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God\u2019s grace has saved you because of your faith in Christ. Your salvation doesn\u2019t come from anything you do. It is God\u2019s gift. It is not based on anything you have done. No one can brag about earning it. We are God\u2019s creation. He created us to belong to Christ Jesus. Now we can do good works. Long ago God prepared these works for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10).

As Pastor Anthony mentioned yesterday, having shown us that \u201cnothing can steal us out of God\u2019s hand or out of the future with King Jesus\u201d, Paul returns to the great topic of \u2018by grace alone.\u2019 When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, killed by hostile people and resurrected and ascended by the power of God, we are saved by grace alone. The Protestant Reformers were quick to add that faith was not some sort of \u2018work\u2019 we needed to add to the grace of God. Faith itself is a gift of grace.

But I do not want to lean into that doctrine today. Rather, I want to take you into a reflection on the confluence of grace and works. The relationship between grace and works, as set forth here, is much misunderstood. The misreading goes something like this: God has saved us so that we can do something for him. The first task of the Christian is to figure out what this \u2018work\u2019 is that God wants us to do. And if we don\u2019t accomplish it\u2026well, we are left to imagine what the disappointment of God looks like.

It doesn\u2019t take much to recognize that this teaching immobilizes some of us whiling spurring others on to do all sort of things hoping against hope that we are meeting God\u2019s expectations. This distortion of grace is rooted in a misunderstanding of \u2018work\u2019. For us, work is about accomplishment.

We work for a paycheck. We work to add status to our profile, to add to our resume. It is a means of providing for our dependents and for moving up in the world. We think about religious work in much the same way. If fact, for some, the only meaningful work is \u2018Christian work\u2019. In building the kingdom on earth, we accomplish something for God. And the more we accomplish the more pleased God is with us. God will listen more readily to a \u2018pastor\u2019 than to a lesser Christians. But this distorts God\u2019s grace.

In his book, Practising Resurrection, Eugene Peterson helps us see how grace and work belong together. He reminds us that God is the first being we see at work (Genesis 1 & 2). We see God creating. Everything he makes is a gift. This gifting culminates in the creation of woman. The man is delighted. She is a gift. (We distort their relationship when we do not see this giftedness). Everything is a gift. In creating us in his image, God invites us into his work, giving us work to do that corresponds with his work.

Next, we turn to Jesus who continues his father\u2019s work. He insists that the God no one has ever seen is visible in the works that he does right in front of their eyes (John 10:25). His work is like God\u2019s work of creation. It is all gifts. He feeds, he heals, he comforts, he blesses \u2013 all gifts of grace. And he dies.

It is one of the great ironies of Jesus\u2019 life that what people saw Jesus do were the very things that provoked rejection of him as the incarnation of God. Jesus\u2019 work is the form in which the invisible God can be seen. We have seen God\u2019s glory in Jesus. Glory is God\u2019s invisibility become visible in Jesus at work. And \u2014 this is Paul\u2019s point in Ephesians \u2014 we also are \u201ccreated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.\u201d Our work is a form for the glory.

Work is not what we do; we are the work that God does: \u201cwe are God\u2019s creation,\u201d \u201cwe are God\u2019s workmanship\u201d (RSV). In Christ\u2019s crucifixion, God re-makes us into the image of Christ. And with our transformation, our sense of work is transformed as well. Work is no longer about our achievements; rather, it is to put grace into physical form. To live the resurrection life in the here and now. To live the resurrection life as we work for our paycheck. To live the resurrection life at school and in retirement, among our family and when socializing with friends.

This resurrection life is growing up in Christ. It is our work. Work is learning to put away the misdeeds of the flesh and dressing up in the clothing of the Spirit. We are God\u2019s work and doing God\u2019s work: \u201cwe are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life\u201d (Eph. 2:10). Growing up in Christ means we live not in terms of what we make of ourselves but in terms of what God makes us.

Whatever job we get and whatever task we are assigned serves as a container for grace, a means for us to grow up in Christ. Growing up into Christ is our work. Our work is always and only, God\u2019s grace at work in us. \xa0\xa0\xa0

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).