Ben Zornes

Living and Dying to Show the Preciousness of Christ

Home » Good Works

Good Works

Diligence Either Way

Diligence Either Way

by ·

Diligence in any direction is like investing in a stock that pays dividends. Which is just another way of saying, “You reap what you sow.”

The Psalmist describes evildoers this way, “They search out iniquities.” Implying that you can be an A+ student in wickedness. And the way to get good at sinning is by practice, research, repetition, and, once more, diligence. Perpetuating some great evil begins by a life devoted to many, seemingly minuscule, evils. If you invest your time, inner thoughts, and secret deeds to wickedness and you’ll be paid out in dividends of corrupt gain.

One insightful, old-school missionary laid out what he called “The Seven Steps to Hell.” The first step is simply trifling with sin. It’s folding the hands to slumber a bit longer than is prudent, and financial ruin comes. It’s wandering down the digital harlot’s Instagram feed that leads into the gaping mouth of hell. It’s simmering with covetousness that brings you to crush your brother’s skull.

But, just as diligence in evil produces greater evil, the opposite is held out to us as the path of the righteous. The righteous go from strength to strength. The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Peter tells us to “be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless (2 Pt. 3:14).”

This life of diligent obedience is only possible because God has graciously poured out upon You His Spirit. God dwells in you. But faithful obedience doesn’t mean that temptations will lessen. Quite the opposite. Greater opposition, trial, and temptation await. And it is this way so that you can say, in the end, “to God alone be the glory; for all my sins have been forgiven and all my righteousness is His.”

Prayer of Confession

Father…How many are diligent in seeking out their own misery? Your Word summons mankind to faith in You, to walk in the blessed ways of Your commands, and to revel in the joy which comes from obedience to Your statutes. Creation itself leaves mankind without excuse for his continual deliberate rebellion. We have worshipped and served false gods, and it ought not be so. Even we in Your church have found out ways to give lip service to You, while our hearts fondle wicked grudges, ponder carnal desires, and seethe with unjust wrath. Grant us grace to diligently flee from these and all other iniquities, and give us a heart that is fixed & steadfast in seeking after You. In Jesus name, Amen.

There’s only two ways to live. One is diligent in evil, the other is diligent in faith. One is the path of misery, the other the path of supreme joy. By confessing your sins, and looking to Christ alone for salvation, you can be assured that these joyful tidings of God’s forgiveness through Christ are indeed for you.

A Word to #DatPostmil Bros

A Word to #DatPostmil Bros

by ·

It does no good to chest-thump online about theonomy, or #datpostmil if your lawn resembles the Amazon Rainforest, your sheets haven’t been washed in weeks, your children are unruly & unloved, and your finances are a wreck. Building a Christian culture takes sanctified work.

Not busy work. Not self-righteous work. Not the work of slaves. But grace saturated work. If we would build a Christian nation, it means we actually need to be able to build. Not just figuratively, but literally. This undertaking requires diligent hands, faithful hearts, wise minds, and unswerving zeal.  It will involve both sawdust and flour, sweaty brows and calloused hands, stacks of dog-eared books, and well-worn garden trowels.

Psalm 90 concludes with a prayer we must learn to pray: “Let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” If God’s beauty rests upon us only then will our work be firmly established.

Works of selfish ambition & vainglory must give way to works of mercy & worship. Faithful Christian work is no longer the futile labor of self-preservation, it’s the work of giving your life away. You build wealth, not to horde, but in order to provide work, food, shelter and healing for not only your children, but for multitudes.

The drumbeat of Christian work is diligence. We aren’t gamblers swept off by the latest gold-rush. We lay strong foundations, we restore ruins, we tame forests, we nurture the streams. We do so in order that our children’s children might not only build upon those foundations, but extend the borders. Our diligent work isn’t to make a name for ourselves, but because we’ve received the name of Christ. So, we work to bring glory to His name.

Christ saved us from the futile works of sin, and set us to work the works of faith. The Father has prepared good works for us to do, well in advance of us doing them. Yet often we turn aside through laziness, sloth, cowardice, or compromise. We excuse untidy homes by some vague mention of how busy we’ve been. We blame our business failures on the economy. We claim all sorts of reasons as to why we’ve avoided the hard work God’s providence has set before us to do. If we would see reformation, we must come to God for forgiveness over our lazing about, and ask that His Spirit might be poured out upon us that we might work the works of faith and good works. All to the glory of Christ our King.

Our work, if it is to last, must be built on the foundation of God’s grace to us in Christ. every other foundation will crumble. But if we build on sins forgiven and mercy extended, than the Lord will indeed establish the work of our hands. So we repent, and then we get to work.

Grace to Works

Grace to Works

by ·

God, in His great mercy, has given you life in Christ. He’s laid the table with the Bread of Life & the Wine of Relief. From this meal we rise & go forth to living works. To love our spouse. To raise faithful children. To build decks, websites, and investment portfolios. To write books, make movies, compose songs, photograph sunsets, establish just laws, and fight lawlessness.

All these good works, however, flow from the fountain of this table. We don’t scrap & claw to earn enough approval from the Father to score an invite to this table. False gospels say you must be good enough to come; but none of us are good enough to come, and all of our efforts to better ourselves only jam the gears even more. If you invert the doctrine of grace, you end up with a doctrine of dead works. Trying to do good works before receiving grace is like handing out blueprints for a cathedral in a graveyard. Corpses can’t build cathedrals, they can only populate tombs.

The Gospel says come without coin and buy bread. All of God’s infinite grace is here. Your sins are forgiven. Your shame is washed away. Your vices are crucified and you bear them no more. Your virtues are resurrected and sanctified to His glory. The abundant riches of God’s grace are all yours. All this is what gives rise to what some have called the Protestant work ethic.

You can’t earn what’s on this table. But you can receive it in faith, and then by God’s grace, turn a profit on it. So receive grace, in order to go forth with eager joy to do the works of grace, and then in grateful praise bring the fruits of grace to glorify God in the courts of His Kingdom.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Set in Order

Set in Order

by ·

Introduction 

If you were to pick a word to describe the current state of affairs, what would it be? Disorder? Chaos? Fear? Confusion? A big mess? 

What about the current state of your own soul? Could you describe yourself as peaceful, full of joy, at ease in your conscience? Or is your inner man a hairball of guilt, shame, disordered desires, and fear of judgment? It is clear that all around us and within us things are all out of order. The nub of the matter is: how do we get things back into order?

The Text

Titus 2:11-15

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

Summary of the Text

Paul sent Titus to set things in order in Crete (1:5), an island nation which was notorious for being, to use the technical Greek term: scumbags. Even Epimenides the philosopher noted how the Cretans were “alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies (Tit. 1:12).”

But Paul insists that because Christ, the grace of God which brought salvation, has now appeared to all men, mankind is obliged to learn a lesson (2:11). The lesson being taught is that in denying our sinful cravings, we are to live sober, righteous, and godly lives (2:12). We deny our lusts and pursue holiness by looking to the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus (2:13); and when we look to Jesus we must think of the redeeming work He accomplished for us (2:14). He did this to purify us to be a set apart people who are zealous for good works (2:14). And Titus is tasked with proclaiming this truth with force and authority, regardless of the disdain that may befall him for it (2:15). 

Good Works

Paul wants the Cretan church, under Titus’ oversight and by his example, to be busy with good works. Paul’s very greeting emphasizes that our faith and the truth accord with godliness (1:1). Some among them had professed to know God, but had shown themselves in regards to good works to be reprobate (1:16). Later on, Titus is to told to be a pattern of good works (2:7). Christ’s redemption purifies His people to be set apart to and zealous for good works (2:14). The Gospel which Paul proclaims is that we are not saved by our works of righteousness but according to God’s mercy (3:5) and by the kindness and love of God as displayed by sending His Son (3:4); all this is so that the Cretans “might by careful to maintain good works (3:8).” The believers under Titus’ care were to “learn to maintain good works” so that they would not be found unfruitful (3:14).

Paul, the great Apostle who formulated for us the glorious truth that we are not saved by our works of righteousness but by God’s grace alone, insists that though we are not saved by our good works, we are saved in order to do good works.

Arranging Skeletons

All of our current cultural chaos is the direct result of man trying to set things in order without the the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit. We are like paleontologists in a dinosaur graveyard just imaginatively assembling bones according to what we think the creatures must have looked like.

Our politicians try to arrange the dead bones of racial animosity into a semblance of peace and justice, and all they get is dead works of racial hostility, envy, and bitterness. When you try to simply do good works so that men think well of you, all you are doing is polishing the dead bones of self-righteousness to be displayed in a museum, which sooner or later will get cancelled anyway. Dead hearts make dead works. Dead men make dead laws. Dead bones make dead cultures.

But Paul tells Titus that he is to set things in order by preaching sound doctrine. The Gospel preached is the only way for mankind to be arranged properly. To put it another way, the Gospel is a setting of things in order.

The Good News is that the grace of God which brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to slit the throat of our disordered and depraved desires, and to zealously pursue good works. This is what Jesus redeemed us for, that by Him our sin might be forgiven and defeated, and our good works truly received by the Father. After all, Christ’s redeeming work gives us a new heart, by the regenerating and renewing power of the Holy Spirit (3:5).

So, are you in disarray? Are you fearful of all the derangement in our culture? The Gospel sets it all in order. It tells elders what sort of men to be (1:6-9), and how aged men are to bear themselves (2:2). It tells older women to teach younger women how to keep their home, love their husbands and children (2:3-5). It teaches young men to be sober and grave not hooligans given to every impulse (2:6). It has servants obeying their masters with fidelity (2:9-10). It reminds you of your foolish enslavement to lust and malice (3:3), and how you were re-ordered by the kindness of God (3:4).

And it can do all this and accomplish all this within you and within the church––and even within a nation––because God the Father, sent His Son to die for your sins, and the Son sent the Spirit to give you a new heart that you might be busy with good works. You are given a new heart because you have also been given a new identity. You are no longer a Cretan. You are no longer to be known by your lies, your lusts, your fears, or your follies. You have been set in order, by the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit, which lifts up the Lord Jesus who died to forgive your sins and who is your righteousness.

Ben Zornes