God Works, We Walk

“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. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” – Ephesians 2:8-10

Logically, this verse should say, we are “created… for good works… that we should work in them.” Instead, it says that God has prepared our good works in advance that we may walk in them. Why is that? 

We tend to both stress over our work, then claim credit for whatever we do. But Paul’s choice of words argues against both those things. The most obvious reason for the word choice, perhaps, is that his point in this entire section is that God works, not us. Salvation is a gift. It is something we receive, not something we achieve. The good works we walk in are only possible because God both created us to do it and prepared it for us to do. We can claim credit for none of it.

But there’s also an element of fretful striving in our work that this choice of words encourages us to release. Walking is something we’re intentional about—we do have to put one foot in front of the other, and decide where to go—but that we don’t, barring injury, consciously stress about. It is something we live into and how we live everything out. It is the rhythmic, basic cadence of the every day. To walk in our works is to release our anxieties and fears and walk into what God has prepared us to do, step by step. To walk in our works is to see good work in even the smallest, most mundane tasks of our day. To walk in our works is to be persistent, to keep doing them regularly, to not give up. We are God’s workmanship—a work of art, from the Master Craftsman, and he has created us to walk in our good works.