“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” ⎯ Ephesians 2:8-10

This week in your study on Jesus and Loving Others you learned about showing love to a group of people known as the “least of these.” It would be easy for early Christians to get caught up in the idea that what a person does is what makes them good in God’s eyes. That kind of logic was the foundation for obeying God’s Law in the Old Testament. For thousands of years God’s people seemed to view how well they kept God’s commandments as a way of measuring a person’s relationship with God. 

Do you know what changed all that?

When Jesus died on the cross He replaced the DOING as a means of righteousness with BELIEVING. We are saved from our sins not by our good actions (which could never be good enough) but by faith in Jesus’ life-saving work on the cross. Now the good things we do like loving the least is not a requirement for salvation, but a result of salvation. 

Paul said that God created us to good things in this world. Now we have the freedom as believers to do those good things out of our love for God. What we do for Christ flows from our salvation, not the other way around.

Take some time today to thank God for His great gift of salvation and ask Him to guide you to those who need to see the love of Jesus in action.