THE GOSPEL OF GOD
Meditations in the Letter to the Romans
THE TRUTH ABOUT WORKS
Romans 4:1-4(Part 1)

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WHEN we consider our relationship to God the whole matter boils down to works or faith. What I mean is this! We have been created in the image of God. This means that inherent in our being is the inner need for God, because being created in the image of God means that we were created by God for God, and to find our life in him. We have been so created that our life is in God, because God has built into us the godlike quality of independent thought and moral consciousness. Because of this creation we can't know life with purpose and satisfaction without God, and when we realise this we seek to come to God, and find that we have been separated from him through our moral and spiritual failure to meet his excellence. Thus there is the paramount need to be reconciled to God, and so we are back to faith or works because these are the two areas that address this need to be reconciled to God.

When we approach this need to be reconciled to God, we immediately address the problem with the answer of works. We realise we have fallen short of what God requires, so we seek to put this right by working at being more good in thought and action and deed. Paul addresses this matter of working in these four verses, and tells us the truth about this way of seeking favour with God. He shows it is utter futility and failure. He shows it as unworthy of God and an insult to God. It is the purpose of this sermon to open up the truth about works as a means of gaining favour with God.

If you are anything like me, then you will need to read these four verses over and over again, chewing over the meaning. For me, unless I do this, I never get at the meaning or its implications. What is implied is as important as what is stated.

THE NATURE OF WORKS

The nature of works is stated by Paul in verse 4. He says "Now when a man works, his wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation". Paul is stating a fact about the nature of work in human society. We work and are paid for the amount of work we do. Work has a value, and that value is paid as an obligation when the work is done. Work is not a means of gaining favour. That is immaterial. The one we work for may not like us, and we may not like him or her, but this does not invalidate the merit of the work we do, and though there may be dislike on both sides, the work is done as it should be done, and the wages are paid as an obligation for the work performed.

Then we hear Paul saying in the second verse of Chapter 4 of Romans "If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about - but not before God". If we work hard and do good work, then in the realm of this world we gain credit. Our lives are justified before society, or before our employer, or before others in the sphere we live, because of the good work we have done. We receive credit and position. We gain riches and glory. This is the way of the world. The work ethic is crucial to our society.

Yet Paul says that although our works justify us before society and in this world of time, yet our works do not justify us before God. We can boast before the world because of our works, but we can’t boast before God. Paul is telling us that our works, and the way we live, however good it may be, can never justify us before God, and is no grounds for boasting before God. We can not gain favour or acceptance before God on the grounds of the work we do, however good it may be.

This is what Paul is saying, and it knocks the ground away from under our feet. When we think of gaining favour with God, we think of earning that favour by the good life we lead. Paul is saying that however much glory we may receive from society by our good works, we gain no glory before God. This fatal statement we need to inquire into and understand.

UNDERSTANDING OUR ORIGINS

When we analyse our belief that we gain favour from God by our good works, we feel that it is written into the very basis of creation. However when we go back to the creation story in the first three chapters of Genesis and understand what God really said there, then we see that perhaps we did not understand things in quite the right way.

When we read the story of Adam and Eve we are told that God placed in the Garden of Eden the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam he must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but there was no such command against the eating of the tree of life. God told Adam that he would die if he ate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so the implication is that if Adam observed this command and did not break it, then he would live. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that God did not prohibit the eating of the tree of life. From this we assume that Adam, if he had not eaten the forbidden fruit, would have earned his right to life by his obedience, but this is not what the record is saying.

There is no suggestion in the Genesis story that Adam had a right to life, and certainly no suggestion that his obedience merited life. God gave life to Adam, and all the blessings that went with living in paradise, but Adam was still the creation of God and owned by God completely. God had every right to do what he would with his own, with that which he had created. It was God’s grace and love that bestowed life on Adam, and it was grace that would have maintained that life if Adam had not sinned. The obedience of Adam to God was Adam’s obligation because he belonged to God. It could not be merit anything. It was God in his grace and love which bestowed life and maintained life. We have every right to believe that if Adam had not sinned God would have bestowed eternal life, but it was still a gift of his grace, and not by obligation to reward Adam for that which was his duty to do.

This is where we must start, however unpalatable this may sound to our modern ways of thinking.

WORKS GAIN NO MERIT

We can now progress in our think in a logical way. If God created us, and thus owns us, it is our obligation to give him total obedience and loving service. Thus complete holiness is our duty. It is the purpose of our life to live for God and serve him. This is the only way we find fulfilment in life. If perfect service to God is our due and what we have been created for, we can claim no merit for living as God demands or has created us to live. On the other hand if we fall short of the glory of God then we do earn censor because we have fallen short of what is required of us.

So any idea that human beings can do over and above what is our due to God is nonsense. It is a fallacy born of desperation that believes that we can atone for past sin by our good works. We like to believe this because we seem to have no other place of refuge if we don’t, but the fact is that it is our duty to be perfect. Past failure cannot be cancelled out or paid for, because we have nothing extra to pay it with. It is a fallacy that some very holy people, which we are pleased to designate as saints, can do more than enough to obtain their own salvation, and so have some merit over and above what they need to make available for others.

HUMAN BEINGS CAN’T MERIT GOD’S FAVOUR

The fact of the matter is this. We are totally unable to merit favour before God by our good works. Even if we were totally perfect, we still would receive life from God as a gift, and it would be a gift of God’s grace, that is due to God’s undeserved favour.

Further, as we are unable to live a perfect life, then we must always fall short of God’s glory and so come under the condemnation of God, and remain under the sentence of death that is upon all who fall short of that total obedience to God which is our due.

If we are unable to live a perfect life in the future, we not only are unable to stop falling short of God’s standard, but also our past sins can not be paid for in any way. The debt of these sins remain, always tarnishing our image before God, always increasing our debt to God’s law, and so increasing our condemnation. Sins, from a human point of view, are indelible stains on our character that can never be washed away by anything in this world that we can do or others may be able to do for us.

In ourselves we must always remain under God’s condemnation and always by under the sentence of death. We have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and so the wages of sin, which is death, is paid to us. We earn our condemnation by our sins, but we can’t earn our justification by our good works because there is nothing we can do that is over and above what we owe to God already.

THE BLESSING OF FACING THE FACTS

All that we have considered so far must seem terribly depressing. We may well say ‘what is the good of trying to be good if it gains us nothing’. In answer to this, first of all, is that if we don’t try to be good, we only make our condemnation and punishment worse.

To face this fact that Paul states here that we can’t be justified or gain favour with God by our good works is in reality the way to life and blessing. We will never stop trusting in ourselves and our own working and doing before God, unless we understand and accept that we are unable to please God by them. But when we do accept this truth, then we will look outside ourselves for some other remedy, and we will be ready to listen to the Gospel. The Holy Spirit begins his work within us by convicting us of sin, and bringing home to us how weak and hopeless our case is before God, because when this conviction has done its perfect work then the Gospel becomes precious.

God acted towards Adam in grace, in unmerited favour. God acts towards us in even greater grace and unmerited favour. Just as we become under condemnation because we are children of Adam, and like him fall short of the glory of God, so God provides a second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, to work a perfect righteousness on behalf of us sinners, which is then by an act of grace and gift, offered to all who will receive it by faith. By this gift of grace we are accounted totally righteous in the site of God, and receive the eternal life merited for us by Christ.

Christ as the God-man had no obligation to be obedient to God for he was and is God, and he never sinned and has never sinned. So his life of righteousness and his death of atonement he did not for himself, but for others, even to those who believe in his name. The life which we receive through him is indeed eternal, because Christ’s righteousness is perfect and already accomplished, and so to all those who receive it by faith it is the perfect security for eternal favour and life from God.

CONCLUSION

Let us not reject the testimony of Paul here about the value of good works. Let us accept that our works can gain no merit with God and so we can’t boast before God. Let us place our trust outside ourselves and our doings, and instead place our trust in the all sufficient work Christ has done for us in love.