Works of Divine Love
We don’t attempt religious “good words” in an effort to save ourselves. We do good works, because it is God who works in and through us, to do His will. We do good works because we are aligned with God, in trust and it is His grace-empowerment that motivates us.
Saving faith gets into action because God’s love is ALIVE in and through him. The believer becomes a force for redemption as God lives in and through him.
We can’t work IN ORDER TO BE SAVED. Instead, we work from love because we are grateful recipients of divine grace. It is not earned; God BESTOWS our new identity upon us — the very righteousness of Christ Himself. That is impossible to earn. It must be received AND LIVE OUT by faith!
Phillipians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is GOD WHO WORKS IN YOU to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.
John 14:9–11 Jesus replied, “Philip, I have been with you all this time, and still you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on My own. Instead, IT IS THE FATHER LIVING IN ME THAT IS DOING THE WORK. 11Believe Me that I am IN the Father and the Father is IN Me — or at least believe on account of the works themselves.…
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Torah is the commands of God. It means God’s instructions for living. Jesus is the LIVING TORAH. By having Jesus, we have the Torah and the Torah is IN us. In Christ Jesus, we are in the torah and the torah is now INSIDE us — looking to live itself out through us. Everything in the written Torah describes DIVINE LOVE IN ACTION. If you are walking and flowing in God’s love, you naturally are not going to break any command of God. Exactly as Jesus lived in harmonious intimacy and obedience to Father God’s will and commands.
Jesus IS divine love in action. Jesus is the Living Torah. We don’t follow external letters written on physical scrolls — we follow what they POINT TO. We follow Jesus, and thereby we have it ALL! All life, wisdom and knowledge, and blessing!
Colossians 2:3 …2that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, 3 IN WHOM ARE CONTAINED ALL THE TREASURES OF DIVINE WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE. 4 I say this so that no one will deceive you by smooth rhetoric.…
He who has the Son of God, has the LIFE OF GOD. And he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life of God. (1 John 5:12) And why do we have this life? Why is it Father God’s desire to send Christ to us and in us to live a life of faith that is grace-empowered to do divinely good works?
Ephesians 4:12 to equip the saints for WORKS of ministry and to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge (the experiential and directly intimate kind of knowing) of the Son of God, as we MATURE TO THE FULL MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF CHRIST. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming.…
And why are we to mature into the fullness of Christ Himself? The highest of the highest? Well, what was Christ here to do?
1 John 3:1–10 It says two things in this passage. It says Jesus came incarnate bodily into this world to “take away sins. And in Him, there is no sin.” And it also says “The Reason the Son of God Appeared Was to Destroy the Works of the Devil.”
By becoming sin itself (2 Corinthians 5:21) and then dying on the Cross AS sin itself, and also FOR us and AS us as sinful, Jesus did what? Jesus KILLED SIN ITSELF through his own body. And what else did that do? It RELEASED THE BLOOD OF JESUS. So now the divine LIFE OF GOD is not just contained in Jesus, but can GET INTO US through faith.
Thus, we are given grace by faith to mature into the fullness of Christ, being given our identity IN Christ and empowered with the same supernatural power the raised Jesus from the Dead. So we can TRULY LIVE. Not just free from sin and fear, as important as that is. But that is the stepping stone to RULE AND REIGN WITH Christ Jesus as extensions, united submitted humble extensions of the Love of God, the Justice of God, the Redemptive Desire of God… and all the rest that God is.
We don’t keep Torah to be good in God’s eyes. That is ridiculous and that is the trap of religiosity. No, we RECEIVE JESUS as Messiah, as Savior, as the LIFE OF GOD. Now we can mature, be filled, be full, be MORE AND MORE extensions of God’s heart into this time and space existence!
In Christ we have; life, forgiveness, unity with the Father (John 17), included in the heroic intimacy of the Trinity (John 17), righteousness, power, and the fullness of God and God’s Kingdom present in the here and now. Jesus IS the living Torah of God in action. Jesus IN US is activating Torah (righteous living and righteous judgements) to make us a powerful FORCE FOR GOODNESS in this lifetime. It is THE FATHER that is in us (through Christ) doing the Father’s Good Works.
And one of the many good works is to be an agent of truth. We are to assist other fallen humans in KNOWING (the direct and intimate experience of) the Truth. Jesus IS the truth. Jesus IS the life. Jesus IS the righteousness. Jesus IS the Torah. We are signposts; we are conduits. We are extensions of Christ (grown up into the Maturity of the Full Stature of Christ Himself) so as to invite them to know/experience Christ AS HE IS. Their life. Their salvation. Their Hope of Glory.
We are thereby dead to sin and alive to God. (Romans 6:11) Inviting others into the GOOD NEWS, that they can know the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), meaning they can know God, know Jesus Himself. They can directly encounter God and if they choose, receive God’s offer of Himself, His own life, into them and embark on the faith-journey of growing up into the fullness of Jesus Himself.
1 Timothy 2:3–5 “This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,…
We come to the LIVING Torah. To know Jesus Himself as the LIFE of God, the Blood of God, in us and through us and out of us into the world as a servant of God’s desire for redemption. He wants to save humanity by directly encountering Jesus — alive through us. THIS is what salvation is for.
Conclusion:
First: Jesus came to destroy sin and to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:1–10) What is the work of the devil and what is sin? Sin is distrusting and disobeying God, His instructions. Jesus destroys sin in us via the victory of the cross (becoming sin and dying as sin). And Jesus destroys sin in us by RECONNECTING us to God.
The work of the devil was to DISCONNECT us from the harmonious intimacy of knowing God directly. Our intimate reconnection to Father God (by faith through grace in the full work of Christ) is the destruction of Satan’s agenda. We are now alive and empowered to BE Torah JUST AS Jesus lived out the Torah on Earth through His life here.
By following Jesus as Messiah WE ARE following Torah. By fellowshipping and living in trust/obedience we are BEING Torah. We are being divine love actions in this world.
Second: Jesus came to save us by his LIFE. Giving his lifeblood to us, making us ALIVE WITH HIMSELF. (John 6:53) And thereby making us full of God. God IN us; God THROUGH us. Life IN us; life THROUGH us. Love IN us; love THROUGH us. A supernatural life — full of justice and love and truth and a passion for the Kingdom of God, and a fierce and uncompromising LOVE of God Himself. Salvation is thus receiving Jesus and becoming just like Jesus. That is how we do what Jesus did: WE OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD (Romans 12:21).
