Why be good

The debate continues to rage in the Australian church, and no doubt the wider church, about why Christians do good works. It's the age old conundrum: if we're saved by grace alone then it doesn't matter what we do... but there seem to be passages in the bible that insist that Christians will do it, what are we to do with those?

The most common response I get from evangelicals is that Christians do good works because we're thankful. It's the idea that because Jesus died for us we deny ourselves and do all sorts of things out of gratitude. While for a while that answer satisfied me, I'm now getting gradually more and more uncomfortable with it.

The way this response of gratitude is framed, it feels to me as if we do things because we feel indebted to Jesus, like we owe him something. Now there are healthier and less healthy ways to fulfil a debt of gratitude. It's perfectly possible, and in my experience it's actually more common, that such debts are paid with grudging obedience. An obvious possibility of this position is that often we're still doing things we don't really want to do. And it's here that I have my problem.

Virtually all the images of the genuine Christian life I find in the bible have the ring, the colour, the sound of joy about them. People are coming and laying down their lives for each other and the world and they are doing it with a smile. How is that possible? It's certainly not possible if the only reason we're doing it is a debt of gratitude. We actually have to want to do the things we do, no, more than that, rejoice at the chance to do them, in at least one case it's a matter of 'rejoicing for the chance to suffer for the sake of the name...' This doesn't sound anything like paying off a debt to me.

I suspect the heart of the problem lies in the attempt to encourage good works without reference to genuine, transforming, regeneration.

Is it not the case that when someone knows God they receive the Holy Spirit? Is it not further the case that a significant part of the work of the Holy Spirit in people is to make them new? He gives new hearts, he renews our minds, he disposes of the old and brings the new such that wherever the Christian is: there is new Creation (2Cor5.17).

On the issue of good sacrificial obedient works, what he gives is a new desire to see and do New Creation things.

Why do Christians do good works? I think the New Testament answer, is that we do them because we have a new nature and long to see them done.

Before we were renewed in our minds we welcomed people and were hospitable because we were thankful to Jesus and knew it was the right thing to do, there's little genuine joy there. As our hearts are renewed we begin to treasure people, we love them more, we delight to see them happy, we long to see them restored. Gradually the good works cease to be motivated by debt, and become what we genuinely wish for.

Before we were renewed in our hearts we forgave each other because we lived in fear of the reciprocal arrangement in the Lord's prayer and because someone had told us that until we forgive others we are held captive to our own unforgiveness. While both reasons are true, they are not the genuine motivations of the Christian life. As our hearts change, we begin to long for whole and healthy relationships, we cease to care so much for our own standing and appearance, we start to value restored relationships more than our own wounded pride, and so asking for forgiveness and extending it becomes a joy because we are seeking something we delight in: relationship.

Why do we do good works? It's not because we think they will get us anything particularly, either in the realm of salvation, or in the parallel realm of lifestyle. We do them because our renewed natures long for them, long to see them, be part of them and see the world healed by them.

This is the only way that good works will be a joy, and the only way that we can ever rejoice for the chance to suffer.

May God restore and make new his people, so we can stop arguing about why we do good works and simply get on with joy and do them.