Are All Works Only "Filthy Rags?"

 

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I’ve heard “but all of our works are just filthy rags!” when the topic of what we “do now”, in Messiah arises.

But if we take a scrub brush to our inherited “anti-works” doctrine and are willing to apply the entire Word, we arrive at much different conclusions. For starters, do these words of David sound like he’s merely presenting "filthy rags" that so many warn us about? No. Not at all. We must rightly understand the entirety of the Word and what is received by Yahweh, according to His plan. We must know what He desires and what is pleasing to Him.

We must remove all excuses to do works of righteousness (righteous deeds) AFTER we have been reconciled to Yahweh, via the Son. This is not "works unto salvation" but rather “works BECAUSE of salvation!" (Please let that sink in.)

Our righteousness must be proved, friend! Are we better than David? Than Abraham? If we begin to "dispensationalize" ourselves out of doing the works that righteous men before us did, we're going to run into some serious theological problems. especially when we peer back unto our Messiah.

James 2:21 "Wasn’t Abraham our father proved righteous by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?"

Yeshua, of course, knew of this when He said, in John 8:39: If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.

And here we are yet again. The guilt of the non-believing Teachers of Yeshua’s day was *not* that they were living according to the Torah – performing works of righteousness. This could not be further from truth! The problem was that they had demanded that It provided salvation. And not just the Torah, but their Talmudic traditions!

Friend, know what the Word says. Know that we must be found “doing something” today BECAUSE of what Messiah has done for us. Grace, rightly understood, is the power “to do”! To do what? Works of righteousness! Amen!