Good Works and Sanctification

In the second half of Matthew 5, Jesus lays out the relationship of the children of the kingdom to the law according to his own fulfillment of it. In the first half of Matthew 6, we encounter a further development of what it means to live in the kingdom according to Jesus’ fulfillment of the law, but these words are focused on a few important ways in which righteousness must be practiced perfectly. The first of these practices is giving to the needy, which stands as a concrete example for the more general idea of doing good works. Jesus stresses in Matt 6:1-4 the importance of uniting the act of doing a good work with the intention of glorifying God. If righteousness is practiced with the intention of seeking glory for the self, then the practicer just might get the desired result. The tragedy, though, is that such a practicer of self-righteousness will consequently forfeit the eternal and durable heavenly reward that God offers to those who practice righteousness to the glory of God.

With this concrete example of doing good works following so closely on the prior emphasis on holiness in heart and conduct, it is worth reflecting briefly on the connection between sanctification and good works, lest we miss the organic connection between these different parts of the Sermon on the Mount. Herman Bavinck offers some helpful commentary on the relationship between good works and sanctification:

[Sanctification] does not consist of the fact that the believers proceed to sanctify themselves by means of a holiness which they themselves newly and for the first time bring into being, or of one which exists already but which they by means of their exertion and good works must appropriate. The holiness revealed by God in the gospel is not only completely prepared by Christ but by His Spirit is also applied to our hearts and worked out there. Paul says it so beautifully in Ephesians 2:10: We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Just as the first creation was brought into being by the Word, so the re-creation gets its being in the communion with Christ. The believers are crucified, die, are buried, and they are also raised and reborn to a new life in the fellowship with Christ.

And that re-creation has a specific purpose. It has its end in the good works which the believers do. God does not care about the tree but about the fruits, and in those fruits about his own glorification. But those good works are not independently and newly brought into being by the believers themselves. They lie completely prepared for them all and for each one of them individually in the decision of God's counsel; they were fulfilled and were earned for them by Christ who in their stead fulfilled all righteousness and the whole law; and they are worked out in them by the Holy Spirit who takes everything from Christ and distributes it to each and all according to Christ's will. So we can say of sanctification in its entirety and of all the good works of the church, that is, of all the believers together and of each one individually, that they do not come into existence first of all through the believers, but that they exist long before in the good pleasure of the Father, and the work of the Son, and in the application of the Holy Spirit. Hence all glorying on man's part is also ruled out in this matter of sanctification.[1]

So, then, just as Jesus highlights the depth and richness of the law and the prophets in the second half of Matthew 5—so that no one may boast of fulfilling the law—so he begins in the first half of Matthew 6 to underscore the importance of uniting good works with the intention to glorify God—so that no one may think that genuinely good works originate with the individual.

The point of presenting this connection between sanctification and good works is to remind us that even our efforts to promote the public good are not divorced from the gift of God’s salvation and our union in Christ. God does not hand off the baton to us to do good works that we might be praised in the public square. Rather, he prepares beforehand the good works which we do so that we might be lights that shine to his glory. May we thus shine, seeking to bring glory to our heavenly Father rather than to ourselves.

[1] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion According to the Reformed Confession, trans. Henry Zylstra (Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 461.