like Him, then, obviously involves seeing Him as He is, in all His glory, nobility and beauty. I believe that the very sight of Him will somehow advance our ultimate transformation. Seeing Him as He is will necessitate doing away with the last remnants of our sinful selves to be replaced by the fullness of God.

Being like Him must also entail loving like He does, selflessly, perfectly, completely – a love so powerful that its object is transformed into being worthy of it.

Being like Him as part of this everlasting covenant will also mean becoming entirely righteous, without sin in all of its nefarious and destructive forms. While easy enough to write, this concept is impossible to imagine beyond only the smallest glimpse. Since we are sinners, born in sin, and subject to sin even after salvation, we can only guess at what it means to experience perfect righteousness.

Again, it is certainly not what has been foisted upon us by stereotypical images and characterizations of the “uptight religious fanatic”. In fact, it must be the diametric opposite. More akin to the popular myth of “the innocent savage” than to anything else.

Imagine an existence utterly unclouded by self-serving motives, deceit, hypocrisy, covetousness, avarice, gluttony, unbridled lust and violence. Perhaps the best way to think of it is to consider God's synopsis of what we are in ourselves without Him, and contemplate each attributes diametric opposite.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32, NKJV).

Consequently, the everlasting covenant ensures that we will retain full knowledge of God, with renewed and restored minds desiring even more and deeper knowledge of Him.

Instead of the horrifying adjectives applied in Romans 1, we will bring forth the profoundly beautiful fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22, 23, NKJV).

Imagine!

Life, eternal life, amidst and within an environment filled with only those things that each redeemed soul longs for with a longing given by God – a longing which He promises to satisfy.

Like I said, beyond imagining.

Nor will this covenant life be in any way less than immeasurably joyous and fulfilling.

But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NKJV).

The Great Shepherd

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV).

It is fitting that the King of the World is likened to a Shepherd. In the most ideal sense, a shepherd is a selfless caretaker of those who are the least able to care for themselves.

It is also fitting that the King's subjects are called sheep throughout the Bible, since, of all the domesticated herd animals, sheep are classically the most clueless.

Sheep are some of the most shortsighted of creatures, looking no further - in terms of their actions, decisions, and priorities - than the nose on their muzzles or the desires of their bellies. They are amoral (stealing food even from their young without any hesitation), easily manipulated, and, if panicked, will follow their equally irrational counterparts into a raging river current, helplessly drowning because of their wool coats.

I have read of sheep getting stuck in barbed wire straining mightily to nip at a morsel of grass while acres of it are adjacent and far more easily attainable. Sheep, unattended, smell badly and have no means of staying clean.

In the realm of similes and metaphors, sheep are apt and accurate representations of fallen humanity, clueless, amoral, easily manipulated and panicked, and largely without the common sense of a doorknob.

And in addition to all this, sheep are dangerously unaware of their own critical shortcomings and weaknesses, lowering their chances of survival in a savage world that much more.

Like the shepherd, our Lord has taken it upon Himself to enable us to overcome these fatal characteristics. He has put Himself between us and our own idiocies, and between us and the deadly enemies that surround us.

He has chosen this course not because of anything valuable in and of ourselves, but because He has invested in us value beyond measure.

Perhaps the most vibrant description of His voluntary relationship with us can be found in John 10.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. “But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. “The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. “As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. (John 10:11-15, NKJV).

It is no accident that Israel's greatest King was David, a shepherd, someone who, through long experience in the fields and hills of the wilderness, knew what it meant to care for the likes his people, Israel – sheep easily led astray by their own unthinking lusts.

While David was subject to the same flaws and inadequacies of his flock, our Shepherd is not. He is the perfect Caretaker, who unfailingly knows what is best for His people, and who has demonstrated His love for us by doing the unthinkable, dying in our place.

But that death was only temporary, and He now lives forever more as our Guide and Protector.

To get a sense of the beauty of our Shepherd's heart for us, is to see yet another aspect of His immeasurable superiority in all things. We, His sheep, are anything but lovable left to our own devices and in our own debased natures, but only when He cleans us up and cares for us do we become what He has always envisioned for us – lambs whose wool is white as snow, without spot or blemish, fit members of His marvelous pasture.

To be considered equivalent to the least fierce, least capable, least intelligent of livestock does not appeal to our unfounded sense of pride, but that is just another symptom of our incurable condition.

Incurable, that is, until placed under the care of the One who loves us.

In Him, we go from helpless sheep to more than conquerors.

In Him, we go from minions of certain death to recipients of eternal life.

To be a sheep of the Lord's pasture is the greatest destiny any of us can attain, but to get there you must swallow all pride, acknowledge your own helplessness, and follow His lead.

And while mules and donkeys have a popular reputation for stubbornness, it pales in comparison to the actual intransigence of a clueless, self-deluded sheep.