A sincere follower of Christ tends toward good works.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” – Ephesians 2:10
Make sure we understand, we are not saved by good works. The verses right before the one above say “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” – Ephesians 2:8-9
This means that no amount of good works will save us, or justify us before God. We are saved only through faith in the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary.
Because of God’s great salvation, we have gratitude toward Him. We realize God’s nature of love, and we want to be like Him. We welcome the work of His Holy Spirit into thoughts and actions.
We don’t do good works to prove something to God, to other people, or to ourselves.
We do good works because we sincerely love God and we sincerely love our neighbors. We want the best for our neighbors.
We don’t diminish our neighbors in our thoughts. We don’t think that we know the secrets of our neighbors’ hearts and judge them harshly. We don’t judge the actions of others more harshly than we would want them to judge our own actions.
We think toward them kindly, graciously, generously, liberally. We try to attribute good to their motives and actions. Just as we would want out neighbors to think toward us.
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely, this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
– Mark 12:30-31