We are God’s workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus to do good works.
—Ephesians 2:10
In 2010 a Stradivarius violin, hand-crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1697, sucked the breath out of an auction crowd with a top-bid of $3,600,000.
Antonio allegedly said that God could not make Stradivari violins without Antonio.
Partnership with God is a high privilege.
We are saved by grace, not by works: “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
Does the next verse contradict those words when it says that we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”?
No, there is no contradiction. We are not saved by good works, but we are hand-picked to do good works.
Faith doesn’t stand in the shadows
with its hands in its pockets.