Devotional 87: The Reward of Works: Of Grace, Not of Debt

The Confession Read

Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet, because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 16, Section 7

Introduction

We have spent six sections ascending the mountain of what Scripture teaches about good works — their nature, their source, their necessity, their limits, their inability to merit, and their gracious acceptance in Christ. Now, at the seventh section, the Westminster Divines turn to a subject that presses upon every pastor's study and every parent's heart: what are we to make of the good deeds of those who do not know God? The honest pagan who cares for his aged parents, the unbelieving neighbour who volunteers at the shelter, the philanthropist who funds hospitals and schools with no thought of Christ — are these works good? Does God take any notice of them? Are they simply neutral, neither pleasing nor displeasing to heaven? These are not abstract questions for the theologian's study; they arise at every funeral of a decent unbeliever, in every conversation with a moral friend who sees no need of conversion, and in the quiet unease of a believer's own heart as he considers the relative goodness of people who make no profession of faith. The Confession's answer is as pastorally careful as it is theologically precise, refusing equally the twin errors of Pelagian optimism that would make these works meritorious and of antinomian indifference that would make them irrelevant. Works done by the unregenerate may be materially good, of genuine use to society, and commanded by God — and yet they remain sinful in His sight, incapable of pleasing Him or of preparing a man to receive grace. And yet, in a final turn that guards against every temptation to moral carelessness, the Confession adds that the neglect of these very duties is more sinful still.

Scripture Foundation

The prophet Haggai, ministering to a people returned from exile but grown careless in their devotion, was instructed by the Lord to put a question to the priests concerning the ceremonial law: "If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy?" The priests answered, No. Then Haggai pressed further: "If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean?" The priests answered, It shall be unclean (Haggai 2:12-13). The principle was simple and devastating: holiness is not contagious, but uncleanness is. Touch something clean to something unclean, and the clean does not sanctify the unclean; the unclean defiles the clean. Then came the application: "So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean" (Haggai 2:14). The people were engaged in religious activity — they were offering sacrifices, rebuilding the temple, going through the motions prescribed by the law. But because they themselves were unclean, everything that passed through their hands became unclean. The sacrifice on the altar was corrupted not by any defect in the animal but by the defilement of the offerer. Here is the Old Testament foundation for everything the Confession will say: the moral quality of an act cannot be abstracted from the moral condition of the actor. An unclean person renders unclean everything he touches, including his acts of worship. The apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, distills this principle into a single, searching sentence: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). The context concerns the eating of foods whose lawfulness was disputed among believers with weak and strong consciences, but the principle Paul enunciates reaches far beyond the dinner table. The Greek construction is absolute: pan de ho ouk ek pisteōs, hamartia estin. Whatever is not from faith, is sin. Faith is not merely one virtue among many that adorns an otherwise acceptable action. It is the root from which all true obedience must spring. Without it, the act may conform outwardly to the law of God, but it lacks the inward principle that alone makes obedience genuine. Paul does not say that the act is imperfect or incomplete or lacking in merit; he says it is sin. The word hamartia in its biblical usage denotes not merely a flaw or shortcoming but an offense against God. An act that lacks faith is not a good act lacking something; it is an act that, in its very performance, involves rebellion against the God who commands not only the outward deed but the inward disposition of the heart. The author of Hebrews takes the same truth from a different angle, beginning not with a negative assertion but with a positive one: "Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Hebrews 11:6). The word rendered "impossible" is adynaton, the negation of dynamis, power. It is not merely difficult or unlikely that an unbeliever's works should please God; it is a metaphysical impossibility, a contradiction in terms. Pleasing God is not a matter of meeting an external standard of conduct to which faith may or may not be added as a supplement. Faith is the atmosphere in which all God-pleasing action breathes. Remove it, and the act suffocates. The reason follows: the one who approaches God must believe not only that He exists but that He rewards those who seek Him. Faith is the recognition that all good comes from God, that all service is rendered to God, and that all hope rests in God. An act performed without this recognition may look identical to an act performed with it, just as a corpse may look identical to a sleeping man, but the one is alive and the other is dead. The difference is not visible to the human eye, but it is absolute to the eye of God, who looks not on the outward appearance but on the heart. Solomon, in the Proverbs, sharpens the point with an image drawn from the most ordinary of human activities: "An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin" (Proverbs 21:4). The Hebrew parallelism is instructive. A high look and a proud heart are transparently sinful; they are attitudes of rebellion, the creature exalting itself against the Creator. But then Solomon adds a third item to the list: the plowing of the wicked. Plowing is not in itself sinful; it is honest labour, commanded by God in the cultural mandate to subdue the earth, necessary for the sustenance of human life. And yet, when performed by the wicked — by those whose hearts are alienated from God, whose lives are oriented away from Him — even the plowing of a field becomes sin. Not because the soil is defiled or the plough is an instrument of iniquity, but because the ploughman is defiled and everything he touches bears the stain of his rebellion. The very breath he draws, the very strength he expends, the very thoughts he thinks as he guides the oxen; all of it is done in a state of alienation from the God who gave him breath and strength and mind, and therefore all of it is sin. This is not to say that the plowing is as heinous as murder or as culpable as blasphemy. The Confession will make precisely this distinction when it adds that the neglect of these duties is more sinful still. But it is to say that no act of an unregenerate man can be clean in the sight of a holy God. The prophet Amos, thundering against a people who maintained the outward forms of religion while their hearts were far from God, gives voice to the divine revulsion that attends worship offered from an unregenerate heart: "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols" (Amos 5:21-23). The language is visceral. God does not merely disregard their worship; He hates it. He despises it. The solemn assemblies that Israel thought were pleasing to God were a stench in His nostrils. The very songs they sang, the very instruments they played, had become noise — a cacophony that God refused to hear. Why? Because the worship, though outwardly correct, proceeded from hearts that were wedded to injustice, oppression, and idolatry. The form was right, but the fountain was poisoned. And when the fountain is poisoned, every stream that flows from it — even streams that run in channels God Himself dug — carries the poison with it. Amos's words stand as a permanent warning against the notion that merely doing what God commands, in the outward sense, is enough to please Him. The condition of the doer determines the character of the deed.

What the Divines Meant

The seventh section of Chapter 16 addresses a question that arises necessarily from everything the Confession has said before. If good works are those commanded by God and performed from faith by the Spirit's enabling, then what of the works that meet the first condition but fail the second and third? What of the man who does what God commands, gives alms, tells the truth, cares for his family, attends public worship, but does so without faith, without the Spirit, without any reference to the glory of God? Is his deed good? Does it please heaven? The medieval church had developed a complex answer to this question, holding that such works, while not meritorious in the full sense, could nevertheless dispose a man toward grace. The Latin phrase was facere quod in se est, to do what lies within one's natural power — and the teaching held that if a man did his best according to the light he had, God would not deny him further grace. The Reformers saw in this teaching a fatal compromise of the gospel, a reopening of the door to salvation by human effort that the doctrine of justification by faith alone had slammed shut. The Divines, standing in the Reformation tradition, opened this section with a careful concession: yes, the works of unregenerate men may be, in their material content, things God commands, and they may be genuinely useful to society. But then they drew a line that no medieval theologian could have drawn without abandoning the entire system of semi-Pelagian cooperation: such works are sinful and cannot please God. The Divines catalogued three reasons why the works of the unregenerate cannot please God, and taken together they form a comprehensive anatomy of the spiritual defect that corrupts every act of natural man. The first is that such works "proceed not from a heart purified by faith." The state of the heart determines the character of the act, and the unregenerate heart, however morally disciplined or socially benevolent, is fundamentally at enmity with God. It does not trust Him, does not love Him, does not submit to His righteousness. Until the heart is purified by faith, until it is united to Christ and renewed by the Spirit, every act that proceeds from it bears the mark of that estrangement. The second is that such works are not "done in a right manner, according to the Word." God cares not only what we do but how we do it — the manner, the motivation, the spirit in which the act is performed. The unregenerate man may perform an outwardly righteous act with pride, with self-reliance, with a sense of merit, with indifference to the Mediator through whom alone acceptable service comes. The manner corrupts the matter. The third is that such works are not done "to a right end, the glory of God." This is the ultimate test. The unregenerate man, by definition, does not live for the glory of God. He may act for the good of his neighbour, for the approval of his conscience, for the reputation of his name, for the comfort of a well-ordered life — all of which are subordinate goods — but the supreme end for which God made him, the glory of his Creator, is absent from his calculations. And an arrow that misses the target misses it, however elegantly it flew. Yet having said all this, the Divines added a crucial qualification: "And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God." This is the counterbalance that keeps the doctrine from tipping into antinomianism. If someone were to reason that since the works of the unregenerate cannot please God, it makes no difference whether they do them or not; some radical spirits in the seventeenth century did so reason, but this final clause arrests the inference. The neglect of commanded duties adds to the sinner's guilt. The unregenerate man who cares for his parents does not please God, but the unregenerate man who abandons his parents displeases Him more. The unbeliever who gives alms to the poor does not earn grace, but the unbeliever who hardens his heart against the poor compounds his condemnation. The distinction the Divines are drawing is between two kinds of sin: the sin that corrupts the works that are done, and the additional sin that would attend the refusal to do them at all. The former is unavoidable for the unregenerate; the latter is avoidable and would make his state worse. It is a distinction of considered pastoral wisdom. It tells the unregenerate man that his moral efforts, however sincere he may think them, cannot bridge the chasm between himself and God, but it also tells him that abandoning those efforts would plunge him deeper into the pit. The only remedy for either condition is not better works but a new heart, a purified fountain, a living faith that unites the soul to Christ. The Divines also addressed a related error by denying that the works of the unregenerate can "make a man meet to receive grace from God." The word "meet" carries the sense of fit, suitable, prepared. The idea being rejected is that natural virtue can prepare the soul for grace, disposing it to receive the gospel with greater readiness than a life of flagrant sin. The Divines, with the whole Reformed tradition, insisted that grace is not given according to preparatory dispositions. The Spirit blows where He wills. The publican who had nothing to offer but a cry for mercy went down to his house justified, while the Pharisee who had a lifetime of careful morality to present remained in his sins. Grace does not build upon nature; grace creates anew. The unregenerate man's moral virtues do not make him a better candidate for salvation; they may, in fact, make him a worse one, because they furnish him with an alternative righteousness to cling to, a reason to think he does not need the physician. The healthy have no need of a doctor; those who are well have no need of a Saviour. It is precisely the man who thinks his works are good enough who will never flee to Christ.

Theological Depth

Calvin treats this subject in the Institutes with surgical precision, and his analysis in Book III, chapter 14 furnishes much of the theological substructure on which the Confession builds. He insists that the works of unbelievers, however splendid they may appear to human estimation, are vitiated by the corrupt fountain from which they flow. An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, and the unregenerate heart is an evil tree, not because it lacks every natural impulse toward justice and compassion, but because the root of the love of God is absent from it. Calvin is careful to acknowledge what Scripture itself acknowledges: that there are men without faith who perform deeds of civic virtue, who exercise self-control, who display courage and generosity and integrity. He does not deny the phenomenon. But he insists that these deeds, considered in relation to God, lack the one thing that would make them truly good — the orientation of the heart toward its Maker. He uses an analogy that has helped many to grasp the point: a soldier who fights bravely in a bad cause may display real courage, but his courage serves a wrongful end and therefore participates in the wrong of the cause itself. So the natural man may display real virtues, but because his whole life is oriented away from God, those virtues are enlisted in the service of a rebellion. Turretin takes up the question with the forensic precision that characterised his whole theological method, asking whether the works of the unregenerate are simply sins or whether they possess some genuine moral goodness. His answer distinguishes between the material and the formal aspects of the act. Materially considered, that is, with respect to the outward deed and its conformity to the law's precepts, the act of an unbeliever may be good. The pagan who honours his parents does what the fifth commandment requires. The atheist who tells the truth in a court of law does what the ninth commandment requires. But formally considered, with respect to the principle from which the act proceeds, the manner in which it is performed, and the end to which it is directed, the same act is sinful. It lacks faith, it lacks love for God, it lacks reference to His glory. Turretin clarifies that when Scripture calls these acts sinful, it does not mean they are as heinous as acts that are sinful both materially and formally: murder, adultery, blasphemy. There are degrees of sin, and the Confession's final clause, stating that neglect is "more sinful," implicitly acknowledges this gradation. But the fundamental point stands: relative to the standard of what God requires, which is not merely outward conformity but inward devotion, these acts fall short and therefore bear the character of sin. Shaw, whose exposition of the Confession was for generations the standard text studied by theological students, brings out the pastoral implication with particular clarity. He notes that the doctrine of this section is designed to humble the pride of natural man and drive him to Christ. The man who rests in his morality, who thinks his decency will stand him in good stead before the judgment seat, needs to hear that his decency, disconnected from faith and love for God, is sin. It cannot save him; it cannot even please God. Shaw draws attention to the case of the rich young ruler who came to Christ with a lifetime of commandment-keeping and went away sorrowful because he could not relinquish his idol. His works were not bad in themselves; they were the very things the law commanded. But they had become a substitute for God, a righteousness of his own that made the righteousness of Christ seem unnecessary. This is the peculiar danger of the unregenerate man's good works: they furnish him with a false peace, a counterfeit assurance that all is well between him and God. The doctrine of this section is a mercy because it shatters that false peace and leaves the sinner with nowhere to stand except upon the rock of Christ's finished work. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, develops the point with reference to the broader structure of covenant theology. Under the covenant of works, perfect obedience was required, and anything less than perfect obedience was transgression. Under the covenant of grace, the obedience of believers is accepted not for its own perfection but for Christ's, as we saw in Section 6. But the unregenerate man stands under neither covenant in the sense of enjoying its blessing. He remains under the covenant of works as a covenant already broken, under its curse but not under its promise. His works, therefore, are judged by the standard of that covenant — a standard that demands perfection of the whole man, heart and hand, inward disposition and outward act. Measured by that standard, everything he does falls short. Hodge is careful, however, to maintain the distinction the Confession itself insists upon: these works, though sinful, are not equally sinful with their neglect. God's law commands them, and to omit them is to add transgression to transgression. The unregenerate ruler who enacts just laws does better for his subjects — and incurs less guilt before God than the unregenerate tyrant who oppresses them. This gradation matters for civil life, for common grace, and for the final judgment, in which it will be more tolerable for some than for others. But it makes no difference to the sinner's need for sovereign grace. Whether his works are relatively better or worse, they cannot save him. The ladder of moral improvement, however high it reaches, does not reach to heaven.

Puritan Application

First, let this doctrine humble every natural man who thinks his virtue sufficient. There is a kind of person who, upon hearing the gospel's demand for repentance and faith, responds with genuine bewilderment: "But I am a good person. I pay my taxes, I love my family, I give to charity. What more does God want?" The answer this section gives is unsettling but necessary. God wants everything. He wants the heart, the fountain, the root. He wants not merely the outward conformity of the hand but the inward devotion of the soul. The decency of the unregenerate man is a decency without God, a morality that has expelled its Creator from the premises and carries on as though He did not exist. That is not virtue; it is rebellion in a clean shirt. To the natural man who rests in his goodness, the Spirit says through this section: your goodness is not good enough. It cannot please God, it cannot prepare you for grace, it cannot save you. It can only condemn you, because it testifies that you know what is right and yet refuse to do it for the right reason, from the right motive, to the right end. Stop pointing to your works as though they were a bridge to heaven. They are a millstone that will sink you to hell if you trust in them. Flee to Christ, whose perfect obedience is the only righteousness God accepts. Second, let this doctrine correct a common misunderstanding of human depravity. When Reformed Christians speak of total depravity, the world hears an assertion that every unregenerate person is as wicked as possible, incapable of any kindness, any love, any civic good. That is not what the doctrine means, and this section of the Confession makes the distinction clear. The unregenerate can do things that are materially good, of real use to themselves and others, commanded by God. The mother who does not know Christ can genuinely love her children and make real sacrifices for them. The pagan ruler can enact just laws and administer them with integrity. The unbelieving doctor can heal the sick with skill and compassion. Total depravity does not mean that the unregenerate are as bad as they could be; it means that sin has affected every faculty, mind, will, and affections, so that nothing they do is untouched by their alienation from God. The image of God is defaced but not erased. Common grace restrains sin and promotes civic virtue. But the root remains diseased, and no fruit from a diseased root can be sound in the sight of the divine Husbandman. This doctrine should produce in us neither contempt for the unregenerate nor naive admiration of their virtues, but rather a sober realism that honours the remnants of God's image wherever they appear while insisting that only regeneration can make the tree good and its fruit acceptable. Third, let this doctrine guard you against the error of thinking that outward reformation is conversion. A man may stop drinking, stop swearing, start attending church, start giving generously, and yet remain as far from the kingdom as ever, because the fountain has not been changed. The Pharisees of our Lord's day were paragons of outward virtue. They tithed mint and cumin, they fasted twice a week, they prayed at the street corners. Outwardly, their works were things God commanded. But Christ called them whited sepulchres, beautiful outwardly but full of dead men's bones within. The difference between a Pharisee and a saint is not the outward act but the inward principle. The saint does what he does from faith, in a right manner, to the glory of God. The Pharisee does what he does from pride, for the praise of men, to establish his own righteousness. The works look the same; the hearts are opposites. Examine yourself, then, not by the catalogue of your deeds but by the fountain from which they flow. Do you serve God because you love Him, or because you fear men? Do you obey because you trust Christ, or because you trust your obedience? The same outward life can proceed from two entirely different spiritual conditions. Make sure yours proceeds from a heart purified by faith. Fourth, let this doctrine restrain you from the cruelty of telling decent unbelievers that all is well. One of the most treacherous temptations in pastoral care and personal evangelism is the desire to comfort the unconverted, to reassure the moral pagan, the virtuous atheist, the respectable worldling that surely God will accept them as they are because they are such good people. This section forbids that comfort. It is a false peace, and false peace is more dangerous than open war. The surgeon who tells a patient his tumour is benign when it is malignant has not been kind; he has been a murderer. The Christian who tells an unbeliever his good works please God has not been loving; he has been complicit in a deception that may cost a soul its eternity. Speak the truth in love, but speak the truth. The works of the unregenerate cannot please God. They cannot make a man fit to receive grace. They cannot save. Only Christ can do that. Point the decent unbeliever away from his decency to the cross, where the only Decent Man who ever lived died for the indecent, the ungodly, the sinner — that He might make them decent not by moral improvement but by imputed righteousness and inward renewal. Fifth, let this doctrine fill you with humble gratitude that your own works are accepted. If the works of the unregenerate are sinful, what of the works of the regenerate? Left to themselves, they too would be sinful, for even the believer's best works are accompanied by so much weakness and imperfection that they could not endure the severity of God's judgment. The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is not that the believer's works are intrinsically purer but that the believer himself is united to Christ, accepted in the Beloved, and his works are received through the mediation of a High Priest who bears away their iniquity. We saw this in Section 6. But Section 7, by contrast, makes the grace of Section 6 shine all the brighter. The unregenerate man's works are rejected because he himself is rejected — not yet reconciled to God through the death of His Son. The believer's works are accepted because he himself is accepted — not for his own sake but for Christ's. What cause for humility this is! It is not that we were better raw material than our unbelieving neighbour, more promising soil in which grace could grow. We were the same corrupt tree, bearing the same corrupt fruit, until the Husbandman grafted us into the true Vine. Every good work we have ever done is a gift of grace from first to last — grace to will it, grace to do it, grace to persevere in it, and grace to have it accepted through Christ at the Father's throne. Let the fate of the unregenerate man's works drive you not to pride but to astonished thankfulness that yours do not share it.

Prayer

O most holy and heart-searching God, who triest the reins and lookest not upon the outward appearance but upon the heart, we bow before Thee in the knowledge that without faith it is impossible to please Thee. We confess that by nature we were alienated from Thy life, dead in trespasses and sins, and that whatever our hands touched was defiled by the uncleanness of our hearts. We brought Thee no acceptable service; we offered Thee no pure worship; we performed no work that could endure the severity of Thy judgment. Every thought of our hearts was only evil continually, and even our righteousnesses were as filthy rags before Thy holy eyes. Were it not for Thy sovereign mercy, we would still be in that condition — doing deeds that men might praise but that Thou couldst only condemn, going through the motions of religion while our hearts were far from Thee, and treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. We bless Thee that Thou didst not leave us there. We thank Thee for the washing of regeneration, for the renewing of the Holy Ghost, for the gift of faith that purifies the heart and unites the soul to Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that because we are accepted in the Beloved, our poor and stumbling works are also accepted, not for their own worth, but for His. We thank Thee that the fountain has been cleansed, the root has been made good, the tree has been grafted into the true Vine, and that from that living union there flow works that, however imperfect, are pleasing in Thy sight through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, let this truth produce its proper fruit in us. Keep us from the pride that would despise the unregenerate as though we were made of better clay than they. Keep us also from the false charity that would assure them of Thy favour while they remain estranged from Thee. Give us wisdom to speak the truth in love, to wound that Thou mayest heal, to strip away false confidences that men may flee to Christ alone. And grant that we ourselves, resting wholly upon the righteousness of Another, may abound in every good work — not to establish our standing before Thee, but to express our gratitude for a standing already secured; not to earn what is freely given, but to adorn the gospel we profess; not to draw Thy gaze toward our merits, but to direct all eyes toward the merit of Thy Son, in whom every acceptable sacrifice is offered and through whom every prayer ascends. Bring many, we beseech Thee, from the broad road of self-righteousness to the narrow way of faith. Strip the decent of their decency, that they may be clothed with Christ. Empty the full of their fulness, that they may be filled with His. And bring us all at last to that day when faith shall give way to sight and every work done in the body, whether good or bad, shall be judged by the Man whom Thou hast ordained, to the praise of the glory of Thy grace, world without end. Amen.