Good Works Cannot Save

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)

Billions of people around the globe have been deceived into the belief that their eternal destiny is determined by the quality and quantity of the good works that they do. Many of the major world religions, as well as a few “Christian” denominations, are based on this belief. An inquiry of your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers will quickly reveal that they too hold the belief that the criterion for whether they go to heaven or hell is solely determined by essentially how “nice of a person” they are. Is this your belief as well?

According to the verses above, such a belief leads to everlasting spiritual death and separation from God. In other words, “hell!”

Why? There are three reasons why your good works will be useless when you meet your Maker.

1. Your sins are far greater than you comprehend. Using the analogy of an iceberg, the sins we see in our hearts are only a small percentage of the sins we have committed against God. In Genesis 6:5 we read: “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” In other words, when you go to bed at night and evaluate your day, you may think the only sin you committed was when you gave the other driver a finger when they pulled in front of you. However, the truth is that your heart was at war with the Lord from the moment you woke up until the time you went to bed. You tried to be your own god. You relied on your own strength. You gave yourself credit for things that God did in your life. You pursued wealth, power, fame, influence, and pleasure. You did what you wanted to do, said what you wanted to say, and lived to be the person you wanted to be. You generally ignored or forgot about God as you went about your day. You lived your life as though God was irrelevant to you. So while you plot how you can do an act of kindness to atone for the obscene gesture you gave the other driver, the truth is that if you could earn forgiveness from sin you would need to relive the entire day perfectly and that, my friend, is impossible. Given you’ve already sinned greatly against the Lord for thousands of days in your life, there aren’t anywhere near enough good works to overcome the mountain of sin you’ve accumulated on your record.
2. Doing good works to save yourself from hell is evil. A good work is only “good” if it is truly selfless. A good work is motivated by a desire to show love to another person without any expectation of some good received in return. Imagine kneeling before God with a track record of doing thousands of good deeds in life wherein you asked each recipient of your kindness to pay you a dollar. You got rich on earth by being “kind”. Would God accept your good deeds as legitimate? No! Every act of kindness you performed had a financial string attached to it. The same is true about doing good deeds motivated to save your backend from the fires of hell. If I do a good deed to “earn points” with God the deed is no longer good. It is selfish and proud and, guess what, that is a sin! Yes, it is a sin to do a good work motivated to manipulate God’s assessment of your life. Jesus Christ proved that the only measure of goodness is perfect selflessness, service to, and sacrifice for others. Can a good work ever be good? Certainly. When it is motivated by the Holy Spirit after receiving Jesus Christ as your savior. The Holy Spirit inspires us to do selfless acts of kindness simply because we want to please the God whom we are thankful to for our salvation.
3. Whatever good you do is done by Christ Himself. We understand that Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter. Let’s imagine that He built a beautiful home near the Sea of Galilee that received accolades throughout the region. Now imagine His hammer shouting that it was the one who built the house. “I did it!” says the hammer. “I’m the one who built this house! Praise me!” The same is true for us when we take credit for the good deeds that Christ has done through us. We sound just as foolish. The truth is that whatever good we do in life was inspired by Jesus Christ, equipped by Jesus Christ, and performed by Jesus Christ. If our good has a good impact upon others, the credit for that too goes to Jesus Christ. As the verse above states, many people are going to come before Jesus and recite the good works that they did in their life. They will do so fully expecting Christ to be impressed and to point them in the direction of the land of eternal paradise. However, the truth is that Jesus will say to them that it was He alone who did all of those good deeds and that they stand before Him with empty hands. If they have not placed their faith in Jesus Christ that He forgave them by dying on the cross for their sin, their eternal doom is certain.

My friend, if you are preparing a list of good deeds to recite to your Maker after you die, you are in danger of eternal pain and suffering. You have nothing to offer Jesus Christ, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of people have complimented you for your good life. The only good work you can do that will have an impact on your eternal destiny is the act of believing that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for all the multitudes of your sin and that because of Him your record is now clean before Him. The only good work is to believe you now stand righteous and holy before God because Christ took upon Himself the punishment your mountain of sins deserved.