“Created in Christ Jesus to do good things”

When the apostle Paul preached the good news in Ephesus, many people’s priorities and ways of life changed profoundly (cf. Acts 19:17-20). It was important for them to see clearly that this was not just the result of their own initiative, strength or willpower. They were God’s accomplishment (Greek poema), living out the kind of life God desired them to live. Paul, as passionate a preacher of God’s saving grace as ever lived, wrote that after we accept that grace, we do not live the same old way, but as people “created in Christ Jesus to do good things.” Our good deeds do not earn God’s favor—they grow in our lives as a result of God’s gracious favor.

• John Wesley’s Second General Rule of the Methodist movement applied the idea that we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good things.” It remains vital to Methodists today: “By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men.” * Does the phrase “doing good of every possible sort” spark your imagination to reach beyond conventional thinking about what is good? What are one or two “sorts” of goodness you can think of that Christ might be calling you to? To what extent have God’s priorities become, not just ideas you occasionally exercise when there’s a special church activity, but woven into “the way that (you) live (your) life”? How open are you to letting God continue to shape the way you live even the “secular” parts of your life—driving, shopping, business dealings, saving and investing, playing and watching sports, and the like?