Counseling: renouncing my works...

Renunciation of Works

At first glance, this may seem to be an inappropriate characteristic of genuine repentance. After all, we believe we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (). Furthermore, John the Baptist tells us to bear fruit or do works that are worthy of repentance, and James tells us that faith without works is dead. How, then, is true repentance manifested by a renunciation of works?

The answer is in : — ‘Therefore, let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God’. The phrase “repentance from dead works” refers to a renouncing or turning away from any and every hope in some personal work of piety as a means of justification or right standing before God. Any work that a person might rely upon in place of the person and work of Christ is a dead work that cannot save.

Scripture teaches that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone; it is not of works, lest any man should boast (). This is why the Scriptures present grace and works as diametrically opposed to one another and mutually exclusive. How did the apostle put it? ().

In classical logic there is a principle called the law of noncontradiction that states that contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same context. This is true with regard to works and grace as they pertain to salvation. If salvation is by grace, it cannot be by works; if it is by works, it cannot be by grace. Therefore, before a person can exercise true saving faith in Christ, he must first abandon all hope of attaining salvation through any other means.

This abandonment of self-righteousness in favor of Christ alone is one of the great works of the Spirit of God in regeneration. Through the Spirit, the truly repentant person has come to see something of the unattainable righteousness of God and the unsearchable depths of his own depravity. He has been confronted with his sin and made to cry out with the patriarch Job and the apostle Paul:

— Since I will be found guilty, why should I struggle in vain? If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye, then you dip me in a pit of mud, and my own clothes despise me!

Why then do I labor in vain?

If I wash myself with snow water,

And cleanse my hands with soap,

Yet You will plunge me into the pit,

And my own clothes will abhor me ().

— What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

This new revelation of self and sin leads even the most self-righteous among people to renounce their trust in their own virtue and merit with the same force that they have renounced their most vile and heinous sin. They no longer seek to establish their own righteousness before God by means of works, but “rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (). This is powerfully illustrated in the conversion of the apostle Paul:

This new revelation of self and sin leads even the most self-righteous among people to renounce their trust in their own virtue and merit with the same force that they have renounced their most vile and heinous sin. They no longer seek to establish their own righteousness before God by means of works, but do what in ?

This is powerfully illustrated in the conversion of the apostle Paul: Read

Read

As in the case of grace and works, true repentance and self-righteousness are diametrically opposed and cannot cohabitate in the same person at the same time. The unrepentant person sees himself in “need of nothing.”

However, when the Spirit of God regenerates his heart and illumines his mind, how does a person see himself ?

What do we see with the tax collector in ? He comes to God with the attitude of the old hymn writer who penned:

Not the labor of my hands,

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling.

The repentant sinner categorically rejects all the deceitful approvals and honors of a works-based religion. Consequently, how does this person’s heart overflow with? see

Any suggestion that he is right with God by virtue of his own character or deeds would horrify him. What is part of our true confession? See .

What place, then, do works have in our salvation? Is the Christian to continue in sin that grace may abound ()? Is he to be void of fruit and personal righteousness? Absolutely not! Those who have truly repented and believed unto salvation have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and recreated in the image of Christ. How are they described (see )?

He has died to sin and been raised to walk in newness of life (look up . What sticks out to you?)

By the power of regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the relentless providence of God, the believer will bear fruit and accomplish good works for the glory of God. However, these good works do not result in salvation; rather, they flow from it. The works the Christian accomplishes, which God prepared beforehand so that he would walk in them, are not the cause of his justification but the evidence of it.

List some of these good works that are the evidences of your salvation.