Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2210
“Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” Ephesians 2:9,10.
I shall call your attention to the near neighborhood of these two phrases, “Not of works” and, “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” The text reads with a singular sound, for it seems strange to the ear that good works should be given such a negative description as to the cause of salvation and then should be spoken of as the great end of it! You may put it down among what the Puritans called, “Orthodox Paradoxes,” if you please, though it is hardly so difficult a matter as to deserve the name.
Not long ago, I tried to handle the point of difference supposed to exist between the doctrine of faith—“Believe, and you shall be saved,” and the doctrine of the new birth and its necessity—“You must be born again.” My method was on this wise—I did not explain the difficulties which appear to the logician and the doctor of metaphysics, but I tried to show that, practically, there were none. If we deal only with difficulties which block up the way to salvation, there are none. As for those matters which involve no real hindrance, I leave them where they are. A rock which is in nobody’s way may stand where it is. He that believes in Jesus is born again. These two things are equally true—there must be a work of the Spirit within, yet he that believes in the Lord Jesus has everlasting life.
Now, there is a contention always going on about the doctrine of good works, but instead of taking one side or the other, we shall try to see whether there is really anything to quarrel over if we keep to the Scriptures. We insist upon it, with all our might, that salvation is “not of works, lest any man should boast.” But, on the other hand, we freely admit and earnestly teach that, “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Where there are no good works, there is no indwelling of the Spirit of God! The faith which does not produce good works is not saving faith—it is not the faith of God’s elect—it is not faith at all in the Scriptural sense. I have just taken these two points to bring them forward for the help and comfort of beginners. I seek not to instruct you who are already well taught, but my aim at this time is to instruct beginners on this important subject. Salvation is not of works, but, at the same time, we, who are the subjects of Divine Grace, are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” This is plain to the enlightened Believer, but babes in Grace have weak eyes and cannot at once perceive it.
Before, in the gracious Providence of God, Luther was raised up to preach the doctrine of Justification by Faith, the common notion among religious persons was that men must be saved by works—and the result was that, knowing nothing of the root from which virtue springs, very few persons had any good works at all! Religion so declined that it became a mere matter of empty ceremony, or of useless seclusion and, in addition, superstition overlaid the original Truth of the Gospel, so that one could hardly find it out at all. The reign of self-justification and priestcraft led to no good result upon the masses of religious people. Indulgences and forgiveness of sins were hawked through the streets and publicly sold. So much was charged for the pardon of one sin and so much for another, and the treasury of “his holiness” at Rome—who might better have been called, “his unholiness”—was filled by payments for abating penalties in a “purgatory” of Rome’s inventing!
Luther learned from the sacred Volume, by the Spirit of the Lord, that we are saved by Grace, alone, through faith—and, having found it out, he was so possessed by that one Truth of God that he preached it with a voice of thunder! His witness on that one point was so concentrated that it would be too much to expect equal clearness upon all other
Truths of God. I sometimes compare him to a bull who shuts his eyes and goes straight on at the one objective which he means to overthrow. With a mighty crash, he broke down the gates of Papal superstition! He saw nothing—he did not need to see anything—except this—“By Grace are you saved through faith.” He made very clear and good work upon that point, faulty as he was upon certain others. The echoes of his manly voice rang down the centuries. I note that nearly all the sermons of Protestant divines, long after Luther, were upon Justification by Faith and, whatever the text might be, they somehow or other brought in that article of a standing or falling Church. They seldom finished a sermon without declaring that salvation is not by works, but that it is by faith in Jesus Christ.
I do not censure them for a moment! Far rather do I commend them—better too much than too little upon the central doctrine of the Gospel. The times needed that point to be made clear to all comers and the Reforming preachers made it clear. Justification by Faith was the nail that had to be driven home and clinched—and all their hammers went at that nail. They were not nearly so clear and specific upon many other doctrines as they were upon this, but then it was a foundation stone and they were occupied in laying it—and they did lay it and laid it thoroughly—and laid it forever. Still, they would have more fully completed the circle of revealed Truth if Sanctification had been as fully apprehended and as clearly explained as Justification. It had been well if the legs of the Gospel of the Reformation had been equal, for one was a little longer and a little stronger than the other and, therefore, there was a limp—a halting like that of victorious Israel, as he came from Jabbok—but still a limp which it would be well to cure.