What does the Bible say about good works?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, or pastoral care focused on good works. 

• Leviticus 19:9-10, provide food for the hungry (do not gather everything from your fields or vineyards; leave some for the poor)
• Proverbs 21:3, do justice (doing justice is better than sacrifice)
• Micah 6:8, do justice (do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God)
• Matthew 3:8, bear good fruit (bear fruit consistent with repentance)
• Matthew 5:16, good works glorify God (let your light shine so that others will give glory to God)
• Matthew 7:21, do God's will (those who do the will of the Father will enter the kingdom of heaven)
• Romans 2:6-10, do good (God will give eternal life to those who do good, not those who are self-serving)
• Galatians 6:9, do what is right (let's not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time if we persevere)
• Ephesians 2:8-10, good works don't save us (we have been saved by grace, not by works)
• Colossians 3:12-14, be loving (cloth yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, and love)
• Titus 2:11-12, be upright and godly (the grace of God trains us to be good and follow God's will)
• Hebrews 13:16, do good and be generous (don't neglect to do good and to share what you have)
• James 2:14-17, faith without works is dead (what good is it if you say you have faith but do not have good works?)
• James 2:24-26, good works are essential (a person is justified by works and not by faith alone) 

Sermon ideas about good works 

What light can sermons shed on the relationship between faith and good works? In an upright life, good works make up a good part of everyday life. Spouses encourage each other, cook for each other, run each other's errands. Parents embrace and nourish their children. Friends visit, support, and gift each other. Citizens pay taxes and vote.  

Church members bring soup to the sick and visit those who are lonely. They rebuke sexist remarks. They tell the truth even when it's difficult to do it. They take good care of animals, and of trees and shrubs. They shovel snow, rake leaves, and cut grass for the elderly, the grieving, and those with disabilities. They show hospitality not only to friends, but also to strangers, including refugees. They guard each other's reputations. They own up to being wrong when they are. They work on forgiving people who have hurt them. They plant trees that will shade future generations. 

Good works are not mere niceties or add-ons or ornaments. They are the daily stuff of a righteous life, and they include all the acts of justice in society, such as fighting racism with workshops, votes, boycotts, and online publicity. Acts of justice include performing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay and paying an honest day's wage for an honest day's work. Upright people love justice and hunger for it. 

Faith may motivate good works. Faithful persons trust that God is good, and good to them. This trust moves them to please God by doing the good works God loves. Such trust easily morphs into gratitude — the powerful, mixed sense of being blessed and indebted. Gratitude moves good people to do good works. So does love of God and love of neighbor. To love God is to want to please and bless God with a fruitful life of good deeds. To love one's neighbors is to strive to confer value on them through favorable action toward them. 

In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches that good works are one form of evangelism. They are a light shining in the world, making God and goodness more credible. Journalist Sonia Nazario once told of witnessing scores of Central American kids trying to get to the United States by riding on top of boxcars. They were buffeted by winds and rain, harassed by gangs, tormented by hunger and thirst. But the kids met kindness in some towns in the persons of Catholic padres, who heaved sandwiches and bottles of water up to the kids. "I'm an agnostic Jew," said Nazario, "but I want to tell you, those padres have made me pause." 

A sermon on good works can point out that Paul and James appear to tug at each other over good works. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we are saved by grace, through faith, and that this is not the result of works. James says faith alone won't save us; faith needs to be completed by works. Their emphasis differs, but they fundamentally agree that mere intellectual assent (James' idea of faith) comes nowhere near saving faith. Saving faith includes trust in God's benevolence, and it inevitably generates fruitful works. Good works are the fruit of a good tree. 

According to Jonathan Edwards, good works are the evidence of saving faith. He said the way to tell whether we have been truly born again by the Spirit of God is to see whether we have a godly practice. Do we have in our lives a pattern of good works governed by the Ten Commandments and other biblical guides? Do we make good deeds our central business the way a physician makes medicine her central business? And do we keep on in our practice of godliness for the long run of our lives, not just in little spurts while other people are watching? 

Of course, in urging good works Edwards was not discounting the place of prayer, Bible reading, or attendance at public worship for preaching and sacraments. He prescribed these things as basic spiritual exercises by which Christians commune with God and excite their hearts with love toward God and fellow believers. But how genuine are these exercises? Given the danger of hypocrisy, how do we know we aren't just thrilling ourselves at church while ignoring God? How do we know we aren't deceiving ourselves? 

The way to tell, said Edwards, is not by noticing how much we talk about Jesus. According to the gospels, people who say "Lord" all the time don't necessarily impress God. After all, talk is cheap. To follow Jesus, we have to practice what he preached. And what Jesus preached is that a good tree is known by its fruit — not by its twigs or leaves or heaving branches. And Christians are known by their godly practice, not by good intentions or pious talk or spiritual handwaving. A good tree is known by producing actual fruit, and a good Christian is known by producing actual good works. 

But can't good works be counterfeited too? Can't people make a show of them, try to get credit for them, and go after them not to do good but just to look good? 

Absolutely. So to see whether we have the Spirit of Christ in us, and not just the spirit of self-advancement, we should ask whether our good deeds cost us something. Are we willing to accept the pain of new life as well as its joy? Do we give money away that we would rather have kept, and do we (eventually) find satisfaction in doing so? Do we accept other people's suffering as a shared burden, and thus try to relieve them of a part of it? Are we able to rejoice in God right through allergy season? Do we praise freely and complain rarely? Do we put the best face on other people's motives while also suspecting our own? 

Only God knows a human heart. But we can see a Christian practice. We can tell a good heart by good deeds that express the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

David Swing was pastor of Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church in the 1870s. Three thousand people came to hear him preach each week. In his sermons, Swing emphasized the need for good works in the Christian life. He did this so consistently that certain other Presbyterian ministers suspected him of harboring a doctrine of salvation by works. Swift replied that it is a fine thing to center salvation on faith in Christ, but how can you say you believe in Christ but overlook what Christ taught? Jesus constantly taught the need for good works. Swing said he was only trying to give Christ his due. Tried for heresy by the Presbytery of Chicago in 1874, Swing was acquitted. 

Excerpts about good works 

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about good works: 

• "Fruits of righteousness are good works, and they are evidence that we abide in Christ. If I am living in sin day by day, what right have I to conclude I am a child of God?" Scripture Meditation or Sermon by Charles H. Spurgeon from The Spurgeon Center for Biblical Preaching 
• "But while Berry's vision of humans doing good work to care for the places where they live is enticing, it is very daunting 'in our globalized consumer economy,' Jeff Bilbro remarks. 'It is hard to imagine what good, caring work on behalf of the world might look like when reliance on electronics and labor-saving technologies obscures the Christian belief that God has given humans meaningful work to do, and instead encourages us to act as if humans are pleasure-seeking units of consumption.'" Education Resource from the Christian Reflection project from the Center for Christian Ethics 
• "While God saves us by God's grace, good works like sowing to please the Spirit remain very central to the life of God's adopted sons and daughters." Sermon Illustration, Sermon Preparation by Doug Bratt from Center for Excellence in Preaching