You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. [Psalm 139:13-14 (NLT)]
“It’s a masterpiece!” I would exclaim when admiring my grands’ latest creations before hanging them on the refrigerator. Truth be told, they only were masterpieces in my grandma eyes. To anyone else, they were just a child’s efforts with crayons, markers, and stickers. A real masterpiece is a work done with exceptional skill—a supreme intellectual or artistic achievement. Even then, the word “masterpiece” usually is limited to an artist’s best work. While my grands needed to hone their skills before creating a true artistic masterpiece, every one of us is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece and an example of God’s best work.
Unlike masterpieces like Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon, or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, we are not to be hung on a museum wall or placed on a stand. We are not a beautifully painted piece of canvas or a masterfully crafted statue whose purpose is to be viewed and admired but not touched. Nor are we a masterpiece like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Dickens’ Great Expectations, or Shakespeare’s Hamlet with words and ideas that, while wonderful, never change. As great as they are, masterpieces like Renoir’s paintings, Rodin’s The Thinker, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Emily Dickenson’s poems are static—the same today as they were when they were completed. As God’s masterpieces, however, we are never finished. Regardless of our age, we are works in progress. Our creator continually fine-tunes us, refines our stories, fixes the messy spots, and chisels away at our rough edges so that we look and act more like Jesus every day.
Unlike the masterpieces on display in the Louvre or the Library of Congress, it’s not enough to be God’s masterpiece and sit passively on the sidelines of life. God created us with a purpose—to do the things He planned for us long ago. Yes, we are saved by faith and not works, but we have been saved by God’s grace so that we can do His work. God doesn’t make mistakes nor does he make junk and each one of us is as much a masterpiece as are Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. While those beautiful frescoes were made for viewing, however, we are made for doing!
Good works are indispensable to salvation—not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence. We are not saved because of works, but we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, good works which God prepared beforehand…and for which he has fashioned us. [John Stott]
During his second missionary journey, Paul spent 18-months establishing the church in Corinth before returning to Jerusalem. In 53 AD, he set off on his third mission and ended up in Ephesus. Upon receiving disturbing reports of immorality among Corinthian believers, Paul wrote to them. After a delegation from Corinth arrived with a letter containing a series of questions for him and another group visited the evangelist with reports of divisiveness in Corinth’s church, Paul replied to them with the letter we know as 1 Corinthians. Although Paul’s epistle was written to correct such things as errors in doctrine, divisiveness within the church, a sectarian spirit, and sexual immorality, this rebuke to a troubled church has one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13.
Martha, the elder sister of Lazarus and Mary, was chided by Jesus when she complained about her sister not helping with dinner preparations. Her fault, however, was in her fretfulness and reproach more than the work she was doing. She had more than a dozen hungry men to feed but, wanting to be the proper hostess, Martha’s preparations probably were more elaborate than necessary. Could it be that she’d become more interested in impressing her dinner guest than knowing Him? “Worried and upset by many things” that night, she lost sight of Jesus. Praiseworthy service must never obscure our view of the Lord!
While anointing people seems a bit strange to us in the 21st century, in Jesus’ day it was a tradition among the Hebrews to anoint a guest with oil as a way of welcoming them into your home. Anointing them with perfume like nard, however, was a costly and significant act of devotion and honor—one saved for exceptional occasions. A major economic sacrifice, it signaled wholehearted commitment. That twelve ounces of nard used to anoint Jesus in Bethany represented a full year’s wages!
If there were a litmus test for Christians, it would not be pious words, powerful preaching, grandiose gestures, or even extraordinary feats; it would be the presence of the Fruit of the Spirit. If love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control aren’t evident in our lives, we may be talking the talk but we’re clearly not walking the walk. Jesus recognizes us by our fruit and, if we’re bearing the Fruit of the Spirit, people will see some of Christ in us.
In contrast to works, which are produced by us, the Fruit of the Spirit is produced by the Holy Spirit. Rather than a basket with a variety of fruit, this is one indivisible fruit characterized by nine virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We could call this the “Christlikeness fruit” because these characteristics describe Jesus and should describe us.
