Hebrews Chapter Thirteen, God's Peace And Good Works

Linking verse 20 to verse 21, we backtrack past God’s credentials to His title in verse 20: the God of peace. “May the God of peace…make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight.” We read elsewhere, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure,” Philippians 2:13. 

Also, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them,” Ephesians 2:10. It is difficult not to notice the source of our workmanship and the emanation of good works: God Himself. The God of peace will make us complete or mature, so that every good work will be pleasing to Him. It is in fact God at work in us, creating the good works that are the natural fruit of a Christian walking in the Spirit. We are tools, so to speak in God’s hands, His workmanship created in Christ for good works. He prepared such works (and us) beforehand with the express purpose that we should walk in them, not in the lust of the flesh.

John chapter 15 delves into this concept as our Lord explains that He is the True Vine, and we, His disciples, are the branches. The branch abides in the vine, which provides it with the necessary nourishment to sustain it. This metaphor is meant to clearly reveal the believer’s desperate need of abiding in Jesus Christ and not succumbing to carnal living, quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit. The branch of a fruit tree does not produce the fruit, as it were; the tree produces fruit naturally of its own kind. The branch is a conduit through which the tree manifests the kind of fruit it natively produces. If a supposed apple tree never bore apples once, someone might have reason to suspect the tree’s pedigree.

Jesus explained that the Christian abiding in Him may produce fruit, but the fruit produced is really God at work in Him, using the believer as a willing vessel for the life of Jesus Christ to manifest in them. Christ died to sin, so that He may live in us, and through us continue His purpose of redeeming a lost world back to the Father. The saint that does not abide in Christ, as Jesus warned, can literally do nothing of any spiritual good, John 15:4, 5. The works produced then would be God’s power at work in us and through us for the glory of the father and the benefit of others. 

How then, in this context, can works save us? If God is at work in us, and the fruit produced is Christ’s presence manifesting through our yielded spirit, how may someone claim that works can earn salvation? The works are ultimately God’s works, as seen in the lives of Moses, or Joshua, or Paul. Such works were never done for self-serving reasons. They were done to further God’s purposes on earth and reveal His glory, so that others may know Him and be saved. Imagine Moses taking credit for the death of the first born, or Joshua thinking the parting of the Jordan was meritorious for his salvation? No, while these works are more visibly grandiose, they serve to characterize how a Christian is to live, and how we are to view good works: as products of God’s providential power at work through us as we submit to His Holy Spirit.

Finally, it is evidenced that these works are done through Jesus Christ, as the author himself states, condensing John chapter 15:1-8 in this summary. It is to Jesus Christ that the glory for the good works is attributed to, because it is through Christ our Lord that we have eternal life, the Holy Spirit abiding in us, and the ability as reborn children of God to finally serve and please the Father in good conscience. Paul writes of those who are unbelieving and defiled as being insubordinate, Titus 1:10, 16. Refusing to submit to sound doctrine, which reveals God’s truth to the willing mind, such people profess to know God but their works reveal a contrary story. They are said to be disqualified in terms of either committing carnal works, or doing works for motivation outside of Christ. Recall how our Lord stated that He is the True Vine, and our abiding in Him will naturally produce fruit. Contrary works indicate that professing believers are not abiding in Him and are carnal Christians, or are unsaved and do not know Him at all, replacing relationship with service.