My Year With Spurgeon #15

Good Works
Charles Spurgeon
1856
“Zealous of good works.”—Titus 2:14.

The children of God are a holy people;—for this very purpose were they born and brought into the world, that they should be holy; for this they were redeemed with blood and made a peculiar people. God’s end in election, the end of all his purposes, is not answered until they become a people “zealous of good works.”

Our good works, if we have any, spring from a real conversion; yet more, they spring also from a constant spiritual influence exercised upon us, from the time of conversion even until the hour of death. Ah! Christian, thou wouldst have no good works if thou hadst no fresh influence day by day… we think that good works spring from union with Christ. We believe that the more a man knows and feels himself to be one with Jesus, the more holy will he be. The very fact that Christ and the Christian become one, makes the Christian Christ-like. Why is a Christian’s character like Christ’s character? Only for this reason, that is joined and united to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The use of good works is, that they are a Christian’s sermon. A sermon is not what a man says, but what he does. You who practice are preaching; it is not preaching and practising, but practising is preaching. The sermon that is preached by the mouth is soon forgotten, but what we preach by our lives is never forgotten. There is nothing like faithful practice and holy living, if we would preach to the world.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible