The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: Romans 12:10-17

“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

God’s Workmanship

Saved by grace, through faith in Christ, not by works of our own. That is the only Gospel found in the New Testament. “A person is justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law” [Galatians 2:16]. This central truth of the Christian faith needs to again and again be emphasized.
But, there is also another side that must also be spoke; and that is this, the faith justifies. The faith by which we are saved, is not a dead knowledge in the head, but a living thing in the heart. “Faith working through love” [Galatians 5:6]. Saving faith, as Luther so often points out, is an active, busy thing that performs good works without questioning.
Here, God tells us that we are His workmanship. Even as He has given us our body and soul, so He has now given us spiritual life and power, “created in Christ Jesus” for the express purpose that we should perform good works. We are saved not only for the life hereafter, but equally so for this life on earth. We are saved to serve! Yes, the Apostle goes so far as to tell us that God has ordained the very works in which we should walk. But the greatest “work” in which we should walk, is the “work” of Christ Jesus at Calvary.

O God of grace, make us to abound evermore in love and grace, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord and King. Amen.

June 06, 1944