Thank you for helping to support Peace Devotions through your prayers, likes, and shares.
If you’d like to support our ministry financially, you can donate here.
Why Do Good?
Why should we do good? There's a lot of reasons to do good, but one of the fundamental reasons is that we were created in the image of God.
Ephesians 2:8-10
Why do good? Why do good things? Do good works? Recently I was hanging out with some of my high school students from my church at an area Lutheran high school, and I asked them that question and they gave some good answers. They said we should do good because Jesus tells us to. We should do good because it’s a way of showing thanks to God. We should do good because it helps other people, and we should do good because, well, it helps us feel good. That’s a good thing. And those are all good answers. But as we were talking, I realized that we were actually missing the most fundamental reason why we want to do good.
When God created everything in the beginning, including humanity, he looked at it and said it was very good. He made us good. We were created good. To be good. And actually, God created humanity with a special, special purpose. He created us in his own image and in his own likeness. Not that we physically look like God, but that we were created with the ability and the vocation, the calling, to live in a way that looks like God. It’s this beautiful thing. How does an invisible God show what he looks like? It’s by creating people to live in a way that reflects his character, his love, his goodness.
He created us to do good. And as we were to take hold of his creation in a good way, we would image him, show what he looks like. Now, unfortunately, Adam and Eve stopped trusting God. And when you don’t trust your creator, you don’t live like your creator. And we’re all born now into that same rebellion where we don’t do good. Scripture says in many places that there’s no one who does good. And so we’re all stuck in this way where we naturally don’t do what we were created to do and don’t be what we were created to be.
But Jesus came into this world to be everything that we were meant to be but aren’t. And he laid down his life to take the justice for your sin and mine onto himself and to deal with it. And he rose again to set us right with God, but then also to send us now the spirit to give us new life, and to make it so that we can begin to live. Think about Ephesians chapter two. There’s this beautiful section where it says,
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
And then it goes right into saying,
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
Notice the result of being set right by God, by Jesus through faith is that we now get to do good works. Sometimes people think we need to do good works for God. That’s not at all in good works are the gift. Good works are the opportunity to be finally what we were meant to be. To begin to live the way we were meant to live. We’re not going to do it perfectly now. And whenever we trip up and stumble, whenever we live in a way that is less than what we were meant to be, we turn back to the cross and we are assured we are forgiven. And then we get to step forward in the spirit, begin to be who we were meant to be, and look forward to that day where we will live with Christ in paradise, or when he returns and sets it all right when we get to fully be everything we were meant to be.
That’s why we do good.
